I apologise in advance. This is a very long post, There is even more back story than this.
I have tried not to drip feed.
I'm 58. The eldest of 3. Very glass half empty
I work at a VERY low level job within the NHS, barely above minimum wage
I live in a shitty part of the world - Two decades ago, I bought a three up, three down, mid terraced house, in the hope that, with family help and a loan I could do it up
My family sickened, my life turned to crap, the loan became a complete millstone and I've been unable to do the house up due to lack of funds or sell because the house's current value won't let me buy another place
I have ADHD AND dyslexia, the cost of education is out of reach and I am unqualified apart from O Level, CSE, GCSE level and a useless HND
I am unlikely to get a better paying job
When our parents died owning property in London, middle brother fucked around and got a deed of variation and second brother and I inherited less than we should have done - I was in a very crappy situation, close to killing myself and at least I got some money
Instead of doing the correct thing, I threw money at this dump, got shilled by cowboy builders who since went bust and I am STILL living in a dump in a crappy, slumlord dominated hellscape
At one point, after paying the mortgage off, I was offered £15k for it by a slumlord and I realise I should have bitten his arm off
I would still have enough money to buy a better place in a nicer area
Still, hindsight...20/20...blah,blah
my only 'savings' are the remnants of my inheritance which I am loath to touch as that is my pension/rainy day fund
Think tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands of £££ - I cannot afford to lose this, spend it rashly or crack into the bonds/savings accounts without penalties
My only saving grace is that I now no longer pay a mortgage, handy, considering I'm paid so little
Middle brother, got a three bedroomed flat in London out of our parents' estate which has only gone up in value since my dad died
He's divorced with two adult children, one of whom is "in law" - Has a law degree and is advising dad
After the sale of the flat, which somehow took forever, he paid his ex-wife and still had a considerable sum of money to buy a place
He moved in in December 2023
It is now August 2026.
At first, it did look temporary.
He did a few jobs around the house, whilst getting to know the area, looking for houses, all the while moving more and more stuff in
Fixed the bathroom window which leaked when it rained and the wind blew in the wrong direction
Found and fixed an issue with the drainage from the cowboy installed upstairs bathroom, digging out a new drain and fixing it to the sewer line in the process
Laid out a new lower path (which causes me issues with a knee injury), but it's now lower than the damp course
Fitted and charged me for a new, unwanted fence but found an issue which had been causing damp in the upstairs bedroom he is now sleeping in
Painted the back of the house after hiring some scaffolding
He started with the damp issue with the downstairs of the house, but stopped more than two years ago
He got caught up spending more and more time in the garden, weeks, in fact
It now looks lovely, but now has grass which needs cutting - Not slumlord or renter friendly
The ONLY people who might have any interest in buying a mid terrace house between tenanted properties will be a landlord and that back yard will cost somewhere in the region of £5k to £10k to take back to slab/concrete/courtyard
There a 20 square foot patch of bare brick in the corner of my back room, signalling to anyone who visits that there is a massive issue with damp and it's been like this for TWO FUCKING YEARS
He found a place, a mid terraced house, but the vendors had to wait for probate
He refused to look for another place
He kept going and bought this dump, with the sale going through in 2024 - It was structurally unsound, near a school, so has parking issues, has antisocial neighbours, but since then he's been promising me that he's leaving
Three dates in 2025 have gone by and he's STILL here
One of the dates, he started shouting at me that I was being insensitive about the death of a guy who he had never mentioned before and he had to go to London to perform a few DIY tasks for his grieving widow
All the while, the space needed to sort the damp issue, make exploratory holes in the flooring to see the extent has been taken up with his hoard
The front room is filled with his tools, desk and chair, the second bedroom is filled with his stuff as well
I started this low paid job as I needed a break from the shift work which was slowly doing my head in
I took a £1k a month pay cut to have regular hours
I worked on small pieces of salvaged furniture, I have an interest in sewing and embroidery and bought an expensive scanner for all the family photographs which I intended to digitise for the rest of the family
All these plans have been turned to shit
The fabrics and thread are inaccessible due to them being locked away in the spare bedroom - more than likely being eaten with moths
The scanner is up and out of reach, there is nowhere to lay it out to operate it
The front room, where the furniture used to be worked on is now hoarded out with tools
I have removed the dining table in the back room to create space - It's now used for drying laundry
Better yet, I am allergic to a variety of foodstuffs which Middle Brother insists on cooking - My own kitchen is inaccessible to me and he sees nothing wrong with this
I have told him to leave - HE refuses and has taken advice from his son to say this is correct
Sum total of the legal argument is "But he'll be homeless"
He insists that the work he's done has more than paid for his rent AND all bills
Yes, reader, in case you're still here, he has not paid any of the bills aside from three months, when he showed willing, all the while piling more stuff up in the house
He does have a storage unit
I have lost the single person's council tax discount and I am paying increased gas and electric bills
I have taken paid legal advice and been told that as he has done some work to the place he may have a beneficial interest in a house I have owned for decades
I have gone into "petty mode"
I have stripped the gas hob and oven of everything to make them useable - Gas consumption has dropped to the point that some days, the standing charge is higher than the cost of the gas used on a daily basis
He then insisted that the washing machine wasn't rinsing properly and started to do two washes - One for the wash and one for the rinse - of course the electricity went up
I removed the machine drawer - A friend at work is looking after it for me
To me, the storage and laundrette costs are more than the cost saved, but I am petty as fuck
Middle brother has now bought an electric hob and his own microwave
Taking up more fucking space and using more electricity
Matters are not helped by the state of his house
During the early Spring, when family visited from all over, he took us on a "tour" of the house
We could stand in the front room, look up and see the underside of the roof
When I challenged him during one Saturday in July about the state of my finances and when he was moving out he gave me an instruction to wear solid shoes and he would take me over to see the state of the place
Sunday morning he confessed that he has spent months digging a hole and there was so little progress on the house that I would notice
He bought such a fucking garbage patch that a well, you know, a water type well, outside his kitchen door has been leaking and damaging the foundations
He had been digging out the well by hand and performing groundworks outside the house after taking advice
And the foundations need to dry out,
And he has to create a soakaway
And the house cannot be moved into
I am beyond fucking livid
This parasite is leeching off his poorly paid and increasingly disabled sister, forcing her to eat out of packets due to his selfishness in the kitchen and he is on side quest after side quest
Electric bike, well, garden etc
Even in his own house, because he has no front garden, he can't park a skip on the road due to the parking issues around the school - A huge portion of the rubble from the works is in 'cages' around the garden, forming building blocks for walls
He has no bathroom or kitchen and this will remain so for some time
Instead of working on the house today he's got a "van job"
I had to take a day off to let the BG Boiler man do his annual survey, hence this rant
The people at work area aware of my predicament - I have two half joking offers of help to dispose of his corpse should I kill him
We worked out I needed two volunteers, because he has two vehicles. They are both dog owners and know remote spots to dispose of the vehicles and his corpse
We jokingly planned it all out, utterly deadpan
I have been referred to safeguarding on the grounds of financial abuse, their referral upwards failed to progress as there are plenty of others in greater need than me and my case was not considered severe enough
The police were useless - "Well, have you told him to leave?"
My paid legal advisor told me he may have a beneficial interest in the house
A house I have owned and lived in for over two decades
What can I do?