Is my friend outrageously entitled in her expectations?

Tell her to fuck off

@MariadeiMiracoli She wants a bungalow with two bedrooms, so she can have a yoga/ meditation/ craft room. She wants a south-facing garden she can tend. It's got to be within walking distance of a decent town, but somewhere quiet and peaceful with a green outlook. And parking because she has a car.

Ok well the way to get this is to work hard in paid employment for at least 40 years building up a good pension and paying off a mortgage. She didn't do that.

She will not get a home like this through any kind of social housing system. Places with 2 bedrooms will be given to people with high care needs who need a carer to stay overnight, not people who want a yoga/meditation/craft room.

However, her delusions and sense of entitlement aren't really your problem. You don't have any duty to make her behave reasonably. You can let her know that you will absolutely refuse to provide any suport for applications for social housing which exaggerate or fabricate health or care needs that boost her chances of getting these unreasonable demands met, but will be happy to give whatever support is needed for applications that are fully open and honest (though I can't think what support would be needed other than asking you to lie for her)

Then we usually pay for it ourselves.....

I knew masses of people like this when I was younger (I grew up in a town full of trust fund hippies) and almost without exception they come from wealthy families. As young people they get used to having their super permissive mummy and daddy fund the “free spirit” lifestyle, they live on fresh air and full moon parties and it’s all so spiritual not being in the rat race.

When the trust fund runs out and the penny drops that money is needed to support a life they start semi grifting off friends and claiming benefits.

Usually in late middle age they have drug and alcohol problems and nothing much to show for following their creative animus wherever it takes them. Your friend actually sounds reasonably sorted among these types in that she is volunteering and doesn’t sound self destructive.

But I agree it’s excruciating when people who have never worked properly suddenly wake up later in life to the fact that people need to work to earn a living. Be compassionate by all means but don’t get roped into anything. She doesn’t sound like a bad person just a naive and entitled person.

I can hear her saying to you what she said to me. Something along the lines of 'What's the problem with aiming for what you really want and what would bring you happiness, instead of just settling for what you're offered?'

My response would be that she seems to be using the term "aiming for" to mean "ask to be given for free", where most people would use it to mean "have a realistic plan of working towards earning to achieve this"

She can want whatever property she wants, can live however she wants really.

but it’s almost impossible the council are going to hand her as a single person, a dream 2 bed bungalow with south facing garden and meditation room. Let’s face it, these will go to genuinely disabled people who can’t access flats or houses. No matter what her links to the community are.

If the OP and numerous people commenting here are so astoundingly ignorant of how housing works in the UK, it's very likdly that OP's friend, who has been out of the country a lot, has no idea whstsoever.

Simply explain to her that it's incredibly difficult to get housing and it's unlikely she'll meet the requirements. No issue.

And then people go on about how tough the benefits system is.

It’s not tough. It’s a gravy train. It needs slashing to the to the bone to stop abuse of paying net contributors.

Even in a decent apartment block apartment living sucks when you start to feel you don’t want to be there anymore, you start to hear everything, living without a garden sucks big time, I can’t describe how you just feel trapped. So I’d guess she’s gone a bit tunnel visioned and can’t see what she has.

BUT she needs to get herself out by getting a job and renting and definitely not by tricking her way in. But I do feel sorry for her, she’s had amazing times and it must be a come down ti not have the freedom of choice she’s strangely had before getting back to real life

My friend (similar lifestyle to your friend but much younger) asked me once for my degree cert to copy. She had a contact who could doctor it to make a fake for her.

It was a flat no from me and she stropped a bit but got over it. She's still my friend but God no, I wasn't letting her use something I'd worked so hard for (and not particularly enjoyed).

People only keep asking these things if they feel they can so just say you won't get involved and leave her strop about it. These people have thick skin and she will honestly forget it ever happened I reckon.o

She wants a, she wants be, she wants c..The .shs should have got a job and saved for it like the bloody rest of us.

She is entitled to a roof over her head and nothing else. And she's bloody lucky she's even entitled to that!

She would be eligible for Pension Credit I believe.

She sounds very entitled. A severely disabled relative of mine recently managed to aquire accessible accommodation after a very long wait. They were low priority for housing because they weren't homeless and didn't have kids. Every flat that came up involved stairs, narrow doorways, inaccessible bathrooms. The flat they managed to secure came with very strict requirements they had to be a wheelchair user and live locally for a start. So I seriously doubt she would even be considered. However, if she is thinking of trying to fake a disability I would be compelled to tell her I won't be supporting her application as I disagree with her ethics and it would probably be a friendship ending event for me.

