Council housing priority - council advising to wait until Ballifs turn up

[Blueotter22]

Hi All,

Im posting here for traffic really to see if anyone else has experienced this or has been able to challenge it. I’m at a loss on how I can support my Mum with this.

My mum has advanced Alzheimer’s (early onset) and is cared for 24/7 by my SIL & Brother. My angel SIL quit her job (as a care home worker) to care for my Mam full time, she does everything for her (personal care, feeding, medication, appointments etc). My SIL & Brother have rented a house from SIL’s brother for a number of years, rent is reasonable and they’ve managed just about but now her brother is moving back home from overseas and would like his house back. SIL has her heart set on a council house because of their low income they will struggle with the private rent but also the area they live is typically flats to rent which wouldn’t be suitable for Mums mobility needs. They would also like the security that having a council house brings as they have a pet and want the stability of not having to move again.
Which is understandable, as they have no savings, wouldn’t really ever be in a position to buy and brother works a low paid job which is a struggle to provide for 3 adults.

Mum has been rejected for benefits due to a super complicated and I think unfair situation, she was basically living in America with her husband when she became unwell and was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. We (& she) wanted her to come back to the UK but husband insisted they were staying in America as he worked there, he wasn’t aware of how Alzheimer’s disease progresses and sadly she deteriorated quite quickly during Covid and he couldn’t travel to bring her home. He admitted he could no longer care for her and brought her back to the UK and basically promised he would sell up in America and come back to help care for her, but yeah..he didn’t. He’s stayed there and now my Mum hasn’t been able to access any financial support because technically she’s been out of the country. The rules are the rules so it’s just something we’ve had to accept. My SIL therefore hasn’t even had any carers allowance or support.

So the issue is, the council are refusing to acknowledge that my Mum exists basically because she doesn’t have benefits. Despite turning up to the house unannounced and witnessing how unwell she is. The housing officer has told my SIL that they won’t be considered a priority until she is taken to court and ballifs attend the property.

SIL brother has served them a section 21 and said they have until X date to leave, but obviously he doesn’t want to take them to court or get the ballifs. It will cost so much! I just think it’s absolutely crazy that this is the actual advice given? Pay court fees, pay ballifs just to prove you need housing?
Also, they said they’ll likely find them temporary accommodation first before they are able to bid. I just don’t see how this is reasonable for a woman who is highly distressed a lot of the time anyway, can’t manage stairs, needs constant supervision and I’m just so overwhelmed trying to understand how I can help them.

I can’t believe this is actually a thing? Part of me was thinking my SIL might have got the wrong end of the stick but she is adamant that is the advice from the housing officer?! 😳

I am going to write to their MP and I’ve googled so much about this but has anyone experienced a similar situation and is there some kind of legislation or something I can use to write to the council?

Thank you, yes I have some time off work soon so I’ll make some calls and see if I can get some legal advice or consultation with a specialist about the deputyship etc.

SIL & brother are very entitled, and at times I feel like we’re all a bit scared and bend over backwards to meet SILs requests. There was a big issue last year where she said they needed a 2 week holiday, which of course they should have respite as it’s a 24/7 job caring for Mam. The issue was she refused to allow husband to pay for a care home respite placement, she was insistent that myself and my sister had to come to her house to provide the care which was really tricky for us as I work full time and didn’t have enough AL and my sister had just started a new job without much flexibility. Then she insisted they wanted to go to Florida for 2 weeks, husband actually offered them a one week accommodation in Florida but she said it was pointless going just for one week. We all tried to say how about one week and then that’s manageable for our AL and then have another week later in the year. That wasn’t good enough so then it caused a big drama and she left the family chat and so we are always feeling like we’re walking on eggshells making sure she’s happy because she does such a great job at caring for our Mam. Then there was a situation where she had asked to use my credit card because she needed food and husband had already paid for other expenses so she couldn’t ask him, so I agreed to let her use my credit card…then the requests kept coming, wanting to buy Christmas presents for other people using my pay in 3 card. I felt like I couldn’t say no because I felt sorry for her, so when she asked to use it again I said no and then that caused a big fall out and I basically wasn’t welcome to see my Mam for about 3 months. So it’s a really sticky balance of trying to keep her happy and then the whole husband and their joint assets situation. It’s a mess, and I do sometimes think if she was in a nice care home maybe life would be easier and I could just go up and see her whenever I can. But you read these horror stories about care homes and neglect don’t you, and so I just become this middle person where she will offload to me, call me crying about their housing situation and I feel completely stuck.

