Update and council’s response here.

Right. This is a post about trying to house a disabled tenant and trying to find a deposit and rent in advance… Read on for more about one weapons-grade shambles that I’ve seen first-hand. I wonder how many people are having this sort of dire experience as more and more people are shifted out of inner London boroughs…

This is a story about Brent Council’s great reluctance to cough up the rent in advance and deposit on a place for a disabled man who was rehoused out of an absolute dump of a flat earlier this year. This situation really is a shambles. I would be happy to talk about it with the council, except that the council won’t talk to me. My attempts to contact the council have gone unanswered to date, so I am saying Boo Hiss to the council right now. I am posting this to talk to the internet about the problem instead. I am also hoping Brent will see this post and respond to me and everybody else and FINALLY AGREE TO MEET TO RESOLVE THE PROBLEM.

Earlier this year, I attended an emergency homelessness meeting at Brent Council with a man in his 50s who has learning difficulties and health problems. The meeting was held at Brent Council‘s very flash Civic Centre which is next to Wembley stadium. (This is the Civic Centre that the council opened a couple of years ago with a legendary £98,000 ceremony if I may digress for a moment . Brent is also the council that famously found £12,000 for a virtual assistant hologram for its reception desk. I like holograms – who doesn’t – but you see where I am going here. There is some money sloshing about at Brent Council – for opening ceremonies and holograms, at least).

Money can be harder to come by if you’re looking to rehouse a disabled man, though.
The man with learning difficulties had been living in this mould-encrusted hellhole in Kilburn:

He’d received an eviction notice, because his landlord wanted the property back. He needed rehousing fast. This man was terribly stressed by all of this. He hates change and he had also been distressed for months about the mould and mice in his flat (the council came and inspected the place when I called to complain about the mould, just by the way. I asked the council for the results of that inspection a couple of months ago. I’ve heard nothing more on that, either. Brent Council may be good opening ceremonies, but it really is useless at communication. I held a sit-in at the Brent Council foyer with disabled woman Angela Smith about social care problems around a year ago. Maybe the council’s still pissed off about that).

The council said that it would look for flats for this man. (The council did offer several flat viewings after the meeting, but the man turned them down, because he did not understand then that housing benefit only covered flats as small as the one he’d been living in. He was very worried about being stuck in another tiny, airless flat and getting sicker). Officers at the meeting also put great emphasis on encouraging the man to search for a flat himself. Rent in advance and a deposit would obviously be a problem for this guy (he signs on for jobseekers’ allowance).

The council officer at the meeting said this about the rent and deposit help that Brent Council could give:

“If he finds something to rent and… if you don’t have the incentive, like the deposit, the rent in advance, the council could provide an incentive which could be the deposit and the rent in advance, so there are things that we can do to try to help you find your own accommodation as well as assessing this application.”

As luck would have it, I have a recording of that statement.

As I say, I was present at that meeting, along with a member of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers’ Group who was there to support this man. We all left the meeting very much under the impression that the council would help with rent in advance and deposit costs if the group and this man did the (very) hard work of finding an affordable flat in the private sector.

Unfortunately, this was where everything went all a bit Brent.

After the meeting, a retired member of the Unemployed Workers’ Group (a woman who puts in a great many hours a week as a volunteer support worker) found this man a small studio flat in Haringey. The man was by now extremely stressed about his impending eviction and clearly looking for guidance from people he trusted. He agreed to take the Haringey flat. That retired group member paid the deposit and rent in advance herself, on the strength of the council’s statement that it would help with those costs. People understood that the council would want to look at the place at some point and check its safety certificates and so on, but nobody imagined for a second that there’d be any real problem with the rent in advance and deposit. The decision to take the flat was made quickly. That decision HAD to be made quickly. You can’t faff about in London when a flat comes available. A decision to take a place must be made pretty much as soon as you see the flat. If you hesitate, the flat will go to someone who doesn’t.

Problem is that Brent Council has been extremely bloody difficult about reimbursing that rent in advance and deposit. As I understand it (and by god this is confusing – you should see the emails), the council was pissed (I think that’s the technical term), because the Unemployed Workers’ Group member paid the rent in advance and deposit BEFORE the council had inspected the place and carried out its normal checks, etc. Problem was – as I say – is that there wasn’t time to wait for the council to do all of that. The man with learning difficulties was panicking very badly by that stage and people were worried the flat would be lost. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. London flats must be taken when they’re offered. There’s no time to hang about. We’re all working in a very difficult environment here.

It seems at some point after this that someone at Brent Council, or somebody anyway, suggested that the man and his advocates apply for a discretionary housing payment to cover the costs. This DHP application was duly made – and duly turned down by the council. One officer said that the DHP application was rejected because the man’s whole rent was covered by housing benefit. Another wrote that the application was rejected because the man had moved to another borough (although the council’s own DHP policy says that Brent Council uses DHPs to help people with deposits for tenancies in or out of Brent. See page eight of the attached policy. Intriguing). There are other emails about an incentive payment being made to the man’s new letting agent in Haringey, but nobody seems to know who made that payment, or if it came from the rent in advance and deposit that the Unemployed Workers’ Group person paid, or even if it was made at all. God knows. I certainly don’t. I wonder if anyone does. I’m also wondering how much an incentive payment is. Any pointers here much appreciated, btw. Do incentive payments cover an entire rent in advance and deposit? Are incentive payments a set amount of money? Can incentive amounts change if a tenant in need is really struggling? Who can really say.

You see what I mean when I say this is a weapons-grade shambles – one that has only come about, let’s not forget, because a few people tried to house a man who has learning difficulties and was living in a dump that he was about to get thrown out of. The radio silence from the council in my direction (or not in my direction) is very irritating, too. I contacted the press office last week and left a phone and email message. I’ve had no response at all. Nobody had responded to my email about the mould inspection at the time of writing. Very poor show, I must say.

I imagine these sorts of problems fan out beyond Brent, too. That’s another reason that I’m posting this. We all know that the pressure to find and secure housing is intense. I wonder how often an attempt to sort a flat out for a person in serious need ends in this kind of ballsup. God knows how people are supposed to have a sensible conversation about things with a council while they’re being shoved from one department to another and being told No all the way.

Maybe we should all give up on housing and just move into Brent Council’s very fancy Civic Centre. It’s not a bad pile, you know – there’s a rather plush and overpriced cafe on the mezzanine floor, and a Starbucks on the ground floor for those who are having a rest from their tax-justice activism (I must admit that I’ve cracked several times after long and hopeless meetings at the council). The lifts are totally transparent, which is cool – you can see where you’re riding. Some parts of the service leave a lot to be desired, though. I’m starting to think that the virtual hologram is the most substantial thing Brent has done.

Anyway. Brent Council – can this not be sorted out without you lot pointing the local government finger of blame at each other and everyone else? And why won’t anyone at your council talk to me? You owe me something, surely. I spent a fortune in your cafe last year when me and Angela occupied it.