‘I never thought when my daughters grew up and moved away from home that I might face eviction and homelessness. I didn’t expect the unemployed would be resented by the working/’striving’ members of their community for having their curtains closed after 8am. When I became angry about the treatment of the poorest, most vulnerable people in society and decided to protest I never dreamed I would be arrested for dressing in a costume and having a toy gun from the pound shop. Yet this has all happened.
The cuts are a deadly attack on the poor. Some say ‘oh well we need to have cuts because we have so much debt’ when it was obviously the banks, that gambled billions of pounds they didn’t even have, that are responsible. The City of London is the most unregulated banking sector in the world and billions are stolen every day through fraud, not to mention billions lost on tax evasion; why should we accept responsibility? You just have to look at the media’s newspeak: workers are now ‘strivers’ – Labour is also quite happy to use this horrible word. Anyone on any benefit is a shirker, scrounger, or sponger. Benefit payments are now government handouts; public money is now taxpayer’s money. If I was working I would take offence to being called a striver – somehow I don’t think the woman working for minimum wages in Greggs dreams of being on the board of directors one day.
I have been through a year of hell due to Atos’ notorious work capability test. I care for my husband. He has profound mental illness and was diagnosed with advanced heart disease aged 35. After two heart attacks and consequent surgery and worsening mental health, which together have confined him at home for the past four years, a general nurse employed by Atos decided by looking at the answers on a form that he should be in the work-related activity group. Now, if he was fit for work, he would be working. I know many think the vast majority of disability claims are fraudulent thanks to the Daily Mail, but the official figure is actually 0.5%.
So I appealed against the Atos decision and six months later I received a letter from the DWP saying that they had reconsidered and had put him back in the support group. During this time his health worsened; their changed decision never made him feel any better. He told me ‘they will just come after us next year for bedroom tax or another assessment, it will never end’. He truly believes this government will kill him because he is a burden on society who cannot be tolerated any more, a useless thing that cannot work or contribute and therefore is not required.
So this is the year of the revolting bedroom tax. I have been a tenant of my housing association for 28 years and have never been in arrears. I face losing a quarter of my housing benefit. We have been in our flat 10 years, raising two intelligent, compassionate daughters who stayed on at school but who have now moved out. Ironically if they had stayed at home and ‘languished’ on benefits I would not have to pay the tax. If I didn’t have a spare room I would never get a proper rest as my husband wakes up shouting and fighting with violent nightmares. My other so-called bedroom is six feet by ten feet and therefore under the minimum size (according to the Overcrowding Act 2003) for an adult, only for a child up to 10. The window also has to be accessible but the room is so small that with a single bed it is blocked.
To say they are doing to free up housing stock and bring waiting lists down is a lie. If this was the case then working tenants would be asked to downsize as well. But your working neighbour can have as many spare rooms as he or she wants and let out those rooms for profit, whilst his disabled neighbour is punished for being sick and unable to work. I doubt I could find a 10-year-old lodger for my small bedroom that will cough up the monthly rent.
My landlord does not have a one bedroom property even if we were willing to move, which we are not. So, if we get into arrears and we get evicted and are made homeless, we will have to turn to the private sector where the council will end up having to pay more housing benefit. This does not make any sense to me especially as that housing benefit, public money, goes straight into a private landlord’s bank account instead of a non-profit housing association. And if they have to put us in temporary accommodation that will cost much more than social housing rent.
So if you are a private landlord the government pay inflated rents for slums, whilst local housing associations with affordable rents will be evicting people from their homes. They are not a ‘co-habiting couple on benefits residing in an under-occupied property’ – they are people’s homes! My husband was born and raised on this street and we thought we would be here for life. Now I don’t feel safe and secure here anymore. It doesn’t feel like my home now, it is like we are in limbo. I have never felt so frightened and despairing as I do now.
What kind of future do they want? Where drug addicts will rip your face off for a few quid because they have been left with no money or support, or single parents will get desperate and turn to the sex industry to feed their kids and put themselves in danger, and the sick and disabled are left to die of poverty and neglect. They say, ‘the party is over for scroungers’. Couldn’t have been a very good party – I don’t even remember it.’
Jan, Glasgow
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 231 February-March 2013
