AIBU to think that this is just wrong?

[HiddingMyIdentity]

A girl I know, lets call her K, recently had a baby. K has just turned 18, and she was living with her sister and nephew. K and baby clearly had their own room judging by the 500+ photos she shares on shapchat daily.

K just shared a photo of her new house keys. Apparently for her and baby, government funded of course as K has never worked a day in her life.

Ireland are having a massive homeless crisis, hostels and hotels are full to the brim with families, and K a few weeks after her 18th birthday gets given a house??

I work 50 hours a week, and had to move county to afford to rent a house. Yet this one pops out a kid at 17 and gets handed a house, that I and all the outer tax payers of Ireland are paying for, as her 18th birthday present from the State!

There are families out there in much worse living conditions than K, who have been on housing lists for years, why should she get a house ahead of them??

Is it just me who thinks that this is wrong?

Sorry I needed a bit of a rant!

Just to add there is no social housing available in Ireland, it is a 10 year waiting list.
There are familys all over Ireland in hotels. 4 local hotels are now homeless hubs, the situation is shit. Familys sleep in Garda stations, family's queue at the council daily for a bed that night they get a list of hotels and spend the day phoning, so I can see why OP is wondering how a girl with one baby and accommodation skipped the lists.
What part of the country is she is, purely for nosey reasons.

Notsurprisedatall It is Ireland. None of the above apply.

The Irish taxpayers funding a system that supports single mothers and their babies to have a decent home. Given the not too distant past history of the treatment of single pregnant girls and women in Ireland, I’d say this is hooray that Ireland is supporting people humanly.

OP, I’m with you and the posters attacking you and accusing you of begrudgery are quite probably overburdening social housing with their own poor life choices.

NDN are social housing tenants; the maximum rent they pay is €345/ mth on a home that rents for €1650/mth They own a campervan and two cars (151 and 172 regs), and abroad twice a year including back to Nigeria. They work part time as apparently working full time would interfere with their church commitments (no, not priests / vicars) and family life. My DHs cousin who owns a pizza company knows them by name as he delivers there twice a week. Meanwhile we work full time, our yearly tax is more than their rent and we share one car. I’m not opposed to hand up, but too often it’s muggins working their arses off while those who can’t be bothered live their best life off others hard work

Oh fuck off OP, don't be so bloody bitter!
Anyone that thinks that is the problem in this country is an utter tit!

No, OP, you are wrong
Horribly wrong

Those of you "working your arses off", do you have your own home? On a mortgage meaning you will eventually own it?

If you've been fortunate enough to have employment through your adult life, the skills to get it, the ability to keep it, the resilience to keep doing it, you are already winning at life. If you have a partner to share the load, or had parents who were willing or had the ability to support you, you are already winning at life.

You should be railing (and voting) against a system that allows families poor living conditions, whilst landlords profit, or fails to build enough decent housing, not begrudging this levelling of the playing field that this young person and her child are entitled to.

@Emeraldshamrock, the family that publicised sleeping in the police station had turned down homes, had multiple convictions for theft related offences and got caught shoplifting from Primark not long after.

@donelikeakipper no, giving away more social housing encourages more poor life choices - why work when you’ll get your housing from the taxpayer at a discount / free (because if it’s paid for from a benefit, it’s free since you didn’t earn the money). What would be better is limited tenancies reviewer every two years and limited to five years. Five years of a handup is ample time to get your act together

I am surprised there is any local authority with houses spare. Shame they don't help some of the homeless.

About 30 years ago a neighbours' daughter had a baby at 18. The lived in a 4 bed house and there was only her and her parents so plenty of room. In order to get a council house her parents told they council they were going to throw her out. She got a 3 bed house! They were so chuffed they told everyone.

At the time I knew a couple in their early 30's who were homeless because of a combination of ill health and job loss. The council put them in a bed and breakfast and told them they would never be entitled to anything else because they had no children.

The B&B was really grotty with a really small room and shared bathroom. After a year the woman killed herself.

So yes I do think giving a house to a girl who has somewhere to live just because she has a baby is wrong but that is this joke of a country for you

I live in Ireland, nowhere near Dublin or any city and there's loads of council houses empty in our local town because the estates are extremely rough and even desperate people would rather not take them.
I know a couple of teen mums who have been housed in the least rough estate before their baby was born. They grew up in the estate so are happy to continue to live there. Good luck to them, I hope having a home md their own makes life easier and one day they'll be able to move on to somewhere better.
My own home still has a mortgage left, we could do with spending 20k making it nice but that'll happen one day and in the mean time we live in a lovely area, we've lots of equity and in a decade we'll own outright. I wouldn't swap places with anyone living in a council home, nor would I begrudge it to them or turn my nose up at one if that was my best option.

I was a singles mother at 18, I relied on social housing before that I was crushed into my parents little house for 2 years. I'm no longer a single mother, dp and I own our home. I can tell you j wpuld never want to go back to that life, it was hard enough without arseholes like you.
Funny, no blame seems to ever fall on the fuckwit male that played a 50%part in creating the child and then disappears for good!

Oh. We haven't had one of these threads for a while have we?

Honestly - would so many people really want to return to the days of the workhouse? Because logically that's the conclusion of constantly kicking down.

