Pensioners soon be hit by bedroom tax?

We will carry on hogging our four bedroomed house as long as we can.
We both worked very hard for it, paid for it without anything much in the way of inheritance at an extortionate mortgage interest rate and will stay here as long as we are able and as long as family come home to visit, DGC come to stay and we are able to entertain visitors - and as long as we can afford the council tax.
Haven't we discussed all this recently?

I feel a generational divide when I see young mums in their 4x4s in their designer clothes and overhear them chatting about their planned visits to Disney Florida, their ski trips, trips to Centre Parks at half-term, trips away without the children. It was never thus for most of us 30+ years ago.

Nor do they have to be offered any accommodation at all. They just get their benefits cut and are expected to still be able to pay the same rent.

No it is not a condition that people have to be offered suitable accommodation before their benefit is reduced - that's why so many people are facing debt and huge distress.

On the subject of generational divide - A lot of people in this country are having things more difficult than they would like and are looking for scapegoats.
They may blame foreigners for taking jobs, working mothers for not providing a cosy home life and/or taking jobs, people on benefits for scrounging, older people for scrounging or for selfishly splurging their stashed fortunes, gay people for lowering the moral tone of the nation etc etc etc.
None of it is sensible or likely to change while people feel themselves to be aggrieved.

If its not it ought to be, and it should be suitable accommodation, not a one-bed where no-one can visit for a few days, up six floors in a block miles away from the area they have lived in foir forty years and all their friends, and next door to four umemployed teenage partyists.

Are we sure it's not a condition of charging bedroom tax that the householders have to be offered alternative housing?

People like to say "This already applies to private rentals" but in fact tenants in private rentals and receiving benefit, do not get their benefit reduced until they want to finish their tenancy and start a new one.

Tenants in social housing are having their benefits reduced while they still occupy the original house and, most likely, have no prospect of finding somewhere smaller to move into.

You might say it's the better off that do not need the bus passes and the fuel allowance, but it is also the better off now who worked the hardest and paid their taxes.

Oh! Let these young people bog off and mind their own business. We paid our taxes and National Insurance all those years. Why should the benefits we were given to understand would be ours be snatched away now? The banks largely got into trouble, and got the country in this mess, by lending too much to the must-have-it-now generation who then defaulted on their debts. It wasn't our fault this happened.

Elegran: I guess I should have predicted this would happen when I started the thread!

Let me repeat a paragraph from my last post, in a belated attempt change the course of the thread:

"My reason for starting this thread was to do with the generational divide that is starting to appear. Yes, benefits may or may not be a part of that, but is that all? Is there more to it than that?"

I am getting deja vue here. A while ago this subject was well and truly turned inside out by those who thought that people should downsize as soon as their family had left the house, and those who thought that a home was a home for life.

This was followed by those who thought that those in social housing were there as a temporary expedient and had no rights to permanency, and THAT was followed by those who thought that social housing tenants were being regarded as a second-rate section of the community.

No one has answered my question so I googled it and found this on the government website

*"The following benefits give you some help towards your mortgage costs:

Income Support. This is help for lone parents or carers
Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA). This is help for people who are looking for work
Pension Credit. This is help for people who are over 60 and on a low income
Income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). This is help for people who are too sick or disabled to work."*

No mention of Housing Benefit to repay mortgages.

The major problem with that argument, Mollie, is that there aren't the smaller properties for the working-age people currently hit by the bedroom tax to downsize to, so where exactly would pensioners be meant to live if this was applied to them?

However, apart that one comment, I'm going to try to resist getting drawn into an in-depth argument here on the rights and wrongs of the bedroom tax. My reason for starting this thread was to do with the generational divide that is starting to appear. Yes, benefits may or may not be a part of that, but is that all? Is there more to it than that?

As for your complaint that younger people seem to be linking bedroom tax in their minds with free bus passes, free heating, and free TV licences, well what's wrong with that? They are all benefits aren't they? It's just some of them also go to people who don't actually need them. Hmmm, now if I were a young person, which of those would bother me most?

Where was the personal attack mollie65?

I was simply shocked and amazed at your expecting people to move out of homes they provided for themselves just because they have reached a certain age.

Yes. You make a good point there Elegran. I think family sized social housing should be for families, but appropriate housing must be given to the older folks moving out.

jingle whatever - there was no need to make a personal attack - the 'hog a 4 bedroom family home' comes from the oft-quoted phrase used by the younger generation about the older generation. perhaps I should have put it in quotes to avoid your reaction.

Good point Glamma. But, to be honest, I'm not sure I have a lot of sympathy for anyone who takes out a mortgage in later life, without being quite sure they can meet the payments whatever circumstances arise.

Xed posts jings

The pensioners in 4/5/6-bed council houses receiving housing benefit are getting older all the time. When they no longer need the tenancies they can be given to a family with a lot of children - they probably have a large family of children and grandchildren who come to visit them anyway to fill uop the bedrooms.

If they move from the home they have occupied for decades, where would they go? To a block of one-bedroom flats and bedsits full of teenagers who have been allocated them as homes?

Can you get Housing Benefit to pay your mortgage? I didn't think you could, but I admit I know nothing about this.

There must be a lot of people over the age of 65 who still pay a mortgage who are unemployed or just hit the retirement age who are in receipt of Housing Benefit towards their housing costs how will they be made to find smaller homes.

I wasn't referring to the article there.

Sloppy journalism - they all jump on the bandwagon and ignore inconvenient facts.

"hog a four bedroom family home"

Our house has four bedrooms and we have no intention of downsizing.

it is only if you receive housing benefit that your 'benefit' is cut. as I mentioned above but perhaps did not make it clear - pensioners in private rentals are already restricted in how much HB they get in accordance with how many are in their household
in effect those who own their own home are unlikely to hog a family 4 bedroom house and will downsize asap for economic reasons.
is that any clearer - probably not - if you do not receive HB (pensioner or not) you are not affected.
I am as obfuscating as the journalist who wrote the article.

No, you are not getting the wrong end of the stick Tanith IF the article is accurate. Are they allowed to rent out the spare rooms?