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Contrary to popular belief, most Tories are fair minded decent people. If you ask most of them about the bedroom tax all they know is the official “It’s just bringing the public sector in line with the private sector”.When you actually explain it to them, most are horrified at the effects of it, because lets be honest here, only the left wing media has reported any of the cases. That has to stop. Everyone has to be made aware of the hardship and pain that this is causing.With more welfare cuts in the pipeline it’s time for a real debate about what is and isn’t fair, but that discussion is for another post.So let’s look at the under occupancy charge. Supporters of the changes have referred to the unreformed system as a “spare room subsidy” whereby tax-payers are said to be subsidising social housing tenants living in houses larger than their needs require, with the said intention of the policy being to reduce these costs and ease housing shortages and overcrowding. Supposedly the rationale of the policy is to encourage council tenants living in houses too big for their needs to move to smaller properties so that existing housing stock can be better used.Research by the BBC suggests that only 6% of those affected have moved. Mainly this is because there is no where to move to. There are very few 1 bed properties in the social sector partly because the difference between the cost of building a one and a two bedroom property are so small that it is better to provide the accommodation that is more flexible. Currently huge numbers of couples and single people find themselves in a two bed property that was what they were offered by the council. Many of these are in high rise flats where the councils have made the decision that the houses were not suitable for families, so have used them as housing for people who only need a one bedroom property.New Government figures show the number of empty three and four bedroom properties increased from 25,462 in 2012-13 to 26,958 in 2013-14 when the tax was introduced. As a result lost rental income went up from £107million to £127million, and some authorities are considering demolishing empty homes.A second rationale made by the Department for Work and Pensions is to reduce the overall housing benefit bill. If you are decreed to be under occupying your house by one bedroom then you lose 14% by two you lose 25%.On the face of it that sounds quite reasonable. Why indeed should spare rooms be paid for at the expense of the taxpayer? The problem comes with the definition of what constitutes a spare room, and the idea that it is just bringing it in line with the private sector.According to some research two thirds of those affected claim some form of disability benefit. Many sleep in a separate room from their partner because of it. Many use the spare room for their disability equipment. Many have had a small fortune spent on adapting their homes to suit, yet none of these things were originally taken into account.If an extra room is required for a carer to stay overnight that is accepted if the person requiring care is the claimant or their partner, but not if it is one of their children even when they become an adult. After cases that went to the supreme court there have been some successes where a disabled person was accepted as needing a separate room and the issue of a carer for a child were accepted as requirements, but like all court cases these are individual decisions and although they create a precedent, it doesn’t mean the local authoritywill accept it without a challenge. See With and without foundation - Bedroom tax in Supreme Court - Nearly Legal: Housing Law News and CommentOn the subject of children, the rules are now that two children under the age of ten must share a room irrespective of sex, and if same sex must share a room till 16. This is quite different from the housing allocation policies of many authorities. Many authorities will allocate a bedroom per child if there is more than a 4 year age gap, so the housing authority would not expect a 3 year old boy to share with his 12 year old brother, however according to the under occupancy rules that would mean that the household were over accommodated.Most authorities will also take a shared residence order into account when allocating a home, but there is no recognition of the huge numbers of parents sharing care of their children when it comes to the bedroom tax. Only the parent receiving the child benefit can claim that their children live with them. The damage this has done is incalculable. I know of numerous fathers that have been forced into accommodation where their children can no longer stay overnight, causing tears and trauma to the children involved.Until the subject of benefits where there is shared care is addressed this will remain a problem. You would imagine that if two children each spend half their time with each parent, then it would make sense for the child benefit to be split between parents, however the official line is that it is awarded based on who has primary care of the children, and where the children spend equal time with each parent, that is decided by the address for school, usually the Mother’s. Of course where there are two children, the parents could each claim for one, but unless they do it in agreement with each other, the decision always favours the mother.That covers some of the questions of whether a room is spare or not. Now lets look at the assertion that it is just bringing the public sector in line with the private sector.Firstly the private rented sector is quite different from the social housing sector. If you rent privately you know that you are in a short term let which, after the initial six months, you can be given a months notice to leave at any time. You have no security of tenure and