Please accept my apologies for posting on AIBU but I need some quick responses and to reach a large range of people, and I know AIBU gets lots of views!
I really need some advice.
My dear DM in her 70s lives in social housing after losing our family home due to needing to flee from domestic abuse. It was very traumatic and has left her with significant mental and emotional instability.
She lives in a house in a nice area, and is lucky with the council house she was given.
However she's developed severe arthritis in all her joints and can no longer get up and down the stairs, so she has applied for a transfer to a bungalow.
She's been offered a bungalow on a council estate that has the worst reputation by far of the council estates in her city. It's a 1 bedroom tiny weeny bungalow up on a hill on a road that leads out of the estate. She viewed it, said it had a nice view at the back, because it's elevated on a hill, was in new condition, newly decorated, new kitchen, with a small manageable flat garden. Comparatively, the house she's currently living in has inaccessible bedrooms because she can't get up and down the stairs, so shes sleeping on her sofa, it has an old kitchen and the rooms are full of mould which has been on the waiting list to be sorted out for 5 years now, and her garden is steep uphill with lots of steps to get up to it which she struggles with due to her arthritis. But her current house is in a nice area.
So, she accepted the bungalow on Thursday based on needing a bungalow for practical reasons and told the council she wants to transfer there, and they accepted her acceptance.
I've been looking at crime stats for the postcode of this bungalow on 'Street checker' and I've never seen anything like it. 121 reported crimes in March, 71 of them violent assault. The rest are burglary, theft, etc. Ditto February. Ditto January. And ditto for every month over the past year. It's literally shocking statistics.
I also looked up ONS stats which shows the majority of the people living in her postcode are long term unemployed.
Comparatively, her current postcode has zero crime for the month of March, and very small numbers of crime prior to that, and the majority of the population in her current postcode are employed, as per the ONS site.
So I told her this, and she immediately called the council and told them she'd changed her mind and doesn't want to move there. They said OK.
Then she thought about it and decided she does want to move there despite the statistics I sent her, so called the council back and re-accepted it yesterday.
Someone from the housing department is visiting her on Wednesday for her to sign a document about the transfer. I presume this is to say she agrees to leave her current house?
This morning she contacted me to say she's changed her mind again and doesn't want to move there, having reflected on the area.
She is now severely panicking that the council won't allow her to change her mind again.
And as it's a Saturday we can't contact the council.
For context, my DM is not of stable mind. She has also just received a diagnosis of autism 2 weeks ago by 2 Psychiatrists, and this in itself has completely unsettled her frame of mind.
So my question is, is it true that the housing department at the council won't allow her to change her mind back again?
She is saying they've put it on their computer system to say she has agreed to leave her current house and she's saying they will force her out of her home on that basis, and is crying to me about her mistake in her decision.
Is this true, what she's saying? Can they force her out on a verbal phone call decision?
She hasn't signed anything yet.
She is mentally unstable, vulnerable, coping with various health problems, lives alone, has no friends and no-one to talk to about this, except for me of course.
Does anyone have any experience with this, who could advise me?
She's in a real state this morning and I'm worried about her.
Thank you to anyone who can answer.🙏