How the bedroom tax is bringing despair to a Tory heartlands village

If Jean Baxter moves, her daughter, a single mum, may have to quit work. But there is nowhere to go, and no one to fill her home

Jean Baxter, 60, at home in Marston Moretaine, in the home where she has lived for 35 years. Photograph: SWNS.com

Memories – happy and sad – suffuse the modest, neatly decorated three-bedroom house that Jean Baxter has lived in for 35 years. Treasured pictures of her children and grandchildren smile down from the walls. From her bedroom window, she can see the gravestone of her baby daughter, who died soon after being after being born, not long after they moved in.

Baxter, 60, has lived in the rural Bedfordshire village of Marston Moretaine all her life. Her children and their families live locally. Baxter provides childcare, often at unsocial hours, for one of her daughters, a nurse and single mum with four children under the age of seven. But this carefully nurtured, close-knit network of mutual support, however, is rapidly unravelling.

A year ago, Baxter learned she would be affected by the bedroom tax. Since then, she has been preparing, reluctantly, to move. She's sold furniture, and packed many of her belongings into plastic containers as she anxiously waits. "It's my home, I can't imagine not living here," says Baxter. "Obviously at some point I knew I would be moving to somewhere smaller – when I could no longer climb the stairs – but I feel I'm being pushed out."

In principle, she's not opposed to the idea that she should move somewhere smaller in the village, freeing up her home to a young family living in overcrowded accommodation who need it. But there is no smaller property for her to move to, and, extraordinarily, there is no sign of a desperate young family waiting to move into her current home even if she does.

Nine households in Marston Moretaine, including Baxter's, are "under-occupying" their houses by two bedrooms and waiting for a one-bedroom home. Two have come up in the past year (Baxter bid for one, but failed). In the four villages within eight miles of Marston Moretaine, 20 households hit by the bedroom tax are competing for just two one-bedroom homes likely to come up in the next year.

Even were Baxter to leave, it is likely her house would stay empty. Even families who need more space won't take a three-bedroom home for fear of being hit by the tax. A year ago, 80 people would typically bid to move into any three-bedroom homes that came up. Following the bedroom tax, they typically attract just one or two bids. Some lay empty. Others have been taken by "lowest priority" tenants currently in the private rented sector who normally would not qualify for social housing.

Ministers said that the bedroom tax would solve the overcrowding problem. But in this bit of central Bedfordshire, according to Baxter's landlord, Aragon Housing, there is no overcrowding. Here the bedroom tax proposes a solution where no problem exists, causing avoidable fear and stress and disrupting long-established networks of family and friends.

Cherise Berridge, an Aragon housing officer, points out a smart, newish three-bedroom housing association house. "If there was a family waiting for that home, we would feel better about asking tenants to move somewhere smaller," she says. "But no one wants it."

Baxter thought about downshifting to the private rented sector. But the rent on a one-bedroom property in the village is £650 a month – £250 more than the rent on an equivalent housing association home. Although the bedroom tax is meant to cut the housing benefit bill, it would be cheaper to keep Baxter in her current three-bedroom home than have her move to a private one-bedroom home. If she did move, housing benefit caps mean that she would lose more than if she stayed put and paid the bedroom tax. If she moved further afield, she would no longer be able to afford to travel to provide childcare for her grandchildren. Her daughter may have to give up her job.

The grandmother has lost £27 a week through the bedroom tax since April (she also now pays £4.50 towards council tax) – a quarter of her income. The council has given her a short-term discretionary housing payment to cover the shortfall, but this ends in November, with no guarantee that it will be renewed. At this point, Baxter, a meticulous budgeter, estimates that she will have just £4.50 a week for food, toiletries and travel after rent is paid. The stress, she says, makes her depressed and anxious. "Sometimes I don't bother eating or getting dressed. I've been a cleaner all my life, but I've not vacuumed or dusted in ages. What's the point of cleaning? In the last four months, I've felt like giving up."

Aileen Evans, Aragon's managing director, calls for an urgent review of the bedroom tax, not least because of the catastrophic impact it is having on some of her most vulnerable tenants, particularly those with a disability who live in specially adapted homes. It is, Evans says, practically impossible to find suitable smaller properties for these tenants.

In common with other housing associations, Aragon has seen a rise in rent arrears as a result of the bedroom tax and other welfare reforms. Some 72 of its tenants who owe rent had never been in arrears before. But arrears only tell half the story, says Evans. The number of tenants that Aragon has referred to the food bank have doubled in recent months. One – a vulnerable man in his 50s who, after the bedroom tax came in, is left with £20 a fortnight for food and clothing – has had three food parcels to date. He wrote to Evans recently to say that he'd be "better off in prison" as he would get "four meals a day".

Jacqui (not her real name), 44, a single mum whose two sons have now started work and left home, is furious about the bedroom tax. "What's the point of making me move into a one bed if this home doesn't get filled?". She's meeting the shortfall for now, but worries that if she loses her part-time job, or her fridge breaks down, she'll slide rapidly into debt. This is true blue Tory heartland (Nadine Dorries is her local MP) and Jacqui has always voted Conservative. Now she fears they are out of touch. "Next time I don't know if I'll bother to vote. I wish this government could meet ordinary people."

Guardian