oddzpop:
I applied for a council flat around two years ago but because i was in full time employment single, and had no dependants was put to the bottom of every list.
The social housing system is in crisis in many areas.
A friend of mine was forced out of his job last year by a new boss. My friend is dyslexic. Unfortunately, his previous boss left - she understood his strengths and weaknesses, also she recognised that she had complementary skills to my friend so together they made a strong team.
The new boss expected her deputy, my friend, to have the same skills that she did, which would never be the case. The new boss expected my friend to deal with complex matters that were not urgent in exactly the same way she would do herself. Clearly, this approach was doomed - the boss homed in on every little slip my friend made rather than using his complementary skills effectively. She also failed to implement the Equality Act requirement to offer reasonable adjustments, despite my friend commissioning a formal dyslexia assessment at his own expense.
It became clear that the boss had decided to use the disciplinary system as a weapon to force my friend out, making every small slip a disciplinary matter. Eventually, on union advice, he recognised that the battle was lost - notwithstanding his legal rights, there was no way he could stay in this job under this boss, so the best solution was to negotiate a pay-off to leave.
Unfortunately my friend lived in tied accommodation, so losing his job left him, his wife and their pre-school daughter homeless. They’d been working with the local housing association for a while, as they had recognised he may well lose his job.
All the housing association could do was to give them one room in a homelessness hostel, where they lived for six months with shared bathrooms and kitchens. They were lucky to get in there - what was intended as a short-term homelessness hostel was increasingly being used for long stays due to lack of housing, and the hostel was full much of the time. Had they not got into the hostel, they would have landed up in a cheap B&B.
My friends kept on applying for accommodation in each fortnightly round, recognising that they would be grateful for anything they got. They were willing to take anything with two bedrooms in the town where their daughter had spent all her life and had put down roots.
After six months, they eventually got a small two bed semi, in need of some tidying up. They recognise they were exceptionally lucky to get that house.
Talking to the housing association, they were told that only people assessed as at critical need of housing (category A) had been offered a first housing association tenancy during the six months they spent in the hostel. Their six month stay in the hostel was because of the number of category A people who had been waiting longer and the small supply of available property. There is such pressure on housing in many areas that everyone else is being turned away.
My friends’ circumstances were extensively investigated before they were given category A status - amongst other things, they had to provide written evidence from the union rep that, in his opinion, my friend really had no alternative to leaving his job. Had my friend been sacked following disciplinary proceedings, he would likely have been deemed intentionally homeless because it would be regarded as his fault he lost his job. Had this happened, the council and housing association would have had no responsibilities towards them other than putting them on a waiting list in a category below A where there was almost no chance of them being housed.
Single homeless people in that area with no special needs (usually health problems or having been in local authority care) were being advised by this housing association that there was little point joining the waiting list for accommodation because they were not going to get an offer of housing for many years, if at all. Very few category B people were being offered housing - and these are people with considerable housing needs who have often waited for years.
There is no point joining the category D waiting list in that local authority - there are people who have been on that list for many years and nobody on that list is being offered housing. That sounds like the category you would have fallen into two years ago, oddzpop, and the situation has got much worse since. Realistically, councils and housing associations are not going to have anything to offer single working people in the foreseeable future, unless there is a huge programme of building new social housing.
Families with young children who land up unintentionally homeless are languishing in temporary accommodation for many months before being housed in this area - and I suspect this area is typical of many. The days when social housing was relatively easily available to certain groups have long gone.
) and just want to get back home to the xbox.
