Aibu to think the local authority will house me?

[Jojomarie29]

Hello,I'm 33 and have suffered with anxiety most of my life.
I still live with my mum and I'm single.
I claim esa due to anxiety but I'm trying to get my life on track.
What chance do I have of the LA housing me?
I'm desperate to move out but can't afford to private rent.
Will the LA house me?
How do I go about it?
How many months will it take?
Will I be entitled to full housing benefit?
I'm hoping to get back to work soon.
Any advice would be great

I've only read the first page but I think you are giving inaccurate information.
It doesn't matter where you live- there is a huge housing problem on a national basis.
As a single homeless man you are not eligible for social housing. First they consider whether you are intentionally or unintentially homeless and they wouldalmost certainly find you intentionally homeless. Then there is the issue of priority need and you certainly don't qualify. Youhave to have children,other vulnerable dependents,old age/ill health- I don't thinkanxiety would be seen as priority need. There are many people with serious mental healtth problems who are turned down.

Most LAs sub contracted their housing stock to the private sector but you aren't in the clutches of a private landlord. lAs move people to other parts of the country where accommodation is cheaper,but again these are families usually. You ask about HB - why don't you work?

For good advice contact SHELTER the best charity for housing.

So this is what I pay my taxes for 😒

There is nothing stopping you from looking for private rented accommodation and claiming the housing benefit you will be entitled to to fund that. Or perhaps supported accommodation if you didn’t quite feel ready for complete independence yet.

Waiting for the council to source accommodation even for the highest priority can take ages in a lot of areas so you are best to look yourself.

I agree OP - but I understand your frustration. You need to get back to work if you possibly can. That is your best option.

PPs seem to have given good info about the way the LA Housing system works so I'd listen to them. Check your local area and your own LA as suggested.

I go against the grain however when I say that I think that time on the list should be a big factor in getting a Council House. The current system penalises single people, encourages tenants to get evicted, encourages people to lie and in the end there will always be someone ahead of you if you do the right thing. But I doubt many will agree with me.

Sorry I meant I agree with others who say that you won't get a place easily. I disagree that you should get a one bed flat on full housing benefit and full ESA as that doesn't seem fair

It's quite unreasonable of you to expect the taxpayer to pay for you to move out just because you want to.

Op go on a waiting list, maybe nothing will happen and it will probably are a long time for you to go back to work and move out but you never know. No one here can tell you, there s such a variation across the country.

You would likely only get a room in a shared house following a stay in a run down B&B/hostel. Been there when illness/erm, gross misjudgement led to me being on the bones of my arse, pregnant, living in my van and in a very shitty, vulnerable situation. I agree with PP saying that a baby and shitty circumstances are the golden ticket (depending on where you live) although I am unsure whether this was said in a sneery way. It is not, however a golden ticket to a golden life; shitty neighbours (and I mean awful shitty neighbours), skintness, total loss of self esteem, being treated like crap by the council are par for the course in my experience along with having to prove and re prove you are ill/in need/homeless relentless form filling/question answering etc etc.

Will you present at the council offices as sleeping on the street as that is the only way I can see this working for you, then taking what is offered (emergency accommodation is usually dire and will no doubt be what you get for the foreseeable) until you are 35 and eligible for a flat/bedsit, assuming g the rules haven't changed by then?

It cost me a fortune to do my council house up to a basic standard (which I got by way of a B&B then flat). and, not having a fortune to spend, has taken much saving, going without, scrimping etc etc to provide my daughter and I with a washing machine, tumble drier, fridge freezer, cooker, television, beds and bedding, towels, kitchenware, flooring (£40 a room to have even the crappest cheapest flooring fitted - I was lucky enough to have a friend who fitted it for free - total bodge job but good enough - had to pay out for the stairs though as they have to be safe! not to mention carpet glue, those spiky carpet thingies, laminate for kitchen etc etc.

