This report follows part one, which you can read here
Through the trials and tribulations of being in “supported accommodation,” through all the having to hold myself back due to housing benefits claims and cost of rent charges (£300-odd pound a week if working), this is where it’s ended up.
Government increases to tax rates for landlords with more than one property means all rents have been increased. Today, a local supported accommodation housing provider has told me that due to an increase in rent charges (which the Local Housing Authority are refusing to meet) that they aren’t being paid any housing benefit.
To further add insult to injury, three houses in the local district, that are owned by the same landlord and used through said supported provider, are being sold.
This now means that the service provider has to rehome six vulnerable adults, including myself, with issues ranging from mental health to addiction.
The service provider has no other houses in the local city – only in the next city. One of the residents who’s needing to be rehomed has been the city for 18 months, maybe a little more, and is trying to build his three-year local connection status to get housed by the council. If he moves out of the city then he loses all he’s built toward his final goal of some sort of stability in life where he’s been pushed from pillar to post.
Where does this struggle end seriously. It’s so easy to see how and why people slip in and out of homelessness.
“…Where does this struggle end seriously. It’s so easy to see how and why people slip in and out of homelessness….”
Hello there, TeeJay,
Thank you for your sensitive and accurate observations, about the shenanigans of so many parties involved in the Private Renting / Housing Universe. Dare I say that they slip in and out of employment too. Result is a bad life style.
My tuppence worth , TeeJay….
This type of activity goes on in the corporate sector (blue collar and white collar) as well.
People are temporarily employed for extended periods of time, going from one short-term employer to another… This reflects badly, falsely, on the potential employee’s apparent incapability to hold down steady employment, reflecting badly in one’s Housing too – that, one cannot shake off the transience of circumstances of one’s life.
The unethical employers, having advantageously used, exploited, “the agency temp”, for a period of time, say six weeks, are often reluctant to pay the agency for a percentage – 15 to 20 percent – of employee’s annual salary , as finder’s fee or recruitment fee, upon employing the said temporary employee as a full time, bonafide employee.
The temping employee would be hard-pressed to “land” a career-enhancing steady employment and lose out a potentially good track record of general steadiness in his / her life.
This scenario is perhaps 15 / 20 years old . Currently, in the third decade of twentyfirst century, everything is in a state of flux and seems well & truly *&%^$£*.
And “So it goes.”. As Kurt Vonnegut would say.