Seniors are being called to arms to protest the doubling of rents at the Bermuda Housing Trust this week.

Opposition Seniors Minister Louise Jackson also called on Government to consider awarding the BHT a grant instead of hiking the rents.

Mrs. Jackson told The Royal Gazette yesterday she plans to give Premier Alex Scott two bottles of aspirin for Christmas - because she wants every senior on the Island to call him at home in protest.

However one BHT tenant told The Royal Gazette she did not see the point in calling the Premier. “We marched on Parliament, he was inside and he didn't even come out - I don't see any point in phoning him when he couldn't even face us.”

Others are afraid to protest, she added. “Everyone is very upset, but so many are nervous about saying anything - you don't know what those people would do.”

“People marched on Parliament saying they cannot afford this,” Mrs. Jackson said yesterday. “Government has taken every shred of dignity away from them.”

The BHT provides affordable housing for seniors at four different locations around the Island. In an effort to stave off increasing maintenance costs and create more capital to build more affordable homes the Trust warned several weeks ago that rents would be increased and evened out across the board.

As rents were varied all across the properties, consisting of 82 one-bedroom and studio units, that meant some rents were to be more than doubled.

At least 25 percent of the tenants living on Trust properties could actually afford to live elsewhere, the BHT added. Those tenants had somehow slipped beneath the radar to gain places at the affordable units, they said.

Though tenants at the properties agreed to rent increases, they vocally protested the extent of those increases, warning they could not afford to have their rent doubled by January 1, 2005.

The BHT and Government have repeatedly said that seniors who cannot afford the increases will have Financial Assistance available to them, however Mrs. Jackson dismissed that idea as forcing seniors to go begging from their own Government.

Instead, she said yesterday, Government should award a grant to the BHT. If seniors will be forced to go to Financial Assistance, she pointed out, “Government will have to pay for it anyway”.

The senior who spoke with this newspaper said her rent had gone from $305 to $650. Though she has lived at the BHT for nearly twenty years her rent has only been increased about three times before this - by about $30-$35 each time.

Her pension - her only source of income - is roughly $740 per month, she added. “Where do I get the extra money?”

She was told she will not qualify for Financial Assistance, she added, as she does have some savings - money she has set aside in case she has to go to the hospital; as well as to help pay for her insurance, medical and grocery bills.

“We thought if we wrote to (Rent Commissioner Eugene) Foley, he'd see it was too much,” she said.

However in a letter she received announcing the amount of the increase this week, Mr. Foley termed it “reasonable”.

“Can you believe that?” the woman asked. To lodge a complaint, she added, seniors will have to pay a fee of $28. “Why should we pay that fee when we'll just get the same answer back again? This is Christmas. What a nice Christmas present.”