3 years later, my house is starting to look halfway decent. The multiple tins of magnolia I initially used (and have since just painted over as needed and certainly weren't 'free!' I think it was £20 a tin of no frills Dulux), paint brushes, rollers and trays, curtains, furniture from charity shops have added up to a hell of a lot more than you'd imagine, not to mention bills and ongoing expenses (landline as mobile phones are unreliable here signal wise and I have DD and ongoing health problems so need to be able to contact/be contacted by various folks).

I receive ESA support and am basically fucked and getting progressively worse. I am also in receipt of PIP, Housing Benefits etc and live in constant fear of the next assessment/hoop to be jumped through and the imminent change over to Universal Credit, which actually makes me feel suicidal. I used to have a very well paying job and was blatantly misdiagnosed by 4 Doctors at my old surgery and sent away when I couldn't speak, was incoherent and could barely walk (brain illness). The hospital then took 5 attempts to do my spinal which, it is reckoned has caused wide spread nerve damage, along with problems following my illness, depression, anxiety, and am classed as disabled. I am boring on about this to illustrate that, although I am very ill, which is well documented by professionals/appointments etc I am still living in constant fear that the rug will be pulled from under DD and I by the ever shifting goalposts. As such, in the ESA work group, I don't know how you can even consider that you are in a stable enough position financially to move out and I say that kindly. You could be declared fit to work at any time then really be up shit street if having to pay all your bills, possibly having used credit to sort a place out. Get back into the world slowly. You are totally different to your friends. I fretted that I did the whole thing back to front, marriage, split up, left stable home work etc (albeit in immediate aftermath of illness) and am the token single parent in our circle of home owning, married parents, however I've come to realise I have a massive amount of freedom my friends don't, financial, physical, and I am sure by the time the children are 10 or so there will be at least a couple of divorces whereby friends will find themselves in the crap situation while DD and I are hopefully still plodding along happily. I kind of see life as a snakes and ladders game, all unexpected snakes then the odd ladder if you are lucky! What i'm trying to say is don't judge. Take life at your own pace and don't compare. Get on the housing list because, why the hell not?! Get on some medication which maybe helps you feel more able to get out and about, volunteer again etc, small steps, but be kind on yourself. Illness may hit someone else at any time so please try not to feel life is shit; you clearly want to better yourself so goo for you (what about an online course/education?). Sorry for the utter garbled essay but I really feel for you and to anyone who wants to benefit bash, I could quite easily have sued the NHS for all their fuck ups which have essentially ruined my life but would rather eat my own liver than do so, so make no apology that I am on benefits through no fault of my own whatsoever (I miss work so much it makes me cry).

Why do you deserve a free home?

Why should you take money from people who go out to work and pay taxes when you don't feel like you should contribute to the same pot?

Why do you think the world owes you a home?

I'm sure there are plenty of lovely HA flats, but the one my FIL in Manchester lives in has drug dealers living next door. They regularly have shootouts with the police, and FIL recently had someone try to break his door down with an axe because they got the flat numbers mixed up and his neighbour owed someone dodgy money. There are a lot of other tenants in the block who are similar. He regularly sees crime in the streets nearby and is too scared to go out or come home after dusk. We don't ever visit because the area is so dodgy.

He's also had problems with the HA - for example, they were planning to turn the heating off to the entire block for weeks in winter to put a new system in (which only didn't happen due to admin delays). He spent weeks complaining to the council about the plans but got nowhere.

I'd be worried that any flats with low interest would be similar to the above. Unless your living circumstances are truly dire, it might be better to try to work towards getting into a private rental, where you at least have more choice about where you end up!

"He's also had problems with the HA - for example, they were planning to turn the heating off to the entire block for weeks in winter to put a new system in (which only didn't happen due to admin delays)"

This does not surprise me in the least.

Mirai Its always been that way. Single women around here were told back in the 90s "oh youll eventually move in with a boyfriend" or "it would be different if you had a baby"

Single women stood zero chance back then. This is not new. My best friend kicked her partner out in 1992 because he was physically emotionally and financially abusive to her.

