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21 January
Arising from a screening of Half Way (2015), and a Q&A and interview with director Daisy-May Hudson, an outline (work in progress) of how the law on #homelessness affects people
The law on homelessness is not new, and it changes – as all law does¹.
Even so, various other changes to policy, over the decades, have worked, alongside the broadly established general principles of who can declare him- or herself homeless, and when, to complicate the effects on such a person and his or her dependants : in Half Way (2015), Daisy Hudson filmed what happened to her mother, thirteen-year-old sister² and her, both to show what happened, and as a way of coming to terms with and coping with it all.
Notice being served on an assured shorthold tenant with a 13yo daughter left her unable to afford other property :https://t.co/obuGusmi3K— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 22, 2017
One such way in which the law changed regarding housing, under the Cameron government², was ‘encouraging’ people to move to smaller properties (whether or not those properties actually exist and are available) : this is the so-called ‘under-occupancy charge’ [or #bedroomtax], which might cost a tenant £14 per week for a room that he or she, under the rules that define this ‘charge’, is deemed not to be occupying. Children under a certain age are then supposed to share with each other - or also with their parents - even if they had never done so before, and so their bedrooms, in the property in respect of which Housing Benefit is being paid, became 'under-occupied'.
Another, starting under Thatcher’s premiership, was when local authorities became obliged to sell off properties, to their tenants and at a discount, from their stock of rented housing, but without, one gathers, being allowed to use the revenues from those sales to build new properties for equivalent rental (those revenues, in any case, did not reflect market values, and might not even – assuming that one already owned the land, etc. – have corresponded with rebuilding costs).
The TAKE ONE (@TakeOneCinema) interview with Daisy Hudson is here
Elaborate applications now made, as if for university - yet lose a tenancy, and just one offer of property, not to be refused unreasonably.— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 21, 2017
[...]
End-notes
¹ Under the law of England and Wales, sometimes through courts interpreting it, to apply it to the cases that come before them (and some of which gives rise to binding case-law), and sometimes through new legislation, which may be to rule out what judges have determined the law to be, or just to change it…
Do most public bodies do as @dsyhdsn / @halfwaydocu show ? :— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 26, 2017
Deny claim / challenge to appeal
True of DWP / #ESA or reply from @ICOtweets
Some changes are said to be needed to revise, update or ‘reform’ the law – their effects, whether or not intended, can profoundly affect people’s lives for the worse, and the notion of ‘reform’ then seems distinctly more like the criminal notion of penal rehabilitation, wrapped up with argument about who deserves, or should pay for, what ?
² At the time when notice is served on Daisy's mother. By the end of the film, Daisy’s sister is 15.
³ Allegedly a coalition – as averted to on Twitter, where he is dubbed #Shameron.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
