In my latest podcast episode, we hear about the ways that councils drive people in housing need to the brink. DWP does the same sort of thing with people who claim benefits.
This episode is the fourth about a family with a disabled and autistic 8 year old boy. Hackney council is trying to evict this family – with bailiffs – from their council home of 18 years.
The boy’s paediatric doctor is so concerned about the threat this eviction poses to the boy’s health that she’s making a safeguarding referral – ie she feels that the boy needs protecting from the council.
Meanwhile Kyla, the boy’s mother, says she is feeling suicidal because the council won’t stop calling and emailing to tell her to get out of her home of 18 years and to move her family into temporary housing.
Her daughter talks about her mother’s deteriorating mental health in this episode.
Harassment by bureaucracy, innit. Councils and the DWP are masters of it.
I was thinking in relation to an ex-Parachute regiment guy who is now an Independent councillor in Herefordshire. He was saying, “How come you never hear about people moving out of social housing?”.
And so I was thinking of my previous social housing experience that I moved out of social housing five years after the Housing Association said they wanted us out so they could sell the house in leafy London NW5 as “a desirable location” and ‘rehome us’ in their core area of LB Islington or Hackney to help clear their debts. I’d got tired of their bullying that included putting ‘Global Guardians’ strangers in, summonsing us to meetings we didn’t want to go to, etc.
I eventually took a knowledgeable friend’s advice after immediat room neighbour developed cancer and my health worsened.
Because my tenancy was from 1984 and a ‘Secure Tenancy’ and others less fortunate and landlord could offer me nothing as good as what I already had, I opted for moving to private sector in Herefordshire — with relatives in the area acting as property scouts, and the fact that I was then a Green Party activist and [still am] a Quaker, to help source a social network and ‘hit the ground running’ upon moving.
Of course, as an adult with Dyspraxia, I’m less troubled than the family you refer to here, Kate.
My way of looking at the decline in social housing organisational standards is that the public sector spending cuts since 1979 have worn down and driven out
really good staff. Social housing tenants have been made ever more vulnerable by a system that favours offshore landlords while the far right exploit public ignorance by targeting vulnerable asylum seekers.
And the architects of the planned demolition of the welfare system forever say, “We are going to stop you being so NEEDY by getting you to be more ‘work-ready'” while what they are actually doing is making vulnerable people ever more vulnerable to exploitation.
I close with a note about a 2008 Telegraph interview with investment banker David Freud. He said that he had worked out that it was ‘economically rational’ to pay private organisations over £60,000 for getting ‘the average’ Incapacity Benefit claimant ‘off benefits and into work’. What a benefit fraudster!
Yep – particularly agree about staff. I think you still do get decent people working in housing but there’s very much a climate of “computer says no” and housing departments hide behind that. I have dealt with councils which have shown some discretion and seem more willing to sort things out but some of them are absolutely gone in their refusal to budge. They stick to their guns long after that makes sense.
Perhaps the DWP should introduce a back-to-work scheme for unemployed ex-Royals and ex-Ministers, e.g. Andrew, Fergie, and Mandelson.
I was in social housing with a HA for 17 years but the small local HA that began in Bradford and initially had local offices where tenants could go to pay rent in person or speak to actual housing staff face to face with real people to discuss any concerns or problems, eventually was taken over and absorbed by the much larger Yorkshire Housing that was run more like an ALMA with head office in York whilst all the local offices were shut down. Eventually I moved out and into private rent in another area, which isn”t perfect but at least more peaceful in terms of other tenants and the actual area. The place I’d left in Bradford was very stressful as there was a lot of alcohol & drug abuse by problem tenants. One morning my flat was raided by armed Police who had got the wrong flat! Like a scene from the Keystone Cops. Mind you, the place I’m at now was raided just after I moved in, or rather the flat above was, as the guy upstairs wss beating the crap out of his 20 yr old girlfriend one afternoon so I phoned the cops and they arrived in force, vans and cars full of them, as it turned out that the guy upstairs was wanted as there was already a warrant out for him but in the flat they found cannabis, cocaine, heroin, 5000 Ecstasy pills, a gun, ammo, and CS gas. He got 9&half years . Politicians haven’t s bloody clue how ordinary people live and the sorts of problems and experiences we encounter in our daily
lives. The HA flat I was in got flooded twice, once by accident due to a leak above, and once by thieves ripping out piping. I lived in a bedsit with no bath and a broken shower for 9 months, bathing in the sink until they eventually fixed the shower. The one that got flooded had mushrooms growing out of the ceiling and I constantly felt ill until the HA rehoused me. The likes of Lord Freud and IDS, and now bloody Starmer, know fuck all about the lives of the Peasant Class.
Hi, Trev
Thanks for sharing your story/ies.
For those who don’t know, an ALMA is an Arms Length Management Association, as I understand it; while ALMO would be Arms Lenth Management Organisation — the term I’m more familiar with. These came to the fore, according to my understanding, during the Blair years of government, as did the top-down drive toward ‘digital by default’ that is embedded in Universal Credit. A useful thought to bear in mind when considering how Kate’s blog post ‘Can’t use a computer, or read or write? Tough. No benefits for you’.
I note also that the Blair Government’s ‘Learning & Skills Council’ ‘consulted’ on axing NVQ Level 1-oriented statutory funding for Basic Literacy toward implementing London 2012 Olympics as Levels 2 and 3 were prioritised. The Mission Statement of Learning & Skills Council: “… to help make England better skilled and more competitive.” What a sick joke!
Anyhow, I close here by pointing out that
my friend Amelia Washbourne started Fresh Start South Wye in response to the menace of County Lines drug gangs that has bloomed while ‘austerity’ has pulled the plug on community centre funding
In some council housing estates, community centres formed the hub of an estate.
Alan