Because he was deemed as vulnerable he was housed within days.

volunteering is very different to working. I manage volunteers in my job, and a few of them are on ESA. They can cope with volunteering because they can pick the hours that suit them, if they don't fancy it, they don't come in and there's no stress, they can say "I don't want to do that" if I suggest a task they aren't interested in.
Winnie, that surprises me, but thanks for enlightening me. I've volunteered in a few different capacities, while working /not working / with and without children, and although I would agree with the ability to pick more suitable hours, I never would have signed up for something and then not turned up because I didn't fancy it that day. Or not done something I was asked just because I wasn't interested. I saw it as being helpful for the establishment I volunteered for and appreciated the need to be reliable. Maybe times have changed., but I still stand by my view that volunteering and treating it like a job, ie with responsibilities, would be good for OP.

Your friends' lives aren't necessarily as charmed as you believe them to be. There'll be moribund relationships and despised jobs amongst them, and some will be struggling with parenthood. Some will also have health issues, physical or mental. Don't compare. Live your life at the right pace for you.

Decades ago on the outskirts of Manchester we were at risk of being homeless and were given a two bed huge house for two of us within days.

Fast forward to more recently on a waiting list while living at my parents with two children after leaving ex. Spent 8 years on a list.
Gave up and am now in a one bed private let flat elsewhere.

So I would say unless you are somewhere random in the area you won't be priority. The council have heard the my Mum is chucking me out millions of times.

if you absolutely and genuinely had nowhere to live, such as if you were made homeless (not intentionally) then the option of accommodation for you would, if you were lucky, be a room in a hostel. To get a flat straight away would be a miracle!

FritzDonovan - well, some volunteers do treat it that way, absolutely, and I value this, but it isn't actually legal to make that compulsory. Under the law, fixed hours and responsibilities are one of the things that can make someone an employee and not a volunteer and thus entitled to minimum wage. A couple of charities have been taken to employment tribunal and lost cases along those lines and been found liable for backdated wages for their 'volunteers'.

You can mutually agree regular hours and responsibilities, but if there is any level of 'and you get in trouble if you don't do this' then you may be acting as an employer and have to pay minimum wage. In some places, obviously, there are only some volunteer tasks to do, and it would be reasonable to say 'well, if you don't fancy this, then maybe this isn't the right volunteering opportunity for you' but you can't instruct a volunteer to do anything. You can only ask. That's current employment law (according to the course I just did! A lawyer may tell me I'm wrong, of course) and good practice in the last few places I've worked at.

And of course it may be good for the OP to choose to go beyond that. I don't know. The point I was making, however, is that I think it's untrue in general to say 'if you can hold down a volunteer role, you can hold down a paid job' because the two are very different.

If you don't think you're in the right place to hold down a job, then be very careful about trying to live independently, it would be no easy ride, either mentally or financially. You say you want to be like your friends, who have partners, babies etc but getting a flat is not a magic key to all that. Make getting a job your dream, and then moving out next.

Op, I know exactly how you feel. I too wanted my own place to do up, somewhere I could call home so I worked hard saved my ass off, went back to school and bought a house.

When I was 19.

This option is available to you too I'm sure.

Put your name down on the housing list and apply. There mustn't be an housing crisis in bolton as I have just moved into a 3 bed house after bidding in properties for only a month with no priority. You may be lucky depending on which town you are in.

Fair enough Winnie, I didn't know about the volunteer vs employee criteria, or that there would be anyone low enough to force the case for a wage on that basis! I would see volunteering as being mutually beneficial, so wouldn't expect to be given set responsibilities equivalent to a paid job, although am happy to be asked to do anything. I see you point though.

@LaptopLoverrr
Why should you take money from people who go out to work and pay taxes when you don't feel like you should contribute to the same pot?

The op is ill. At the moment she is unable to work, it's not a case of not being arsed.

@FritzDonovan I work for a mental health charity, we've had volunteers with mental health problems, and some of them could not have held down a job. Volunteering can be flexible in a way that the vast majority of employers wouldn't even consider.