Disabled Mum Set To Become First Person in Scotland Evicted Due To The Bedroom Tax

A SEVERELY disabled mother of two will become the first council tenant to be evicted in Scotland due to the Bedroom Tax.



Mrs Lorraine Fraser, 46 from Uddingston, South Lanarkshire who in afflicted by Coliosis, Curvature of the spine and arthritis and is also wheelchair bound is essentially being kicked on to the street by her Labour run North Lanarkshire Council who took court action to force her out her specially adapted flat after being moved there over two years ago. And all this for failing to pay just £248 in arrears!

Mrs Fraser commented.

“What kind of people would throw a disabled woman and her kids out on the street? They have no compassion or conscience. My condition is getting worse every day. This has caused me so much stress and anxiety it’s making me really ill. I feel at the end of my tether. I have tried to explain to them that my children still live here. My son sometimes stays at his dad’s house because we are divorced but this is still his home.I feel angry, upset and totally helpless. I thought I still had a month to sort this mess out but then I got a letter to say they had already started the legal process. I feel like my life is falling apart. I have been in this house for two years and it was the council who put me here because they knew I needed a specially adapted home for my disability. Now they want to throw me out on the street like a piece of old rubbish. They are targeting the most vulnerable in our community. It’s a disgrace they are allowed to get away with it.”

This is an absolute travesty! People need to realize the damage being inflicted on upon vulnerable members of the community by our very own government.

This "Bedroom Tax" is the worst idea our government has had since the Poll tax and needs to be thrown out before more disabled members of our community are similarly affected!

Mahatma Ghandi said that "The measure of any society is how it treats its weakest members when fallen upon hard times". Maybe our local councils and government bodies should think on his statement because it sure seems to apply in this case!

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reply to post by andy06shake


What is the bedroom tax if I may ask?

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


www.bromfordgroup.co.uk...

Hope this helps you understand because people need to be made aware of the situation!

Ok... so basically it's not a tax from what I can see, it's a reduction in government benefits for people living in council homes with more rooms than they need. The issue would seem to be that government thinks her son doesn't live with her and so they are claiming to have overpaid her and they want it back. She really has to prove that her son does still live with her.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


The woman in question is severely disabled! She was housed in the flat that was kitted out to meet her specific medical requirements over two years ago. Its her home!

Now she is being evicted because the government have decided that she is no longer entitled to housing benefit for the extra bedroom.

Look at the state the poor lady is in! Do you not think that allowances should be made in a situation such as this?

How is a severely disabled wheelchair bound person supposed to be able to make up the extra rent out of there own pocket when she obviously doesn't have any extra income?

Whether or not her Son lives with her sometimes should be neither here nor there. What if she requires careers for over night stays, where are they supposed to sleep?

It just not cricket by any measure or means!

They need to bump the citizens out to make room for more immigr.....er, political refugees. Most of who have several children. Surely this woman can find a comfortable bridge or cardboard box somewhere.

Scary times. I'm fortunate to be married while disabled and have someone to care for me. If I were in her situation I don't know what I'd do. Just sad all around.

Apparently, part of new process of getting disability payments means proving to a private contractor you are not able to work. Set on finding people to cut from the roles the company Atos made determinations that thousands were fit to return to work:

The government's own figures revealed that 1,300 people had died after being told they should start preparing to go back to work, and another 2,200 had died before their assessment was complete, he said.

www.theguardian.com...

The Reagan/Thatcher dream of privatization bears a cost in human lives.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


I'm if you and other people wish to call it 'NOT A TAX' then can i ask what you wish to call it, as far as i am concerned it is stealing money that people are entitled to. my parents are both disabled and have had the house amended for the disability including walk in shower, chair lift on the stairs and are just about to get a ramp for the front driveway and all this and they're not exempt from the BEDROOM TAX. Now while i can accept we have differing opinions i would like to say that this is not just a TAX it is stealing for the have nots to pay the money that the haves lost.

it has always driven me nuts when people say that its not a tax. when you're taking money from people who have barely enough to live on you can call it whatever you want but its still a tax on the poor, whether the rich politicians want to admit it or not. i would also like to point out that no politician whether they live alone or with a partner are charged the bedroom tax, they are exempt because they are working for the government and we the tax payers pay for their two yes that's TWO homes and even their vacations. so calling it not a tax is just ridiculous.

sorry for the rant and not attacking your opinion but its just something that's always driven me nuts.

reply to post by Danny85


You rant away buddy!

