AIBU? Council repairs leaving my 86-year-old mum with nowhere suitable to live

One thing I would add from a general perspective, and acknowledging that council employees are only human, and services are stretched, vulnerable people, especially with mental health issues, find it challenging to engage. Even those without severe challenges can find the system difficult to navigate.

As an example, practises such as sending an email to an 85 year old last thing on a Fruday giving them 24 hours to accept a property they deemed suitable, despite evidence to the contrary, with the instruction to seek official external support over a weekend, and saying if it's refused or not accepted, the council will end it's duty of care and said person will be making themselves voluntarily homeless. This happened to my Dad three times in a 9 month period, and I had to involve a local councillor and our MP to get the situation looked at with any sort of humanity.

The feeling of being at the mercy of the state, and some of the administrative fubars can send people into a very dark place. The feeling of having little or no autonomy, the undertone of judgement, the implication that any objection, no matter how rationally or politely expressed can be a "black mark" is really hard, and can generate paranoia in even the most stable person.

So the OPs case is obviously complex, and we may not have all the fine detail, however, from a personal perspective and having dealt with the services referenced very recently, I understand and can empathise with the sentiments expressed.

Of course, moving forward there may have to be compromises and the OPs Mum's well-being and safety is paramount, but the phrase "the truth us rarely pure and never simple" comes to mind, and from 56 years of life experience I have learned that what should happen, and what does happen can be vastly different when dealing with officialdom, and therefore, people should at least be heard. Just because something is not my experience, I won't claim it didn't happen, because sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

Yes, have to agree. My dad lives in a HA property and while the HA are pretty good, we have to help him keep on top of it. Sometimes minor repairs are fixed by a family member and we decorate every 2 or 3 years.

The HA is also not responsible for pests inside the property (only in communal areas) so when my dad ended up with wasps in the loft, we had to call the council and paid a fee to get it removed.

As everyone has said, would guess OP’s mum’s house had become this way because of a variety of factors. I don’t think anyone would judge her (or her mum) for that. Mental health can lead to people living in truly terrible conditions. The task now is to get it fixed and honestly, just accept clean and safe alternative accommodation.

hard agree. That house didn’t get into that state in a few months. Or even a year or two.

I've read enough articles about council / HA properties in London to know there's a serious problem with tenants being left to live in disgusting conditions.

As pp above, what's causing the properties to fall into 'disgusting condition"? Agree with @SunnySideDeepDown tenants still have to acknowledge they have responsibility for upkeep of their home.
It's on the LA for structural repairs, but general cleanliness, damp, vermin thats surely on the tenant?

I've read enough articles about council / HA properties in London to know there's a serious problem with tenants being left to live in disgusting conditions.

Seen it too. I had friends who lived in a flat in elephant and castle and the whole building was disgusting and infested with cockroaches.

What i dont get is why the op's mum cant go to live in op's home. Even if there's no bedroom and someone has to sleep in the living room its better than the current situation.

Whether the op's mum moves into temp accommodation, a private rental or the op's home the agoraphobia will be the same. Moving from the current home to any other place will be the same.

What i think is not being said is possibly the op's mum is a hoarder and that has affected the state of the property and also perhaps seeing damage or reporting repairs before it got to this point.

If thats the case then the op might be withholding that information because she fears posters will blame her mum for the situation.

There are as many holes in the Op's replies as there is in the property, due to the Op not replying fully.

As her full time carer, where were you when all this happened?

How did your mum end up with holes in floorboards and ceilings coming down? That doesn’t just happen to itself, what maintainance did your mum/you do to the home over the decades she/you lived there? You need to care and upkeep your home.

I do t understand this. And I don’t understand how she’d be less prone to being cuckooed just because her home is an aparthotel. Noe do I understand how she wouldn’t be agoraphobic there but would be if she lived with the op - so much so that she can’t move to be with the op.

i also don’t understand where the young family came from who haven’t seen their mum all summer.

But she could live in this other rental that the OP wants to crowdfund for? Where would the 'young family' (that there was no mention of earlier) be living then?

Why does her agoraphobia mean she cant come to live with you?

My guess is that this is about succession.

