Tenant representatives from the tenant panels of 19 social landlords across the region met at a welfare reform summit in Tees Valley organised by Coast and Country earlier this week.
The 10,309-home association said the aim of the meeting was to educate the tenant representatives about the tax and its implications, and to ‘mobilise them to galvanise fellow tenants’ to launch protest campaigns.
Under the governments’s under-occupation penalty – or the ‘bedroom tax’ as it has been dubbed – from 1 April social housing tenants of working age with spare bedrooms will face cuts to their housing benefit.
Iain Sim, chief executive of Coast and Country, said the aim of the meeting was to help give a voice to 100,000-plus social housing tenants in the north east over the welfare reforms.
‘Last year we had an uprising about the pasty tax, now we have the nasty tax,’ he said.
‘The bedroom tax is nasty because it is affecting some of the poorest people in society, who through no fault of their own are living in homes that are classed as too big for them.’
Mr Sim added: ‘If you look at the mechanics of the bedroom tax it is grossly unjust and could potentially cost the government more.’
Coast & Country has 1,800 tenants who are under occupying, but said it only has two one-bedroom properties empty and to let.
Tenants that attended the meeting came from: Coast & Country, Tees Valley, Erimus, Dale and Valley, ISOS, Cestria, Livin, Durham City Homes, Endeavour, Teesdale Housing, Darlington Housing Association, Housing Hartlepool, East Durham Housing Partnership, Derwentside Homes, South Tyneside Homes, Two Castles, Gentoo, Homes for Northumberland, and Home Group.
The move is the latest in a wave of attempts to organise protests against the bedroom tax across the country.
Labour Left is to attempting to organise protests in 16 cities across Great Britain on 16 March. Details of protests in Liverpool, Hull, Manchester and Nottingham have already been announced.
Defend Council Housing is urging tenants and campaigners opposed to the bedroom tax to attend a summit in London on 9 March while a protest is planned for 30 March in Glasgow.
A demonstration, organised by campaign group Liverpool against the Cuts, is also taking place in Bootle, Liverpool today.
Source; Inside Housing
