Could the Bedroom Tax be about to go pear-shaped?

Most of the new estates being built around here are a mix of 2, 3 and 4 bed homes. It's a while since I worked for a housing association, but I do remember all the houses they built were 2 bed at least. It wasn't practical to build one beds as few wanted to live in them - tended to be inhabited by 'undesirables'. They're too short term. Young singles usually aspire to be part of a couple and a one bed HA house just isn't big enough for two - especially if they want babies. Older singles frequently are broken relationships and want room for visiting offspring - or to become a couple. And most older singles just don't want to live next door to youngsters coming and going at all hours. Perhaps IDS should try living in one for six months.

We always get blamed, Flickety, so we might as well do something to get blamed for.
If we go for bungalows and they go for houses, that will not be a problem.
Actually three bedroom starter homes are cheaper than bungalows, so that's okay.

And that those with cold hands and feet are more likely to have heart attacks, which is strange because that's one of the side effects of the tablets that they give to many of us.

Did you see - I think on the One Show - that all over 65s should heat their homes to at least 21 degrees to prevent blood pressure rising?

We seem to be turning the maximum space the state will subsidise you to occupy if for any reason you cannot afford to house your self adequately from your own income into a moral issue where it is immoral for anyone to occupy more than this stipulated minimum housing requirement.

The state's responsibility is to ensure that everybody in need gets a roof over their head, clothing and food, but after that everyone should be free to choose to live in whatever size house, eat whatever food and buy whatever clothes they can afford.

Our housing problems are not caused by older people under-occupying property, it is caused by governments failing to build sufficient houses for a rising population and smaller households. They have failed to grasp the nettle of NIMBYism and we have for too long had governments that were ideologically opposed to state housing.

Remember if all we oldies vacated our big houses to buy smaller 2 bedroomed properties, we would be in direct competition with first time buyers trying to buy exactly the same type of property. Increased competition would rive up the price of starter houses and then we would be blamed for pricing first time buyers out of the market for started homes!

Just realised that my hands are cold, and turned my heating up to 22 degrees - because I can afford to as I have no rent to pay.

Sounds like a plan Jen I think I've a nice malt left over from our Haggis Bash

I know the feeling, Aka. Earlier this afternoon I made myself go out for a brisk bike ride to try to shake it off, but it's hard at this time of year. I was working first thing this morning and will be working again in an hours time, and I find it really hard to settle to doing anything pleasurable between times, knowing that I've not finished for the day! I end up on here being argumentative instead!!!

Might be that as well, Aka. That could be why so many get benefits.
Sounds like you need a few G&Ts to go with your flowers, and violins in the background.

Thanks Nfk I'm just feeling sorry for myself today. B****y weather, rotten cold, Januaryitis!!

I thought that was IBS....a Specsavers moment Jen.

for Aka

Aka, it was IDS who said that ghettoisation was rife on Benefits Street and showed his policies were working.

I can't afford friends.. I spend all my time looking after the GC My only friends are on GN....

Sooorrry! Recent evening spent with 'rich' friends!. We did feel slightly smug that we can sit comfortably in 22 degrees while their houses never go above 18.

What friends? I don't have my friends

I was born and brought up in a seven bedroomed Victorian house. My grandmother persuaded my parents to buy it so that if they were short of money, they could always have lodgers. She gave them the money for the deposit.
My parents lived there until my mum was 65. They then moved into a one bedroomed flat owned by a housing association. Lots of the rooms were unused because they could not afford the heating and even the lighting in some of the rooms. This time of year it would be freezing.
However, it was useful because they sold it to the same housing association and it was turned into bedsits for youngsters leaving carehomes, to teach them how to cope in the real world.
Everyone involved thought it was a brilliant solution to a housing problem. In fact there was an article about it in the local paper.
Anyone live in a house big enough to do this?

Yes Aka. As long as you can afford to look after it and pleeeeese don't whitter on to your friends about the horrendous heating costs, the amount you had to spend out on new curtains, the hourly rate the gardener charges, etc, etc

Don't know about only Marxist but do know the Nazis forcibly removed Jewish families from their houses to ghettoes, so it seems as if both extremes of the political spectrum are culpable.

Yes, if I own my house it is mine to do what I want with (pedants' excuse grammar). End of argument.

I suppose we downsized slowly because in the middle we had a guest house, so although the house was quite big, the furniture in many of the rooms was not in use by us, except when the kids and their families came for holidays and Christmas. Handy having all those toilets and showers at the time.
We downsized properly after my husband kept losing his balance on the back staircase and falling through the glass firedoor.
If people live to be as old as they are supposed to, many will need to downsize eventually, and it's surely better to do it when you can, rather than when you have to.
Again it comes back to the idea of there being two kinds of people, those who own their own homes and those in social housing. Those in social housing can be moved around, but those who have bought their own can live in as big a house as they want, not need.
Sounding Marxist here, aren't I?

Moving from the 'bedroom' tax. This is what so silly about so many of those reports about older people 'under-occupying' properties they live in. They always talk in terms of spare bedrooms, without defining what a bedroom is, and seem to forget that many people of all ages 'under-occupy' their houses, in the sense that there have more rooms in their house than the minimum the state will pay you occupy, yet visit any of these 'under-occupied' houses and you will find every room in use.

From previous threads we know that Gransnetters have rooms for DGC's regular stopovers, for sewing, painting and all sorts of other uses. nJust because we have more rooms than a state defined minimum doesn't mean to say they are unused.

And I suppose inertia. Why down size? Takes a lot of effort to sort through in our case 35 years of accumulated junk - and ours wasn't that big a house - just had a lot of sheds. As long as you can afford the heating bills why move?

Yes, Durhamjen, my original post was about the definition of bedroom.

The judge has ruled that a bedroom is " a room furnished with a bed and/or used for sleeping in", so hopefully as long as said room does not fit that definition, it shouldn't matter how many walls have been knocked out or left in.

(I'm sure that with the permission of the landlord such things will have been done over the years. Permission is sometimes granted for tenants to carry out quite major changes if it is deemed beneficial to the property.)

But doesn't this highlight the idiocy of the bedroom tax? Someone could, at their own expense, have turned a large bedroom into two or more separate ones and now be penalised for this, while their neighbour with an identically-sized house is spared?