Call it how you see it!

Others most certainly share your opinion, myself included!

This woman may well be the first person up for eviction due to "The Bedroom Tax" but she wont be the last unless people stand up and let it be known that we are not prepared to sacrifice the well being of our most vulnerable members of the community just because some halfwit Tory government pushes through such a heinous proposal.

David Cameron should be swinging from a lamp post for this crap!

reply to post by andy06shake


Sad to hear of yet another victim in a UK that has forgotten how to care about its weaker CITIZENS.

So many rights have been eroded and the authorities and corporations just get greedier and greedier!

The lady you see here has had to help bail out the bankers! Yes, she has lost money so they can have more.

The shareholders want every increasing dividends. The market has to grow otherwise its recession time.

Welcome to the dog eat dog Market. It is not a society anymore; it is a market!

Everyone is in debt in some way! But to whom?

I know who it is! Do you?

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


Exactly - it isn't a tax, but a reduction in entitlement. A big difference that some would like to paint over in order to try and evoke some emotional response in "taxing" disabled people, which of course it isn't.

As for the story, being kicked out by a LABOUR run council for £248 arrears and their blaming the Government? This is quite clearly the local council attempting to make political hay out of this in order to garner votes, all at the expense of this poor woman. They are the ones who should be ashamed.

Also (and I got a hint of this from the story before seeing it at the end of the article), they have tried to work with her and have tried to communicate and have had no response of the tenant.

A North Lanarkshire Council spokesman said: “We have offered every tenant potentially affected by the bedroom tax an opportunity to have a visit or advice by phone.

“The tenant in question has consistently refused to fully engage with us and has repeatedly refused to apply for a discretionary housing payment which may help to alleviate her situation.

I got this impression of the way the article was phrased anyway - the woman kept saying they sent her letters, but not once did she indicate she had replied or spoken to the council about this. I'm sorry, but if you go into rent arrears, then refuse to communicate with the landlord, no matter your disability you are heading for trouble.

Originally posted by andy06shake
Look at the state the poor lady is in! Do you not think that allowances should be made in a situation such as this?

Allowances are made and help is available - this "poor lady" has refused to engage with the Council or seek any discretionary payments to assist her. I'm sorry, but if I ignored my bills and didn't pay my rent, then ignore all and any communication, I would expect bailiffs and to be evicted.

Not to minimize this woman's situation in the least. It is outrageous to be sure. But look what happened in this country. The banks and Wall Street play fast-and-loose with the rules and tank the economy. People lose their jobs as a result and can no longer pay their mortgages (no fault of their own). The very same banks kick these people to the curb. In many cases they bulldoze the homes or let them sit and rot rather than work something out with the people whose lives they trashed through their casino-styled investment schemes. The banks get bailouts and pay huge bonuses while families are destroyed. Yet no one goes to prison.

Originally posted by Danny85
i would also like to point out that no politician whether they live alone or with a partner are charged the bedroom tax, they are exempt because they are working for the government and we the tax payers pay for their two yes that's TWO homes and even their vacations. so calling it not a tax is just ridiculous.

I don't pay any extra for my bedrooms either, what's my excuse?

It's not a tax, that's what!

It's a reduction in entitlement and has actually been enforced on private tenants on housing benefit for many, many years (since the Labour days, in fact). This is just equalising the situation for those who have been lucky enough to get council/social housing which is cheaper to rent than the private sector anyway.

