Dear Sheffield City Council,
I am at an utter loss, frankly. Trying to get a council house/flat from you is akin to pulling the teeth from a shark with nothing but a soggy toothpick. Every week I log on to the property shop website, select my preferred area and hope for some good properties to pop up. And they do. Oh, how they do. I have seen flats in glorious areas at decent prices, I have seen modest houses in quiet suburban streets. And along with every single one of them I see a big notice saying ‘only available to over 60s’ or ‘only available to priority customers.’ So I sigh and trawl through the 10-16 pages of houses listed, and finally I will stumble across two or three with the miraculous words ‘waiting time of 1-3 years’. That’s me! 4 years waiting time I’ve got, I can have that one! However, something is terribly wrong. Unlike all the lovely over-60/must have children/must have a mental problem/must have an addiction properties, all of these ones seem to be in the roughest parts of the town it is possible to live in. I bid anyway, anything is better than nothing I suppose? And so I wait, for 6 months now, and so far I have viewed two properties. One was not bad, had a kitchen the size of a shoe box, but the area was liveable. Sadly, I didn’t have enough waiting time and it was given to somebody else. But no matter, it’ll be fine. The next one will be ours. And it was, the next one I viewed was offered to me, but sadly I had to politely decline, because unfortunately the area was in all likelihood far more dangerous than Beirut at the height of war. Good job I didn’t accept because not a month later the flat was set on fire and a girl was badly beaten on the estate. I fear I wouldn’t have lasted two days.
So this is my gripe. I work hard for my money, I am sensible and have not had children at a painfully young age. I don’t take drugs, I’m not insane, I claim no benefits. And how do you reward me, council? With no home, because I have some vague sense of standards. Why not go private, I hear you ask? Because I can’t afford the advance payments, as I am struggling to get by only paying £10 a week rent to my partner’s grandmother. So I’ve come up with two solutions:
- Find some sort of magic potion that will age me dramatically so I can get a nice house.
- Get knocked up, form a heroin addiction and subsequently go mad. I’ll have a house before you can say ‘leeching the system’.
Thank you for your time,
Yours Sincerely,
Given up all hope.
tell them your gay and suffering from anti-social behaviour where you live, that worked for me
Couldnt have said it better myself.
i have 6 years waiting time and havent even been asked to view one single place.
had 2 put off my wedding as me and my partner are living in seperate flats and arnt able to get a place 2gether its a discrace.
but if i knocked out a load of kids or we both became smack heads then im sure we would get a lovely place.
and its so true because the flates where i live have had 12 new residents in the last 3 years and every single one of them got the flats due to having priority because they had drug problems or had been in prison and since then the flats are swarming with drug dealers so all therse Priority applicants are getting the best of everything and bringing once ok -ish areas down in to the gutter.
so thanks sheffield property shop and howden house your doing a fine job of f*****g everything up.
Unfortunately owing to the incompetence of staff many people are being awarded housing priority in line with homeless legislation.
Staff are pressured by management into awarding priority if a drug user kicks up a fuss. Staff need training! Having said that some staff have been known to award priority to their children in order to give them a head start on the housing ladder! There is a lot of underhand practices taking place and it’s the public losing out. To illustrate an example, a BME service user applied to the Council as homeless and was advised that in line with legislation they were not considered to have a connection to Sheffield.The service user then complained that staff were rude and as a result the service user was awarded priority and given temporary accommodation pretty quick incase the Council were accused of racism!
I do understand your frustrations in trying to obtain accommodation with the Council as the majority do ho to those considered statutory homeless however if these cases were investigated thoroughly and the proper tests applied you would find that in the main many of these applicants do not qualify. Boils down to staff training.
Mishmash – I recall your plight (don’t get many in that situation) as you refused to be seen by BME officers incase your community found out. In your case it should have been thoroughly investigated. Staff knew you were lying but had to award you priority. I understand it would have been difficult for you otherwise as you were single with no medcal needs etc. Fair play to you.
Why is this able to happen..
If you are NOT a druggie
if you are NOT a drunk
if you have NOT always lived in Sheffield/UK you have no chance of any type of property.
12 years ive been on the waiting list and i havent been offered one single viewing.
Yet in my block of flats the last 11 people to move in are either ex offenders or immigrants but when you question the council they have an answer for everything.
There is only two 3 bed flats in my block one is at full occupancy and has been for years and the other recently came up and according to the rules no single person may have a 3 bed property but guess what a young woman who recently moved here from eastern Europe has been allocated the flat .
She lives alone and has no children and isnt expecting anyone to move in any time soon so how the hell has she managed to get that flat.???????
Its a joke I dont care where you come from or if you have a less than perfect past as long as things are done fairly… but they arnt… me -single white female = sod all
What does it mean when am first on a flat and says something like skipped-bypass?