normally you can’t redecorate or make any changes to the house. You know and accept that in the private sector any move is temporary. You simply don’t expect to be in the same place for long.In the social sector, after a probationary period, you do have security of tenure, you can redecorate and, with permission, make improvements to your home. The social sector has always been seen as a home for life, and people treat it that way often over the years spending many thousands of pounds on their home and garden. Frequently as families grow up and leave home they will get houses on the same estate so there is a support network for everyone living there. On most council estates there is a real sense of community.Now lets look at the way rents are dealt with. Since 2008 rents in the private sector are calculated in bands called Local Housing Allowance rates or LHA.Initially if a tenant could find a cheaper property than the applicable rate, they were allowed to keep the difference. That stopped in 2009. The changes were Labour’s attempt to control the spiralling housing benefit bill, but instead they dramatically increased rents payable for the larger homes. Overall they restricted housing benefit to the median rate for an area, i.e. the LHA was set at a rate that would cover the rent for 50% of the properties available in an area. Previously housing benefit covered any fair rent for the property claimed for, so it didn’t matter how much the rent was as long as it was deemed to be a fair rent.Now the coalition government lowered the LHA rates to only cover 30% of the properties in a broad market area. This means that the amount payable for a two bed property varies from £85 a week in West Pennine to £300 a week in Central London.In the area I live in the LHA rate for a one bedroom house is £91.38 a week or £395 a month. The council rent for a two bedroom house is around £74 a week or £320 a month. If you happen to be a single dad with shared care of your two children renting privately you need to find a two bed where the rent is less than the one bedroom rate of £395 which isn’t that hard to do. In fact on the estate I live on there are ex council houses available at that price. Admittedly they are unmodernised, still having gas wall heaters rather than central heating, but perfectly adequate. So a single father who is not in receipt of child benefit living in a two bed council house will have 14% of his rent ignored for housing benefit purposes, so will have to find £10.36 a week off his JSA of roughly £75, so the housing benefit payable is £275 a month. If he then moves to the privately rented house the HB payable is the full £395. So if he moves to affordable accommodation the bill to the taxpayer rises by £120 a month. Even if he moves from 2 bed council to 1 bed private the HB payable is going to rise. Where is the sense in that? It certainly doesn’t look as if people moving to a smaller house is going to save any money unless they can stay within the social sector, and those homes simply don’t exist.If the desire is truly to make the most of the available housing stock, then it doesn’t make sense to exempt pensioners as they are the people most likely to have spare rooms. In some areas councils have schemes where they pay a bounty to anyone moving to a smaller house, sometimes as much as £1800 a room plus help with removal and redecorating expenses. Wouldn’t that be far more likely to create a better use of housing stock than the punitive under occupancy charges?The realities of this legislation is it cannot achieve any of the supposed objectives!

(Answer edited with more information Sept 2020)Yes, once.A little history here - back in 2011, two of my colleagues and I decided to leave the sinking ship that was our former employer; officially, as stated in our exit interviews, it was because our teams clients (we were a bespoke service for large corporate private medical claims) had been ring-fenced so the future of our role was tenuous to say the least. Without actually looking, we were contacted by a recruiter who knew the changes being made by our former employer, and we were lucky enough to be picked to start up a team launching a brand new product for what was at that time a very small company.This was a huge gamble for us despite the situation with our former employer, to leave a relatively secure job for a start up company we knew little about. Our decision was spurred on mainly due to the fact that our former manager was bullying me and another person on our small team in a well covered but very nasty manner, and despite my careful detailing of the incidents in a diary and email printout evidence on behalf of myself and the staff member too scared to speak up herself, the company effectively closed ranks and ignored my allegations. Not particularly relevant, but if anyone's curious, the bullying manager was fired less than a year later due to the slew of bullying/harassment claims made against her from the 8 people they'd hired to replace my friends and I - without us there the rest of the ‘old’ team left quickly, but the manager obviously felt she was bulletproof since my allegations caused no consequences for her and was either stupid or just inherently cruel enough to continue her bullying with new victims. Thankfully, my actions DID end up helping others even though I don't know the individuals involved, I'm thankful that what was a very difficult and frustrating outcome for me spared others having to go through the same. I heard from another person who left my former employer for my current one that the reason the manager was fired was because HR could no longer ignore the claims made against her. The area of the UK I live in hosts the majority of jobs in this particular industry, and it's no secret that the former manager is blacklisted amongst other future employers. Apologies