fighting back

[Russian Doll]

weve been living in a two bed flat for over a year now...theres 4 kids and two adults in lol....anyways i went to our local paper last week and they ran a story about us and how thurrock were letting us down and lo and behold weve been told to expect a call from the housing manager on monday

[eccentric_emma]

well done - i really hope it works out for you......finally!

[Milims]

There was a thing on Radio 2 last week about over crowding in Council Properties - good for you for taking them to task - Go For It Gal!

[oldfella]

Got everything crossed for you folks, Lots of luck

[ina]

[Brij]

Well done for you! Good luck, I hope it all gets sorted asap

[mrsflibble]

gotta love the thurrock gazette.

[John Headstrong]

http://www.thurrockgazette.co.uk/news/l ... _upset.php

[marshlander]

http://www.thurrockgazette.co.uk/news/l ... _upset.php

Crumbs, your dilema has certainly sparked off a heated debate!

I cant believe your living room is counted as a bedroom!

Good luck for Monday!

[Milims]

Tea - I just read the newspaper article. Have you contacted your Environmental Health Dept at the council regarding the suitability of rooms being used as bedrooms?
That said - councils really are a lore unto them selves! When I picked my children up and fled from a violent situation I was told that as I'd made myself voluntarily homeless I wasn't elligible for even emergency housing. And even if they did help me out it would cause trouble as I worked for the council at the time and it would look like favouritism. As it was I lived in my mothers upstairs bathroom (luckilly she had a spare) for 3 months and my children (a boy and a girl) shared the only other bed in the house!

[Russian Doll]

omg im shocked....can i just clear some stuff up...first of i didnt have four kids in a two bed flat..we had a three bed when zachy was born but got thrown out as the landlord had to sell the appartment..mrs f will attest to this.....

im distgusted by the amount of comments about races...i never thought it would get this reaction...thurrock council are at fault here not immigrants etc

aaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh

why do people just see one side why cant they read and see the whole picture

[MKG]

My sympathies, Tea ... on your situation and on the article. Isn't it amazing, though, how few of the anti-immigrant posters could either spell or string a sentence together properly? Well, not really amazing ...

The disgusting part of it all is the number of politico-morons who are willing to unashamedly use someone else's predicament to further their own causes (probably spelled corzes).

[Flo]

Two things come to mind in this situation from a local perspective.

There's a serious shortage of family sized social housing here and if Thurrock is similar, it can be hard to find an empty, suitable house for a family with 4 children. It seems that the social housing authorities are not always able to find land or finance to build 3-4 bedroom houses. Or so we are told at tenants forums.

Also nowadays there is also a lack of a knock on the door when the children leave home and/or the husband dies and the appropriate housing officer saying I'm afraid that we need your house for a family - can we help you to move to a more suitable property please like now. So larger houses are being used to house maybe 1 or 2 persons who should really be in smaller properties.

Some general lack of well organised management seems to happen on too many occasions.

[lsm1066]

My sympathies, Tea ... on your situation and on the article. Isn't it amazing, though, how few of the anti-immigrant posters could either spell or string a sentence together properly? Well, not really amazing ...

The disgusting part of it all is the number of politico-morons who are willing to unashamedly use someone else's predicament to further their own causes (probably spelled corzes).

What I found interesting was the fact that all those who professed to be in highly qualified jobs were the worst offenders when it came to spelling and grammatical errors!

Seriously though, the social housing issue situation in this country is ridiculous. Sadly it's all too easy for those whose opinions lean that way for race to be an issue. The trouble is, in some areas it really is. What particularly angered me was the number of people taking issue with the number of children you have. Yet nobody (even the "racial element") seemed to take issue with the number of children Islamic families are rumoured to have, if the poster who mentioned that factoid are to be given any credence at all.

But none of that is the issue here. I really hope you get this resolved. Maybe a housing association can help. I just hope the council doesn't re-home you just because you were in the paper but leaves all the other families who they're ignoring or have forgotten about. This should be a kick in the pants for all local authorities to deal with their social housing policies. Counting the living room as a bedroom is just obscene. Then again, for the purposes of insurance, a room is considered to be any room you can put a bed in. And legally, that includes the kitchen!

One more story for you though. And this is one that my dad, who used to work in the surveyors' section of the GLC housing department has confirmed to me many times. Way back in the 70s there was an underground magazine called Oz. They reported on the social housing shortage in the London Borough of Camden. The council always insisted that their housing waiting list was far longer than they could ever cope with. So Oz did a bit of investigating and they discovered that there was sufficient empty council owned properties in the Kings Cross ward of the borough alone to rehome the entire borough's housing list. When presented with the list, the housing department didn't actually realise they even owned most of the properties.

Good luck. I really hope this gets sorted really soon.
Lynne

[MKG]

Whaddya mean - way back? I remember Oz, and used to read it regularly. Formative, it was. If it hadn't been for Oz, I wouldn't be where I am now. (What am i saying - I'll sue the ba*****s).