There are actually more people in private rented accommodation in receipt of housing benefit than there are in council housing - not one of you bleeding hearts spoke up several years ago when Labour introduced this "tax" for the private sector, did you? No, you bloody well didn't, which just proves this is simply political.

Originally posted by Asktheanimals

The government's own figures revealed that 1,300 people had died after being told they should start preparing to go back to work, and another 2,200 had died before their assessment was complete, he said.

www.theguardian.com...

The Reagan/Thatcher dream of privatization bears a cost in human lives.

I'm sorry, but what has that got to do with anything? So a few thousand people died, out of how many and over what period and from what, exactly?

Those figures are meaningless without context, after all they may well have died anyway, or been involved in accidents etc and it is entirely misleading of you to to use them to try and make a point. Over 600,000 people die in the UK every year - Is the evil Government killing them all?

reply to post by stumason


Stumason even you cannot possible agree this poor wheelchair bound woman should be evicted from her home and essentially tossed on to the street over rent arrears of only £248. There are people who are thousands of pounds in rent arrears and they still manage to avoid eviction!

I know you lean toward conservative values and probably agree with "The Bedroom Tax" as its being called. But can you not at least see that in some cases this being one of them there should be an exception to the rule.

Is it not our governments responsibility to protect and care for the seriously disabled members of our society instead of upending them out of there home every time they decide to change there policy regarding their entitlement.

If it was your job to evict this lady(You were the bailiff) could you find it in your heart to do so?

Where the hell did our humanity go?

Exactly how far has the U.K fallen when things like this are sanctioned by our government bodies and backed up by law?

reply to post by andy06shake

The woman in question is severely disabled! She was housed in the flat that was kitted out to meet her specific medical requirements over two years ago. Its her home!

Calm down bud, I never said I agreed with kicking her out of her home. However I do believe that she should pay the fine if she cannot prove that her son is living with her, just because she's disabled shouldn't allow her to game the system and get away with it. Disabled people are always asking to be treated equally, it should be no different in this case. It's not a huge sum of money anyway, if she cannot afford to pay it immediately than I'm sure she will be able to pay it off slowly over time. But you are right, there is no reason she should have to lose her house.

reply to post by andy06shake


From what the council has said, she has refused to engage with them on a consistent basis, refuses to respond to correspondence and has refused to take the grant she is entitled to which would make this whole problem go away. The council will have records of all correspondence which would be presented during the legal proceedings.

It matters not that she is in a wheelchair, everyone is treated equally under the law. Once you start granting special privileges to one group, where does it stop? She couldn't pay the rent, she has one adult son and a teenage daughter of working age who only live with her part time, so she isn't entitled to claim for them on Housing benefit anyway.

The rules have to apply to everyone equally - many years ago I tried to get something out of the state when I was young and homeless, but because of the "rules" I couldn't get bugger all, so I've been on the thick end of the stick too, you know.

EDIT: Don't try to play on peoples emotions with language like "poor, wheelchair bound woman". She is a person, with her own mind and makes her own decisions - that is all.

I don't care if she is in a wheelchair, is black, Chinese, Martian, if she is gay or prefers the company of horses.

Maybe the reason why people with higher rent arrears don't get booted out is because they actually communicate with their landlord/council and seek the assistance they are entitled too?

This isn't a simple story of a disabled woman being treated unfairly. The bedroom tax is just a few months old, and no landlord, certainly not a council landlord of any party would evict ANY tenant over this. There hasn't even been time to get the eviction process underway, let alone enforce it. The letters she has received maybe mentioned that eviction would be the final outcome if resolution could not be found...she needs to go and deal with it, negotiate and apply for all she's entitled to.

reply to post by ChaoticOrder


I'm sorry if i seem irate regarding this matter it just really gets my hackles up when my own government does not seem to give a dam about the disabled members of society.

They will quite happily import(so it seems) political refugees by the bucket load and house them in properties with multiple bedrooms. I just think if charity does indeed begin at home then severely disabled members of the public should not be allowed to be treated in such a fashion and should be a be a priority for social housing and care.