for the digression, but it does explain somewhat how much it meant to me having a new boss after the awful experience with the former one.So, other than my best friend and I, only one person was recruited for that team at our new company before us, our manager, let's call her Anna. She was and is an incredible manager, a very inspiring person and a wonderful friend. We all formed a great bond in those early months particularly, the level of work gradually increased so that we went from having so little work that we were assisting other departments with basic tasks, making umpteen cups of tea and coffee, cleaning out stationery cupboards etc, to having to put in 12hr days and Saturday overtime to cope whilst new staff were trained. It was a stressful, but incredibly exciting few years, and very gratifying to see our hard work pay off and our company as a whole make an impressive name for itself in the industry - the gamble had paid off beyond anything we could have imagined!In early 2018I had an attempted gallbladder removal which failed but left me with a severe infection causing cellulitis in both my legs. I was off work for months, the infection caused my legs to swell to about 4x their size and constantly leak fluid. Without going into graphic detail (I have some horrific photos from that time!) the skin on my legs degraded to the point where there was no longer any actual skin below my knees. I did receive home nursing care throughout this by the way.One morning I went to the bathroom, walking was a huge struggle and I used a stick. I fell and was trapped with the stick tangled up with my legs, and no strength to get up. Luckily I had my phone in my dressing gown pocket and called for an ambulance and then for my best friend (one of the colleagues who moved to the new company with me) as she had a key to my flat. Unfortunately the communal entrance door was locked and my vile, drug dealing ex neighbours upstairs saw the blue flashing lights from the ambulance and wouldn't answer the door thinking it was the police. My friend was frantic, trying to get builders down the street to break the door in, shouting for the neighbours to open up, meanwhile I had passed out. I was there for 3 hours before the fire brigade managed to climb in through my first floor window and let the paramedics in. I was delirious by that point but as they brought me out my boss was there, having sent my distraught friend home, and she reassured me that she would contact my family who live abroad.I spent about 6 weeks in hospital, I was in a coma, suffered double pneumonia, multiple organ failure and sepsis and several times was not expected to survive the night. My boss visited me regularly on her lunch breaks even when I was unconscious and after the coma when I couldn't communicate verbally but only write.I did return to work briefly about 6 months after the accident but as I have been left with a brain injury causing partial paralysis and epilepsy I currently am unable to work. She still meets with me regularly to keep me updated on developments on our team (now grown from 3 people to over 100!) and has reassured me that my job as a senior member of staff is still there for me when I'm able to return even if it's part time. I couldn't ask for a better, more supportive boss, in fact the company itself has been incredible, they are still paying me 2 years after the event, still paying my pension, share scheme and for my private medical insurance.I'm currently waiting to be rehoused by my local council in an adapted property. Once I am my employer has already made preparations for me to work from home and visit the office as much or as little as I want. I appreciate very much how lucky I am to work for such a genuinely caring company and that has only made me more loyal to them. I am desperate to get back to work and start repaying some of the incredible kindness they have shown me.Edit: I originally put this in a response to a comment but thought it would be appropriate to add it to my main post and with a slight expansion.Since writing my initial post I have completed the ridiculously complicated and unnecessarily difficult process of being assessed by the DWP (Department of Work and Pensions) in order to receive income support whilst I am unable to work. Due to the particular situation I am in I am in the somewhat unusual position of actually receiving about 30% more ‘take home pay’ than I would if I returned to work in the same position I previously held. Despite this, largely because my employer is so good and I genuinely love my job, I am anxious to return to work as soon as possible. To me, my quality of life will be better working, being productive and able to socialise with my colleagues, even if it is mostly working from home and part time at that.The alternative is doing nothing but stay at home. I still fill my days with reading, learning, writing, finding new hobbies etc., but I can see how easy it would be for someone in my position to just stagnate in front of the TV all day and become a shut in. I survived for a reason so I'm certainly not going to let that happen!If anyone cares about the numbers side of it, here's a brief explanation of how the (ever changing!) benefits system currently works in the UK.Universal Credit (UC) is based on your age and relationship status. As a single woman aged between 25 - 64 with no children I am entitled to £317 basic UC, £336 Limited capability for work and work related activities, and £535 housing costs per month.Personal Independence Payment (PIP) is comprised of 2 components, Daily Living and Mobility, each paying either a standard or enhanced rate if you qualify for either. This benefit is notoriously difficult to get and a huge percentage of people have to appeal decisions, 73% of appeals go on to be successful! After my successful appeal I