'What size is the room?': using the law to resist the UKs bedroom tax

With a focus on the UK’s “bedroom tax’’, this chapter examines the ways in which small-scale grassroots activism utilises the law as a method of resistance to housing inequality. In 2013, the UK’s then-Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government introduced the ‘’removal of the spare room subsidy’’, more commonly known as the ‘’bedroom tax’’. The policy penalises social housing tenants in receipt of housing benefit by reducing their payments if they are deemed to have one or more spare bedroom (by 14% for one bedroom, or 25% for two or more). The bedroom tax has disproportionately impacted many of the UK’s most vulnerable residents, in particular those that require extra rooms due to chronic health conditions, or single parents who don’t have primary custody of their children. The policy has also contributed to a narrative that depicts social tenants as undeserving of home through explicitly suggesting that they are in receipt of overly generous welfare subsidies (Nowicki 2018). Based on research conducted in London from 2014-17, this chapter explores two methods of so-called ‘’everyday’’ forms of resistance to the bedroom tax. Firstly, I focus on ad-hoc legal advice groups set up by social tenants affected by the bedroom tax. These groups act as a platform to share experiences of challenging the policy. In particular, challenges are encouraged through disputing legal terminology regarding bedrooms. Secondly, I outline methods utilised by housing associations that repurposed local authority funding sources (namely Discretionary Housing Payments) in order to reduce tenants’ income loss. Through these examples, I will explore how piecemeal responses to the bedroom tax utilised and reworked legal and policy loopholes to mitigate its impacts. The chapter will also consider the ways in which these actions fed into larger-scale legal challenges to the bedroom tax in the UK’s Supreme Court (2014) and the Court of Appeal (2016). The chapter contributes to a growing body of academic work (e.g. Delaney 2015; Hubbard & Lees 2018; Lees, Annunziata & Rivas-Alonso 2018) that examines the ways in which the law is utilised as a resource of resistance by grassroots organisations.