"I am disabled. I live in a three bedroom house on the Shaftesbury Estate with my husband and son. My house is owned by the Peabody Trust. I had serious back trouble after having children. As time went on it got worse. It got to the stage that I could not get in and out of my bath or get up my stairs. In the end I had to sleep in my front room and wash in a sink because I couldn’t get in the bath. I applied to my housing trust to move but they did not have any adapted properties available. I was told to move out the borough as it was the only chance that I would probably get of finding an adapted property. I have lived in Battersea all my life. My husband works at a nursery and I have two daughters that live close by. They are always on hand to help me. I was on my housing trust list for seven years trying to get an adapted property but they didn’t have any two bed. I was given a three bed adapted house which I moved to in December 2009.  In April 2013 the bedroom tax was brought in. We get a bit of housing benefit because of my husband’s low wage. Our housing benefit was cut from £65 a week to £48 a week and we have to find the short fall which works out at £82 a month. I am on every home swapper site going to find a two bed property – including the council’s and through Facebook. I have been on to my housing trust and been put on their bidding system where you have to bid for available properties. But there are no two bed adapted places on there. Like I keep saying they never had any adapted properties back in 2009. They still haven’t got any now. All that is going to happen is we will end up getting in to rent arrears then if a place came up we wouldn’t be allowed to move. We will end up in court. I have a degenerative condition which impairs my mobility. The bedroom tax is cruel."

Mrs Simpson was talking to Will Martindale

WANDSWORTH’S CUTS ADD TO HOUSING CRISIS

Wandsworth’s Conservative councillors have decided to delete 44.74 posts in the Housing Department causing 31 of their workers to be made redundant. This 10% cut in housing staff is completely unnecessary as the Housing Revenue Account contained reserves totalling £210,329,000 on April 1st 2013. The Council predict this total will exceed quarter of a billion pounds in ten years time.  As their housing income is based on rents they cannot argue that these cuts will help them reduce council tax. This year they have raised rents by an average of £3.44 per week, 2.7% and 0.5% above the Consumer Price Index.

The cut in housing staff is not about saving money. Wandsworth are spending an average of £207.18 per week for each room in temporary housing for the homeless. They currently have 67 families in bed and breakfast, many using more than one room, and many well over the six week limit for re-housing. By cutting the staff who help families evicted due to the benefit cap, Wandsworth are contributing to the housing crisis. In future Universal Credit will further increase homelessness as poor people will have to pay their rents instead of the money going straight to their landlords as at present. In addition Wandsworth are threatening to evict victims of the Bedroom Tax who cannot afford to meet their higher payments. These victims include many disabled tenants whose flats and houses have extra space adapted to suit their needs. At the same time the council officers who are supposed to seek alternative properties for them are being made redundant. To add insult to injury there are very few smaller properties available.