receive the standard daily living rate and enhanced mobility rate which equates to £519.56 a month. Receiving the enhanced mobility rate also entitles me to access the motability scheme where a portion of your PIP (no more than £61.20 a week) can be sacrificed to lease a brand new car for 3 years, inclusive of tax, insurance for up to 3 drivers and maintenance. I can't yet take advantage of this as my epilepsy isn't sufficiently controlled but by June I am looking forward to having the freedom to get out!So if I didn't return to work I'd receive £1709.53 (I'd left off some penny amounts earlier if anyone's checking my maths!)In work full time I was taking home after tax, student loan repayments, national insurance and salary sacrifice for pension and the tax - not capital - on my company private medical insurance ~£1,450. On that wage I had to also pay my rent of £600 pcm, utilities, living costs etc and council tax of £1176 in 10 installments a year.Now I am exempt from council tax and I need to move to an adapted property, this isn't something I can do privately as you can't modify a rented home, so I'm on the housing register. The average rent is around £240 pcm, so I'll be saving a massive amount.Until I can legally drive again I can use my PIP to pay around £12 a week for a mobility scooter, but as I also have a free bus pass I would rather wait until I can get a car since I want to be able to transport my dog, do shopping, travel outside of my local area if needed.There are many flaws in the system and a lot of people would think that I am lucky to receive so much in benefits when most struggle on them, but the reason my allowances are higher than normal is because of my disabilities and the chronic pain and fatigue caused. As I said earlier I will be returning to work God willing, and whilst my UC will be affected I won't lose the other benefits. The affect on UC is that for every £1 I earn I lose 60p of UC, so I'll never actually be losing money.Yet another thing I have to be very grateful for as a UK citizen. The application and assessment process is stringent and very flawed - there are articles in the news daily about corrupt assessors and a system designed to make it as difficult as possible to claim, it's taken me around 8 months from my application to being awarded the entitlements I've listed which entailed filling in multiple forms and attending 5 face to face interviews along with submitting all my medical records for the last 2 years. I'm glad it's done now (for another 3 years anyway) but I'm also very grateful that our welfare system will provide assistance when its needed.Update September 2020: I'm now back at work part time!! I am so very happy about this, as you can imagine I am working from home and this is going to be the case for the foreseeable future, regardless of the COVID situation. As I am considered ‘highly vulnerable’ due to my medical history I have been, and will remain, in isolation for at least the next 6 months as the UK enters its second lockdown. I'm very sad that I've not been able to see my mum for over a year now, but the good news with my new arrangement for home working means that by using a VPN I can work anywhere, even abroad, without a problem. I am very much hoping that once life has returned to some form of normality I will be less restricted than before with trips to visit family abroad given that I wouldn't have to take time off work in order to do it!ANOTHER UPDATE: DEC 2020: Well, despite the utter shitshow this year has turned out to be, I'm now on my new 14 hours a week contract and whilst waiting for arrangements to be made for me to complete my FCA mandated 50 hours of annual training as well as the necessary medical retraining and department specific exams I'm beginning to work through the 40k odd emails accrued in my absence! Only a couple of people on my team actually know that I'm ‘back’ (um, working from a laptop in PJs on my sofa with a cup of tea!) so it's been rather fun observing my team working without knowing I'm there! I'm INCREDIBLY happy to be able to say that I'm now only receiving about 30% of the Universal Credit support I was previously on - whilst I certainly couldn't have survived without the government assistance, I am lucky that with the support of my employer I am regaining at least my financial independence.Unfortunately, my health has deteriorated significantly in the last few months. I have 3 vertebrae in my lower back which are pretty much shattered from a combination of trauma, stress fractures and bone degeneration (I've suffered malnutrition on and off since my teens/early 20s, and certain medication I've been on has contributed to early onset osteoporosis) and despite beginning treatment with Fentanyl patches in July this year, I am unable to do anything that involves bending, twisting, standing for longer than 10 minutes - and even then if I can lean on something like the kitchen counter. So I am going to have to continue claiming PIP in order to pay for the lady who comes in to clean and tidy my flat for me, I'm unable to even go down the 7 steps to the street to put out rubbish! Again I am very lucky though, she goes far above and beyond what most cleaners would and does things like arranging the tins in the cupboard by type and taking a photo so I'm not hunting for things, she brought little cardboard boxes to make ‘drawers’ in them so I could easily reach small packets on the shelves, she is a god send - quite literally as I was put in touch with her through a mutual acquaintance at our church! Since I'm getting worse though I need her help more often, so much as I'd like to go back to being financially independent I need to continue claiming PIP at least - but it's not something I can change and I know that I needn't feel guilty over a genuine need, hopefully one day I'll believe myself!!