The issue was she refused to allow husband to pay for a care home respite placement, she was insistent that myself and my sister had to come to her house to provide the care

OP that puts a bit of a different slant on things. Why exactly didn't she want your DM to go to a care home for respite? Was she worried that DM would do well there and you'd all want her to stay on, and SIL'd lose her income source/ source of leverage over you and your family? We she worried the care home would find deficiencies in the care your DM has had? Is she actually charging the husband more than you know about and if he paid a care home bill he'd see it was cheaper?

I'm not trying to scare you as clearly you've got more than enough on your plate but that's a red flag to me.

I agree.

The more you post about your SIL, the more red flags are waving.

Ask yourself. If she really was doing it entirely out of love for your mum, would she really have stopped you from coming round for 2 months?

@Namechangetry she has always refused to allow paid carers into the house or care home respite. She says it’s because she doesn’t trust that others would care for Mam like we do, due to her previous experience of working in a care home and witnessing care staff or agency workers not treating residents nice. We’ve tried to convince her and said yes but not all carers are like that, you weren’t like that?! But she just flat out refuses and then says it’s either we come and care for her or she won’t have a break. So we feel like we can’t say no. But then all of our AL is taken up by visiting, and so it feels really selfish to say actually I need some AL so I can have a break from work and take my son on holiday because then the comments come “oh must be nice to have a day off, never get a day off here”. She’ll also regularly post updates that we feel really guilty about like how my Mam has kept her awake all night, or how she can’t go out or spend time with her friends or family because she doesn’t have any help. Then there’s the visiting, always being asked when I’m next visiting and when I go up they’ve “not done a shop” so I’m stopping off and buying food and bringing things that my Mam needs. Which I don’t mind doing but it’s costing me £150 a visit or thereabouts. They seem to think I’ve got it easy as I have my own house and a decent job, but I’m a single parent and I don’t have the luxury of holidays or always getting what I want. Sorry I’m just whinging now but I don’t really have anyone to talk to about this dynamic who gets it.

@MargaretThursday she didn’t technically stop me, she didn’t say I couldn’t go. She just refused to talk to me and then my brother wasn’t talking to me either. So I felt too uncomfortable to go up, as I would have had to stay in their house as it’s 200 miles away. I probably should have just gone up and stayed in an Airbnb or something but at the time I was really struggling with it all and so I just avoided it.

It absolutely is not 10 years everywhere. The wait time will vary wildly depending on where you live.

The more you post about your SIL the more she sounds like a horrible person

You need legal advice on behalf of your mum to see if she can force the sale of the marital home and release her funds. How long has she been back in the UK? She needs to have been in the UK for 2 out of the last 3 years in order to apply for PIP.

chances of getting a council house are slim, I’d really be putting as much effort as possible into finding a private rental however with 3 adults and only one person working they will probably struggle with affordability. Could the brother who owns their house possibly live in rented accommodation just until your mum can qualify for disability benefits?

Age UK or CAB should be able to offer some advice.

Listen, you are making excuses for her, and that's totally understandable. But I think you do need to consider that her behaviour towards you is certainly at best guilt tripping and financially grasping.
In which case how's she behaving with your dm, and possibly with her husband too.

(I'm reminded of a friend who occasionally borrowed money. She always paid me back for some reason. When she moved away we discovered she had "borrowed" a lot of money from many mutual friends, all of whom thought they were the only one and were the only one she could lean on. She hadn't paid most of them back and owed between them many £1000s. But she had the same "oh I'm really struggling, can you just lend me..." attitude and would get upset if the person didn't have the money. I wonder when you think she's desperately asking you, she's also asked the husband and other relatives and got money from all of you)

How do you know that her care is excellent when she's not being watched, for example? Sil tells you?
Your dm may not be in a position where she can say - my gran could tell a wonderful tale of what she'd done yesterday sounded very plausible. Only thing was she hadn't done anything like what she said she'd done because the place had closed down 20 years previously etc.

This stood out:
She says it’s because she doesn’t trust that others would care for Mam like we do, due to her previous experience of working in a care home and witnessing care staff or agency workers not treating residents nice.
I'd be concerned that the actual reason is she knows that if someone who knows what they're talking about comes in, then they're going to be raising serious questions.

You need to speak to Citizens' Advice, and possibly Help the Aged or Adult Social care.

So SIL at best is using your DM as a means to control you - your a/l, your guilt, making access to DM hard, using you financially; or worse she is financially exploiting DM by getting more money from the husband than you know about; or worse still is caring for her in such a way that she doesn't want professional carers to see how your DM is and raise concerns.