And there's no way on god's green earth that social services would insist that someone's got capacity when they're 86, living in squalor, have been starved, are so severely agoraphobic that they can't move in with family, and are currently in hospital on suicide watch.

You need help, OP.

Honestly OP, it’s not that you’re explaining it strangely, more that your posts contradict each other. You started off by saying you’d found a place for you all to live together but didn’t have the money for 6 months rent. But then you said you already had a house of your own but your mum couldn’t move in with you due to agoraphobia. But how was she going to move into the private rental if that was the case?

Anyway, this is not meant to be an unsupportive post - seems like the situation is complex and there are big chunks of information that are being excluded. Assuming the OP is genuine then I hope she’s able to get it sorted.

Yes the hospital discharge planning social work team are the people to help you on this. They cannot provide housing but they can arrange care packages and speak to housing. If your mum had carers coming in multiple times a day this would put off any cuckooing people. Usually they are fairly easily put off and don’t bother to follow people out of area because sadly they prefer to move on to other vulnerable people.

Try shelter or age uk

If you take anything from this thread, please talk to the hospital social workers while your mother is there. Let them help both of you.

OP I'm not sure what negativity you're seeing. We're trying to understand so we can help.
Why can't you still stay with her in the flat if that's what you want? She's in the living room and you in the only barely habitable bedroom.
If the issue is that you don't want to, or can't continue to care for her then that is better dealt with somewhere clean and safe.
I'm struggling to get my head around why anyone would stay in that house a day longer than necessary. You'll make yourself poorly.

If it’s such a rat infested mouldy crumbling hellhole then anything she can be moved to must be safer than this so yabvu to say anything else is not safer if it’s not what she has allowed or you as carer allowed her current home to become which on your own description sounds less
safe than anything else on offer. Either pay it up or accept the councils help for a minimum time and don’t let her home get in that bad of disrepair again .

No, I don’t.

If she has been living in such awful conditions for years, then possibly there is a cumulative impact there.

Her daughter has been living in her own home with her young family. How close is that and for how long has her mother been bed bound and what sort of care has she been receiving ?

This also raises the question of why her family didn’t intervene earlier?

@WhiteWinePls what do you mean by 'suicide watch,'? Is she detained?

You must know what needs to happen here.

Your mother is 86 and, you say, on suicide watch because of her dreadful housing which is no longer habitable. (There are many unanswered questions there)

You have your own young family living presumably in your home, elsewhere.

you either - bring her to live with you. Or - strongly advise her to move into a care home if the local authority will pay.

You cannot hope to maintain her tenancy but you must know that deep down.

there is a huge volume of advice on here for you to consider.

I’m not trying to be mean but the updates just add further mystery to this thread. It doesn’t add up.

I don't think people realise just how vulnerable elderly people are to cuckooing. The chap who had the flat before my Dad, in so called extra care sheltered accomodation no less, fell victim to it and ended up dead. It's a big scandal going unaddressed and largely unreported, so what the OP describes isn't as far fetched as some are making out.

I've done some digging in my area, and it seems that some council run extra care sheltered accommodation developments seem to include flats for sale, which is not clearly advertised. There's a murky side to some of the housing provided for "vulnerable" over 55s.

If an elderly person is deemed to have capacity, it is incredibly difficult to get help and support. People with capacity have the right to make unwise decisions, and in my experience if relatives try to get involved, officials can be extremely difficult, and will often use the MHA as an excuse to pass someone with complex needs round and round between agencies like a hot potato. You rarely speak to the same person twice, and nine times out of ten they're on annual leave if you try.

Spent most of last year dealing with this sort of thing on my Dad's behalf, and between bureaucracy and my batshit SM they drove him to his grave quicker than was necessary with the constant stress of it all.

If they gave offered her a flat, help her get set up and work with social services to arrange a care package so this home stays in decent repair and someone monitors her health.

This - there's a route here where you can bolt on care that makes what the council can reasonably provide, a workable solution for your mum (ideally one that reduces the direct burden on you).

What are the negative posts? The ones suggesting you're refusing sheltered housing for your mum because you won't be accommodated where you want in London?