Home, Security?
I met Paul and Sue Rutherford and their grandson Warren Todd in February of 2014. This year I've decided to use some of my respite care time to go and meet people I've talked to about bedroom tax and other housing issues on the internet. Before the policy came knocking at our door with a Notice of Seeking Possession in hand, I knew almost nothing about social housing, the legislation surrounding it, or the people that provide it.
Warren's house has been extensively adapted to make it just right for him. Paul and Sue also live there, but until you've seen how imaginative, personalised and ingenious the layout is, it's difficult to form an opinion about what the rather dry descriptions of 'adaptations' mean. I'd go as far as to say that the property would make a really good model for a home intended to allow independent living for many people with disabilities, not just children. The house hasn't so much been adapted for Warren, as specifically built around his needs. When I compare it to the more modest adaptations we've made in our home, it makes me reflect on how some of the most important principles of social housing are about taking individual circumstances into account.
So it was a little baffling to read the High Court judgement in Rutherford vs. The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, that made the Rutherford's situation seem like something that could be dealt with without taking proper account of their individual circumstances.
Although the case was assumed to be a test case to decide whether any family looking after disabled children who require an overnight carer are entitled to a bedroom for that purpose, in the end the Court took the opinion that this was an individual judgement rather than an examination of whether DHPs are actually working as intended. Paragraph 60 of the judgement does refer to the postcode lottery of the scheme, which from the early available data appears to be awarding DHPs in fewer cases to disabled tenants than those who do not have a disability, undermining the DWP's assertion that the money is available for those who need it most.
What really struck me was Paragraph 59:
"I do not doubt or belittle the evidence of Mr Rutherford that the initial application and subsequent sense of uncertainty caused the Claimants anxiety. However, none of the detriments that have been suggested show "a serious flaw in the scheme which produces an unreasonable discriminatory effect." Much of the anxiety will have been caused by the initial rejection and the uncertainty it engendered. On the information available to me that was an error on the part of Pembrokeshire, which it later recognised and rectified: it was not attributable to a serious flaw in the scheme, which should have been capable of proper operation from the outset."
This opinion sidetracks one of the biggest problems with the bedroom tax, and that is how tenants are made to feel. When I sat with Paul and Sue in their kitchen, I sensed a pervasive sense of fear in their home. It wasn't about the ongoing case, and hopefully wasn't because I was visiting, but it was the same sense of fear that my wife and I felt last year. The fear you have because the sense of security we used to have in our own home has gone. We all talked a lot in the brief time that I was there, and it's difficult to describe how valuable, and how powerful it is to share those fears and that upset with somebody else who understands what it means. It's how I know that however technically legal the Rutherford judgement is, it won't resolve anything for other people in need, who are affected by the policy.
It's fear that I've been unable to shake off in my own home. The underlying principle of the bedroom tax assumes that all social housing tenants who are living in a home that the DWP deems to have too many bedrooms are being subsidised by an amorphous block of 'hardworking taxpayers' so beloved of politicians. Any situation where people might actually be lucky enough to be judged worthy of a spare room by the Department for Work and Pensions is an anomaly.
So, while everyone celebrates not paying bedroomtax, perhaps by being made exempt by dint of having a room for an overnight carer (but only for a disabled adult), or while local authorities, housing associations and support groups celebrate the awarding of a Discretionary Housing Payment or the winning of a First Tier Tribunal, none of these thing can abate the gnawing fear that my home isn't my home any more. I can expect at least annual phone calls from our local authority, in case we've dared to treat our 'personalised' care budget in a way that doesn't include regular, overnight care, or in case there's been a cure for Multiple Sclerosis that nobody has told us about.
We're an anomaly now, temporarily deemed worthy of not having our already precarious income reduced further by having to pay for a room that can't be considered spare in any meaningful sense.
So, for all the hope that the entire bedroom tax policy might be further eroded after the Rutherford's Judicial Review by its reliance on DHPs - as detailed in this excellent blog post by Giles Peaker, and despite my friends regularly trying to assure me that our situation is stable now that we have our exemption, I can't help but feel that in Warren's house, the feeling won't be that of relief, or even settlement. The underlying fear that a really badly thought out policy can undermine your home, and your sense of home, won't go away until better exemptions are made, or the policy as a whole is disposed of.
Tenants aren't helped by exemptions, DHPs or FTTs other than in a superficial sense. We've got to stop looking at them as long term solutions. Underneath those sticking plasters, for us the wound of fear is still fresh. The underlying principle of social housing - a safe, secure, warm, dry, welcoming home, cannot be maintained while the burden of proof for bedroom tax lies with the tenants affected. The default position of the policy being that you're living somewhere that you shouldn't be. That's the feeling we're left with, and it's precisely that feeling that commentators from their own homes often can't appreciate.
Bedroom Tax hope wasn't improved by the National Housing Federation voicing the same appraisal and analysis of the failure of the policy that they've always maintained, earlier in the week. Somewhere along the line, the people responsible for implementing it have stopped listening to the evidence, however overwhelming it is.
You can read all the latest data here, but the implications were summarised by David Orr, CEO of the NHF;
The evidence is crystal clear. This measure does not work. There is no rational way to amend it. It must be repealed, and the sooner the better. Just for once, in a time where anti politics sentiment is tangible, wouldn’t it be great if the government was to say “we got this one wrong”?
David's full statement is a conclusive rebuttal of all the aims of the policy, described by the CEO of an organisation that represents many of those organisations at the front line who deal with the tenants affected. No matter what evidence is produced or what heart-wrenching case studies are written about and discussed, the policy remains in place, and as each day passes, the idea that it might ever go away, giving tenants their sense of security back, seems more distant.
But hey, it's not fair on all those hardworking taxpayers, right?
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You can follow Paul Rutherford on Twitter: @PaulRutherford8
The @nearlylegal blog on First Tier Tribunal cases for bedroom tax is here.
David Orr, CEO of the National Housing Federation, is quietly on Twitter here: @natfedDavid.