To be quite honest, I feel like I'm stuck in mud in a permanent state of waiting for assistance and I've never done this in my life.Autism isn't curable and there can be a genetic component to it, I've no doubts I inherited the condition from at least one parent, my Dad and brothers are all Asperger's and I think my Mum is PDA (also on the autism spectrum.)I genuinely thought that my diagnosis would instantly let me access help - I was supposed to be having therapy, but then my autistic support worker became unforseeably Ill and so literally, I've only had two of those sessions and now she's having even more time off, and I won't be seeing her until September.Meanwhile, I am still not working - my head's a shed - I've received no benefits EVER. AND I might have another month to wait to see how that goes.Oh, and I have an eviction notice from my landlord… after sixteen years of paying rent on a property that' was valued at 38k and I've paid over 80k to live in a substandard property and I've had years of harassment and improper behaviour from the landlord.For a house that is drafty, damp and not safe. I just didn't see it when i was more mentally ill than I am now and literally, the PTSD was triggered by the landlords.To some extent they have always wanted me to claim benefits, regardless of the fact that I worked and the situation with the property repairs has been ridiculous over the years. Once some roof tiles were hanging precariously over my front door and I was terrified that somebody was going to get sliced and diced by them and the landlord left them like that for over a week.I tried calling the HSE (health and safety executive) about it and was told that they couldn't do anything about it. This was years ago and it's one thing after another, with that sort of thing.And meanwhile the council tax bailifs are taking it in turns to bang on my door and they shouldn't be because I probably don't owe the council tax, it's from a few years ago.I can't move, the housing officer said that I've got to stay put until she gets back from holiday. She says the law is on my side.That made me cry because I know the law and its true, it just hasn't felt like anybody else knows that.I have no choice but to fight it all - and I'm sick and tired of having to fight all this unnecessary shit, I know the law and I will use it because I have to.I can't ever remember feeling relaxed, ever - at no point in my life has it gone that way. You know, I try hard to hold down a job, even when people don't like me and I did it for years. I just learnt to numb the feeling over that and distance myself emotionally.I am very much stuck in limbo - I can't move, staying here is stressing me out. So I don't feel like I've had much of a chance to get to grip with the fact that I am quite severely “challenged" mainly from PTSD and those stressors.It wasn't nice receiving the eviction notice, but you know what, it might have done me a favour by forcing my hand into contacting the right authorities.I've been spending most of my spare time, reading up on legislation, to armour up.I completed my own disability benefits application form too and so I suspect that will end up getting refused and that will take a month (maybe more) to appeal.It's best if I think of it like that, rather than assume I will get anything.I just told the truth, so it should be easy right? I hope so.The last year has dragged, it's taken so long to get paperwork sorted out… and I am still not there yet.I had imagined this year to be different, I imagined that I would be in a position to start making shit and earning money at least - it's too difficult with all of this going on in the background and it's the summer holidays.The children are off school and my son is out with his dad - I am supposed to be there too, but first thing this morning the landlords started banging on on the door, pretending to be plumbers (posting gas inspection safety check letters through my door) - checking to see if I'd gone or not. Hoping I'd gone, because today is the day they wanted me out.I owe money from about three years ago and they are still getting paid. They still haven't done any repairs and the gas safety check has never (not once) been passed without recommendation for action by the landlord. And not once have they carried out the necessary work. I've got nearly ten years worth of gas safety paperwork, that backs that up.It's lucky that I hardly ever throw away paperwork.Its also damned fortunate for me, that I can read - (I can't talk on a telephone because of auditory processing issues) and write. I dread to think how many other people are in a similar situation, without those skills. I swear, if I can get through this myself, I'll help anyone in similar circumstances, it's the least I think I should do..Once I get on higher ground.What has been the hardest thing to overcome being newly diagnosed with an incurable genetic disorder?Short answer; all of that, has been the hardest part and I'm not at a point where I've been able to wrap my head around the diagnosis.