I know you've said SIL cares for your DM brilliantly but you're an amateur, would professionals pick up on stuff we wouldn't? It's quite a thing to give up your job and provide 24/7 care for a non relative with a challenging illness. What's SIL getting out of this deal to balance out the clearly very tough job of caring for someone with dementia?

The benefits situation makes no sense. If she has been back in the UK for two years she can claim PIP ( if she is under pension age ) or Attendance Allowance if over. Depending on her age she could also claim Universal credit or Pension credit if she's state pension age. She just needs to show that she is habitually resident here which should not be a problem. I assume she is a british citizen? Once she has these benefits coming in which will likely be a substantial amount then SIL could claim carers allowance also and they would likely have enough to private rent.

You need urgent legal advice, and you'll probably need to engage a lawyer in the US state that the husband resides in. She will need to divorce him and get her assets. She sounds too far along in her illness to give anyone POA though so it's really all a bit of a mess, but the husband has behaved despicably.

I don’t think she’s a horrible person, I don’t think she has malicious intentions with the way she is. I think she is probably taking advantage of the situation to gain as much as she can from it. She struggles with her own MH at times and is neurodivergent so I think she becomes quite fixated on it being her way or no way. There’s aspects of the care that I don’t always agree with, I don’t think it’s abusive and I guess I’m not in a position to really understand what “good” care should look like. I’m in awe of how she can dye my Mams hair (my Mam was always very proud of having her hair a certain colour), she shaves her legs and plucks her beard hairs - all things that are really important to my Mams dignity and what she always said she wanted. I couldn’t do that, I struggle to change her pads on my own and get punched in the head and called a fat pig when I’m trying to dress her. So I do think she is good at caring for her.

I perhaps wish she would take her outside more as they stay in the house all day every day, I feel sorry that my Mam paces her bedroom for hours each day with not a lot of stimulation. But I darent say she should do more because she does all of the care on her own as my brother works night shifts.

I have tried to help them both with budgeting and being more careful with their finances but that gets shut down quickly. Maybe I’m a bit judgy when I’m at their house and see piles of Amazon delivery boxes being ordered, everything is top brands, ordering takeaways every day. They often leave piles of rubbish in the yard and because they don’t drive I come up and do a tip run for them, the amount of just STUFF that they are buying. Unnecessary stuff! But then telling me that they are behind with their water and electricity bills. Nobody can feel like we can challenge them on it, my sister says yeah well Blueotter if you were stuck in the house caring for Mam all day you would buy stuff to make you happy. So I can’t really say anything, I just have to do this fine balance of being supportive and keeping my mouth shut.

I have been told now (just today) that yes she has been awarded full PIP, carers allowance etc. So through my sums, with all of their benefits and other sources of income combined they should be getting about 4.5-5k a month shortly when it all goes through. So yes, they can afford to privately rent. But SIL doesn’t want to privately rent, she wants a council house she can stay in forever.

Refer Mum to Social Work, they will help her get housed in an appropriate property.

Also, reading between the lines, it kind of sounds like sister is trying to take advantage of Mum's predicament to bagsy herself a nice family size council house for life, that isn't going to happen, she will have to either house herself or accept the one bedroom flat.

OP it takes months between applying for PIP to being awarded. You're not being told the truth here one way or the other.

Also @Namechangetry before she cared for my Mam she worked long shifts at a care home where she had to travel on public transport 1.5hrs there and back. She hated it, she complained about feeling depressed and wishing she could quit her job. So when the opportunity came up and husband said he would pay her to stay at home and care for Mam she wanted to do that, it was her original idea. But to be fair husband said it would only be temporary for 6 months until he was able to return to UK and that they would all live together and care for her. Once he had left her he obviously changed his mind and is now living his American lifestyle in his big huge house and seeing new women, going to disneyworld every other week with his Disney friends, got a new job, living his life. So the situation wasn’t what anyone really expected.

We had originally applied for PIP a while back and was refused. So she must have reapplied and kept it quiet and recently told me when she said the council needed proof of benefits and she was awaiting an outcome.

And clearly your DM couldn't apply for PIP herself so SIL has got herself accepted by DWP as DMs appointee? Because that's what you have to do if the person can't phone up themselves (I had to do it for my DD once she turned 16, you have to apply to DWP to become the appointee and DWP have to officially agree you are the appointee). Therefore legally SIL is in charge of DMs benefits, and you are just finding this out now when clearly this must have been the case for a few months minimum?

I'm not saying SIL is some evil scheming person, but people who are doing a good selfless thing are also capable of doing selfish wrong things as well.

If she's now on PIP they must have accepted she is now entitled to benefits based on residency, so that's good.