If she’s been on benefits her NI contributions have probably been made automatically.

Step away.

@MariadeiMiracoliCould she just be very deluded? If she’s a free spirit/hippie/easy life kind of a person she doesn’t sound very grounded. Is it a question of ask the universe & it will be given type of philosophy that she believes in? In a way I too can admire (fleetingly) pple who live very differently & have the guts to travel & live life on their own terms. It will be interesting to see how she tries to procure this bungalow for sure & strange how she expects you to help her in this regard. Hippie manifesting good things from the universe or an entitled CF?? She certainly sounds like she believes she’s entitled to one when she’s far from it which is why she just sounds out of touch with reality (or perhaps a complete chancer). Either way to believe she deserves one over seriously disabled pple is plain wrong & bonkers imo. Makes me thing there’s something missing??

Whatever you decide...dont let her move in with you!

You have mentioned quite a lot of outing information about this woman who is supposedly a “friend”.

You have mentioned that she’s done volunteer work, helped you when you needed her, borrowed money and paid it back and doesn’t seem to have done anything that really warrants you posting about her and mentioning she has claimed benefits in every post!
This is clearly just to wind people up about benefits and I don’t think your friend deserves it.

If she has spent a lot of time out of the country I doubt she can work in a steady secure job as it’s unfair to employers. It sounds like she’s claimed benefits and done volunteer work to offset that by working for free.

I suspect you are jealous of her free spirit lifestyle and you are annoyed about her claiming benefits she was obviously entitled to. Have you been reading other threads similar to this and getting sucked in?

At least make your post transparent and that it’s a benefit bashing post.
It’s not at all likely anyone without (or even with at the moment) a disability will give a list of requirements and get given a disabled access property, I’m sure you know that though.

If this woman who hasn’t really done anything wrong comes across this post and reads hateful comments towards her from people who haven’t a clue about her lifestyle and reasons for choosing it, I think it’s unfair.
You say she doesn’t have a disability so she isn’t claiming PIP, she didn’t have housing in the past so wouldn’t have received housing costs, it’s likely she had a few quid a week to scrape by off from ESA and did unpaid work!
If she was claiming money every time she came back from travelling she’d have to do a new claim and the government don’t just hand it out if you say you don’t want to work either.

I wish people would question these threads and the intentions behind them. Not everyone lives life the same way. This woman presumably doesn’t have kids? So she’s never had maternity leave, child benefits, she’s not had holiday pay from work or sick pay, she’s probably had less from the government then some people commenting on here but their way seems more legitimate as it’s “the done thing”.

If you don’t want to assist your friend OP then you can say no, you don’t have to make a post questioning all her choices and try to imply she’ll be taking a disabled person’s housing from them and kicking them out on the street.

I am disabled and I wouldn’t even try to rent to get any HA or council properties because I know how difficult it is. I know full well I couldn’t just make up a list of demands and ask my best friend to vouch for me, the very idea is ridiculous 😂.

Be interesting when she gets to retirement age and she has nt paid the required 30 whatever years NI! 😳

It is if she's trying to claim she has a non existent disability, so a genuine person gets shoved further down list.

The HA won't be interested in her yoga, I work for one. They'll be looking for people with a two bedroom need such as a disabled person with family member or a disabled person needing overnight care. To get the latter she would need proof of her disability and proof of her care needs and no professional would write that if its not true. They won't give credence to letters from friends either. I would go the other way and tell the HA what she is like and what a freeloader she is.
People like her are the cause of why there are so many disabled people stuck in unsuitable accomodation.

What a stupid thing to say. Let's all grab what we can from the benefits system because that's just free money and we (the taxpayers) don't have to fund it, do we? Besides, your racism is showing.

Mm, the sort of property she is after are really reserved for those with physical disabilities, she is going to have a damn long wait for one to be available for mental health issues.

I've met people like this and yes it seems wonderful, floating through life, 'something will turn up', going where the breeze and the mood takes you.. but the reality is, you can't live like that forever and it will bite you on the arse if you think otherwise.

She's always been this gentle-hippy-chick type: easy going, peace and love to the world. But when it comes to a two-bed bungalow, she's prepared to elbow someone disabled out of the way if she can. It's opened my eyes to how essentially different our values are.

It's pretty ugly behaviour, and shows low self-insight and compassion for others - which to me are all round bad indicators.

I would be inclined to point out to her that she is lucky to have landed a place at all and to not be living in her car, as many women of her age are now.

It is a pity we don't all mature as we get older, and it seems as if she has not yet realised her actual circumstances and what brought her there, and how much worse it all could be. Not your job to counsel her on this. She sounds demanding and unreasonable.