Argue for better access to decent social care for all, rather than being bitter when the few receive it. There's a small baby in this story who has a secure little home now.

@ihatemyselffordoingthis it’s not fortunate, it’s called working for it. I have a life limiting illness and left school with no qualifications. So I pushed myself to achievement. Her failure to achieve is her failure, not the taxpayers responsibility.

Why do people always talk about entitlements and what someone’s eligible for, yet don’t bother to focus on responsibilities? As her responsibility to earn a living and feed and house herself

No wonder you're hiding your identify, what a goady thread.

The irony of a forum called mumsnet where so many of us mums are looked down on if we dare to have kids before we're earning £££££££

And stop pitting us against each other. It's not the fault of young/single mothers that some of you aren't entitled to social housing. There isn't enough social housing because it was sold off and not enough properties have been built since. It's the fault of greedy landlords and governments that get away with this shit because you're too busy blaming someone that needs help the way you do. They're having a laugh, but they're also laughing at you, because as long as you're blaming your situation on those of us who have been single parents and relied on council/housing association, you're not blaming those where the fault actually lies!

To those who complain about people on social welfare, why not give up your jobs and join them if the lifestyle is so great?

I know people on social welfare and I wouldn't swap my life - 2 parents, 2 fulltime jobs with all the usual costs like mortgage, childcare, cars, along with paying the higher rate of tax - with them.

I'd say single mothers and their getting of state run housing is the last thing the UK should change to improve other people's situations.

Let's see... The Torys? All the upper classes and their perks of which they have many? The Royal family? Do we really need them? All the royals and their tag a longs living in luxury whilst all you idiots on here squabble about a single mother getting a house? That's what they want.

@donelikeakipper no, giving away more social housing encourages more poor life choices - why work when you’ll get your housing from the taxpayer at a discount / free (because if it’s paid for from a benefit, it’s free since you didn’t earn the money).

Poor life choices? What ‘choices’ would those be? To be a single parent? To have less opportunities even if you did want to chase them? To have to balance out whether to work 3 jobs and never see your child just to scrape by, or live day to day on wealfare because you had the tenacity to get pregnant before society deemed it appropriate? Who else makes poor life choices, the disabled? Those who lose their jobs later in life and become completely unemployable? Who exactly is choosing to live on benefits these days? Do you have the single tiniest idea of how shit it can be? Or do you live in some deluded world where you’ve seen a couple of people show off their benefit riches in a shitrag newspaper and decided that’s how it must be?

What would be better is limited tenancies reviewer every two years and limited to five years. Five years of a handup is ample time to get your act together

Again you seem to have the assumption that people choose to live this way. In five years time I highly doubt society will have changed it’s fairness in employing single parent women, the disabled or the older generation of the ‘working class’. What do you propose a young woman with a five year old child do when their ‘time is up’ under your draconian idealism?

Half agree, half don't OP.

I wouldn't want to be a single mother at 18/19/20 but understand it happens.

I do however think we are lucky in our country to have access to FREE contraceptives. If you want to have sex young, fine. But be mature enough to either get yourself on a FREE contraceptive option at your GP or get some free condoms from your local sexual health clinic/doctors.

Children having children is never a great idea. I feel bad for her, it's probably lonely in a house all in her own and babies aren't easy creatures! But I don't think it should be handed out so easily. If the sister was opposed to having her there due to money issues (if that was a factor) then maybe the government helping with the sisters bills would be a better option to allow the 18 year old to stay there as opposed to giving away yet another limited housing space.

It's hard getting on the renting/buying ladder these days and i know when I'm fresh out of uni it'll be a while before I can afford my own home.

@notthequeen

The young woman in the OP is not much more than a child herself and hasn't had the chance yet to "push herself", perhaps - like so many posters on this thread - with a secure appropriate home she'll be more able to do just that herself. In the meantime, her wellbeing and more importantly that of her child categorically is the taxpayers responsibility.

Did no one help you ever in your youth? If not you are imo fortunate that you had the drive, resilience and ability despite those obstacles you faced, to make a go of your life.

I'm guessing all those people on here complaining about a mother being given a home (such extravagance!) would prefer to go back to the days where they were cast out on the streets, baby and all.

Housing is a fundamental human right, outlined in the UN Convention on Human Rights. The fact that, sadly, it is so rare these days for people to get social housing doesn't make it outrageous that they do - it makes it outrageous that others don't.

I have a life limiting illness and left school with no qualifications. So I pushed myself to achievement.

So what? That’s your life and the way it went. Did you not have any help in your life to get where you are? Always on threads like these you get people like yourself talking about how they were the lowest/poorest/most pathetic in life and if they could make achievements then why can’t other random people? Life doesn’t work like that.

Oh look, OP. Perhaps you'd prefer 'K' to have been forced to live in a tent and lose her baby, like this poor young woman www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/woman-loses-baby-after-universal-13838030.

That'd teach her to want to 'pop out a kid'.

Halfwit the ops talking about Ireland not sure what the torys or the royal family have to do with the state of social housing in Ireland?

Those spouting poor life choices, hope you dont:
Drink alcohol
Smoke
Eat unhealthily
Exercise too little
Have a stressful job

Just because I wouldn't want the money I pay in tax to help the nhs support your poor life choices.