I'd be concerned that her US assets (the house) and the large compensation payment she previously had, might prevent her getting anything means tested.

The whole situation is so much more difficult because her husband and assets are overseas. I'm not sure he would be accepted as a rental guarantor for that reason.

Yes I think husband signed something to say that SIL could make day to day decisions because she was having to call him up or ask him to do the admin side of things and he couldn’t or was unwilling due to the time difference etc.

Yes I’m becoming very aware from all the comments on this thread about how much I’m being kept in the dark. I just naively assumed everyone was acting in her best interests, there’s been no real reason not to trust anyone wouldn’t. But I highly suspect I’ve been used and I continue to be used as a previous poster described “a personal attack dog” where I’m kept in the dark and then when SIL is unhappy or wants “more” I’m there to rock the boat, raise issues that nobody will talk about and then husband calls SIL and everything calms down because she gets what she wants. I suppose that’s always been the role I play in this fucked up family, Blueotter will get to the bottom of it, she’ll stress herself to hell to advocate on behalf of her Mam, she’ll instigate the hard conversations brother & sister will avoid. It’s funny really, because my Mam always thought the same about me too.

I remember a big family holiday we all had a couple of years before Mam was diagnosed. Mam had paid for us all to go to disneyworld for 2 weeks and then 1 week in their home in America. All expenses paid: Husband, Mam, little sister, me, my son, sister, sisters partner, brother & SIL. It was supposed to be the family holiday of a life time, Mam had spent months planning it, matching T-shirts you catch the drift. Brother & SIL spent the full 3 weeks doing their own thing, not coming to dinner with us, going to the Disney parks on their own. Mam was so upset by it and kept complaining to me about them, telling me how rude and entitled they’ve acted and not made an effort to be together as a family acting like it was their own instagram holiday together. She wouldn’t stop bitching about them. Anyways after a few drinks on one of the last nights of the holiday I brought it up to brother and said look can you just make more of an effort because it’s upsetting Mam. He flies off the handle, storms back home. Next day Mam loses it with me saying why would I ruin the holiday by mentioning it, this is why I’m single, no man will put up with you having to just say stuff blablabla. And so it was my fault, I ruined the holiday by saying what everyone else was thinking. It’s just funny now, because Im not sure if my Mam had her capacity if she would tell me just to keep out of it and mind my own business and I’ve always got to give my opinion.

Hmm, it does feel a bit fishy that as soon as you get involved, SIL suddenly reveals all this new info about all the benefits they've been getting for months. That, along with the manipulation/control around when you can see your mum, who is and isn't allowed to see her, never taking her out of the house and so on... it feels quite alarming to be honest. This thread started with your SIL seeming like some angelic selfless soul and it's taken quite the dive into worrying territory where she has complete control over a vulnerable woman and is getting a chunky income for it and now has 'her heart set on' a house as well. And no one will rock the boat because they don't want to take on responsibility for your mum's care, even though it's sounding more like she'd be better off under professional supervision in a care home. I don't know where you go from here, a lot will depend on your bandwidth to deal with the legals here and in the US, but the eviction scenario seems sadly to be the tip of the iceberg.

Oh I recognise that position in a family OP. I'm sorry you're in the middle of all this.

Everyone else is getting something out of the status quo, aren't they? So they don't want you pointing out that it's all built on sand, and that that sand is shifting and will cave in come eviction time.

You can't force them to see, and it depends on what bandwidth you've got how much you do right now. If it were me I think I'd be looking in terms of getting legal advice re DMs finances - for your own info not necessarily to share at this point. You don't need anyone's permission to do that and it seems like you're the only person prioritising DMs security, rather then their own.

@Namechangetry I don’t have the bandwidth at all, I live alone without much emotional support myself and nobody to talk to that really knows the ins and outs of it all. I work 2 incredibly emotionally demanding jobs where I advocate hard every day for children in care. I co-parent with a useless twat (that’s another thread), I’ve nothing in the tank to give it feels. I can’t help anymore than I try to, but it keeps me awake at night the thought of them becoming intentionally homeless and putting my Mam through it all because they want a council house. I feel guilty that SIL is caring for my Mam, I feel like it should be me and my duty to do that. My Mam was my biggest emotional support, I would talk to her every day, she encouraged me and helped me as a single parent. My other siblings would never keep in touch with her, and yes we’re all experiencing the grief of watching her fade but I feel like I relied on her more than anyone and now she doesn’t even know who I am. It’s fucking shit.

This, and did you have it verbatim from the dh about not going into respite?
No chance they took the money meant for respite for their holiday?