No Room At The Inn

Whereas the Conservatives either laughed or slept through yesterday's debate on the Bedroom Tax if they turned up at all, and whereas the Government only won the vote at the end due to Labour truancy, Andy Flannagan writes:

For the last four years my wife Jen and I have been trying to help build community on our council block in South London. It has been a long road, but a fantastic one. 

As part of our desire to actually DWELL in our block rather than just use it as a base, we knew we would need some rhythms to stop us sliding into box-set selfishness. We were inspired by an incredible bunch of folks we met in Australia called ‘Urban Neighbours of Hope’ (www.unoh.org) who have a rhythm whereby every week they eat a meal at some point with some folks in their immediate locality. We thought we probably won’t manage once a week, but we could manage once a fortnight. 

So for the last four and a half years we have shared meals with our neighbours (now friends) on the block. After ‘date night’ it is the first thing that goes in our diaries as non-negotiable. For the first few months it was hard work. We didn’t get too many return invites, and conversation didn’t always flow easily, as people from vastly different cultural, ethnic and economic backgrounds were mixing often for the first time. 

But four years later we are now regularly having parties, BBQs, and working together to improve the block. The transformation has been a beautiful thing to watch, and I will tell you more about it another time, but bearing in mind the debate in Parliament today, I mention it only as context, as I couldn’t allow our friends’ story to remain untold. I’ll call them Steve and Gemma. 

Steve and Gemma have been key to the developing community, always offering to cook or host. But they don’t live on the block any more. They had to move out. And why did they have to move out? The bedroom tax. They couldn’t afford the extra rent they were going to be charged for their spare room (which was uninhabitable anyway due to damp from an unfixed leaky roof).

So they have had to move to another flat, which is perfectly nice, but is a long way from the community that they have been part of building. They are now a long way from people that care about them, and help them in times of sickness or challenges with family. The change will make them more state-dependent rather than less state-dependent.

Above all we are sad, because our friends are not just around the corner anymore. It gets me wondering how many other communities are being fractured in the name of efficiency. 

When human relationships are abstracted from economic transactions, pretty shocking things can happen. People are exploited. The sub-prime mortgage crisis has left us in no doubt of that truth. 

The Bedroom Tax feels like a housing plan dreamt up by management consultants in a drive towards profit and loss efficiency. Well-meaning perhaps, but wrong-headed in the extreme.

It’s a startling insight into a potential future where hedge fund managers run public services for maximum efficiency rather than, oh what’s the phrase… public service.