The Church, the Council and Me in 2005

I am copying what I wrote in 2005 but didn't blog it. Didn't blog anything. Here is some of it anyway, a bit of history for you.....

I am writing this in July 2005 where my story is coming to an end. The Church has finally made its application to the courts and I have received mine, which I haven't sent back yet because I don't see the point. For months I have been terrified of going to court as I'm no criminal. But just as I realise that it is good that the Church goes, as a landlord, to stand up in the name of all landlords, I'm told that it won't have to go to court after all. Nor do I. It makes me angry. So many landlords just evict people with no solid reason. The Church may say it needs it for a priest but I know it's business. Business over babies.

Back in September (2004) I received a letter from Christo and Co, the Church's ironically named estate agents, giving me a month to leave the property. Panicking like my old self I bought a copy of Loot and rang everyone, for days. No, no, no came the response from landlords near and local. I went to ask Fix It priest if they had anywhere else. "We are not estate agents," he said.

I went to see the council and cried on my housing advisor for over an hour. "Not again, it's got to stop, first his father, now the Church, it's got to stop!" Housing advisor gave me options:
Go privately again? Noooooooo
Go to the Homeless Persons Unit again? Noooooooo
Friends you can stay with? Not in the same area, noooooooo
Family? Noooooooo
How can we help you then? I don't knooooooooooooooooooooooow.

He contacted the Church and said that legally it had to give me two months notice. The Church complied and notice was set for the week before Christmas, the end of the contract. There was the article I'd threatened to write the year before: No room in the Inn for the single mother and her boy child. I couldn't do it.

I wanted to be out by Christmas. I've never stayed anywhere beyond my notice but then, pre baby, no-one had ever served me notice. Nice priest suggested I throw myself at the Bishop's mercy; he may be able to help. I had nothing to lose.

"We have no duty to care for you," said the Bishop. "It is the council's duty." I was so shocked (though why oh why naive plonkette that I am) I couldn't form a sentence, not even a sharp little pointer gleaned from the bible.

Broken, unable to think for myself, my friend at the Department of Trade and Industry suggested I contact my local MP. I wrote letter after begging letter and he replied saying that there was nothing he could do but that he urged me to talk to the Homeless Person's Unit.

I tried, they were not interested. They said they would help me only when I had a notice to quit from the court and then my son and I would be placed in a hostel as we'd "have no choice."

Then a friend who worked for Cambridge council said "ooh no, you don't want to speak to your MP, you want your local councillor, he can put pressure on the council." I did as I was told. I spoke to several before I hit upon my own. They all agreed the system was flawed. AAAAAGH so why doesn't somebody change it then?

In the park, on my street, my neighbour asked how I was. "Truth or stiff upper lip?" I asked. "Truth," she said. "Shit," I replied. "The council won't help me until the Church goes to court for the flat then they're going to put us in a hostel for two years. Two flipping years."

She pointed out four empty properties in the street. "They've been empty for ages, at least a year. Squatters were in one, friends of a drug addicted mother who was evicted from the other." I was onto Housing Advisor within minutes.
"Take down the boards, I'll do it up!"
"It doesn't work like that," he said.

It's funny how you can live your life looking but never seeing then once you see you look only at what you never saw. I'd go to the park every day, I still do, and all I would see were those empty flats. As long as they were boarded up I hoped, looking up at the sky and imploring. I felt intense hunger for the carrot being dangled infront of me, just out of my reach. Then a few months later the boards were taken down off one of them and my hope along with them.

Someone was cooking in my kitchen. The thought stuck in my throat like a stale roll. I became deaf, no longer hearing my son call for me. Mute, unable to speak. (This was also a hallmark of my mothering when I was with the father of child. "I've no feelings for you," he'd say. "But they will come back." Over and over again to the pregnant me, the torn me, the made redundant me, the father with cancer me. I should have slapped myself but instead became a wilted flower stuck in the shadows, begging for sun, gasping for water. My deaf/mute hallmark is one I recognise with each new shock I receive from the situation I'm in. I think it's fear.)

My local councillor, herein to be called my Local Hero because he's so good to me, fights so hard for me, had words with the Church. Said the notice it had given me wasn't very Christian and would they extend it to the New Year. They did, but it made no difference to me. I felt like an unwelcome tenant. I just wanted out.

In January I expected the court summons but the Church now had lawyers and they came round one night with a notice of repossession, this time for May. It was to give me more time, said Nice priest. More time for what? The council weren't going to help me. In fact the council closed my file.
"Why?" I cried (again) down the phone to Housing Advisor. "It's not over yet."
"Nothing's happening," he said. "It's procedure."

I spoke to Housing Advisor's boss. The questions coming so fast that if he paused to reply I took it to mean he didn't know the answer.
"How many single mothers are there in my situation?"
"How many are waiting to go to court?"
"How many court evictions are there a month? A dozen? Two dozen?"
"Not many," he said. "Most referrals come from family, friends and overseas."
"So what? I'm being penalised for coming from the private sector?"
"Different rules apply there."

I can understand the rules, to an extent. If the rules weren't so harsh and punitive the council would not be able to control the quell that would come from the monstrously expensive private rental sector. Still, how often do you get a stigmum evicted by the Church? Make an exception for me!
No.
Can I be viewed as Homeless at Home? No. That is for people who are living indefinitely in the home.
Err, not me then who is waiting indefinitely for all this to end?
No.
Can I be viewed as in temporary accommodation now so that after I receive the bailiff's warrant I can be housed permanently? After all, with the Church as my temporary residence, it means the council's temporary places could go to someone who needs it, a mother for example who's had six shades kicked out of her by her partner.
No.

May comes round and suddenly I am allowed to start bidding for properties. Why now? Why not before? All these months I could have been bidding before I was made homeless and my paltry points REDUCED.

We have 140 points my son and I. He is worth FIVE points. Five. Do you have a child? A niece? A nephew? How much are they worth? Five points?

We have 100 points for insecure housing. These will be taken away when we join the homeless unit. As if to add insult to injurty Housing Advisor tells me once I am homeless my waiting list application will be suspended and it could be "some time" before I qualify for council housing.

We get 30 points for over crowding and I get another five for being on benefits. Whoopee doo.

I must mention at this juncture that I feel very sorry for my Housing Advisor, though not at the moment because just as the shit is about to hit my fan he's buggered off on holiday for three weeks. I feel for him because every time I call he says "We've been through this before."
"Yes, but but, I don't understand and in limbo things go round and round in your head and it makes no sense."

Housing Advisor can do nothing. He works for this unforgiving, incompetent, inefficient machine. He does what he can for me but it's hard with his hands so tightly bound behind his back.

In April I finally sent off my medical assessment form. I should have done this much earlier to coincide with the letter my doctor sent in October but found the whole thing just too depressing. So in May, when I can start bidding, I ask Housing Advisor where my medical points are. I need the extra points.
"There's a backlog," he says. "I'll chase them up for you."
I say OK. Then I ring him the next week. There's still a backlog.
"What do you mean?" I finally ask.
"Just that, there's a backlog."
"Why is there a backlog?"
"There's only one medical officer."
"What?"
"There's only one medical officer."
"Only one medical officer and 15000 people on the waiting list?"

It's July, my Local Hero and my social worker are both chasing up those points. That's one hell of a flipping backlog.

It's pointless bidding without them. It's pointless bidding with them to tell the truth. I need at least 300 points to get anywhere and my medical points might only tot up to 20. Still, that's more than my son is worth.

There isn't even any point going out and getting pregnant. I'd have to hope for sextuplets, and then not for the points. Does six children constitute over crowding? Are there any mothers in the hostels with six children? Or only those with one or two? The odds of my carrying sextuplets however are very slim. There aren't even twins in my family.

I have explored EVERY avenue and have exhausted them all. Even the going back to my parents option which the government would like but which I can't do. They still love me. Better it remains that way. Besides, I want my own home, build my own roots, and create my own nest for my fledgling child.

So yes, the court date I've been dreading is no longer happening. Instead a letter is going to to drop through my letter box giving me 14 days to vacate my flat. When it will drop through I have no idea. If I sent back my defence form I could ask for another 42 days. But what is the point? What good will waiting another 42 days do when I have already been waiting for 301? (this is written in real time, I won't edit). How will I know when my 42 days start? Will a letter plop onto my doormat giving me 14 days after that? If you don't understand this garbled paragraph, rest assured that I don't either. Local Hero is currently looking into it for me.

I am useless; I am scared, I am angry; I am so utterly without will. I just want to tell my son one day that the Church and our country did us a huge favour. I do not want him to suffer on account of me. All I'm after, after all, is a secure flat I can rent.

This has led me to a perhaps foolish decision. I have decided to 'trespass'. If the council insists on punitively incarcerating us in a hostel, or come to think of it, any temporary accommodation, then I will refuse to move. The council has known we are coming for months. We are not an emergency. The Bishop will have to get bailiffs onto me.

Local Hero tells me this is a bad idea. Bailiffs he says, will throw all my things out onto the pavement and it will be humiliating. I am past caring. I will sit on the pavement with my son on my lap and I will cry. I will cry because I have done this to him. It was predicted that my lfie would end up in the gutter. Not his though.

I will cry not because it's raining on my clothes, on my books, on my music, on my photos, on my life, but because I could not prevent taking my son down with me. I will cry because it is raining on his toys.

My landlord is God though. I trust Him/Her/It. I don't believe the Bishop will do that to us. Local Hero believes he will.

I will not tip off the press. I was a journalist once, briefly, you see. I don't want the story told at my expense. Or worse, my son's. We could be anybody. What ever I've written in this collection of fragments has been done to keep me busy, hold back the fear that threatens to engulf me. It's all stuff I've been thinking about in limbo and obviously I hope you get something from it, even if that is nothing at all.

One more thing. A council email fell into my lap. It reads:
"Homelessness is not the easy route to social housing."

So would someone please tell me?
WHAT THE FUCK IS?