Is my friend outrageously entitled in her expectations?

[MariadeiMiracoli]

I moved to my current town 18 years ago and got to know a woman renting a house on the cheap from a local who was off travelling. She was an interesting woman who'd given up her teaching job after a few years and gone travelling to SE Asia and South America, teaching English. Very laid back, getting by on benefits and subs from friends and family. Used to do a few hours at the local pub or shop for cash in hand and when she'd built up enough, buy an air ticket and take off to Hawaii or India for a month or two, picking up bar work or sleeping on the beach when she got there, always anticipating that someone would help her out.

About 12 years ago she met a man and moved in with him in Devon. It didn't work out and she ended up in a caravan and, when she turned 55, was housed in a flat in a 55+ development. But she's unhappy: there's noise, one of her neighbours drinks and plays music loud, another has serious MH issues. I visited her there a couple of years ago and thought it was actually rather nice: smart modern flat in a very desirable Devon town and no issues on the days I was there. I've said to her that even in the smartest private flats you can end up living next door to someone noisy but she says she's not prepared to put up with it.

She wants a bungalow with two bedrooms, so she can have a yoga/ meditation/ craft room. She wants a south-facing garden she can tend. It's got to be within walking distance of a decent town, but somewhere quiet and peaceful with a green outlook. And parking because she has a car. She's found a number of HAs (one here near me, where she used to live, one where she lives now and a third in the Bristol area) that have a tiny number of properties that fit her bill. All of them have been built for disabled people. She's been driving around inspecting them and knows precisely which ones she's after.

She's asked for my support to try and get one of her chosen properties in this area. I'm not sure what that will entail, but I suspect it'll involve spinning the truth to match the HA criteria. I've told her very clearly that I don't think there's any way she'll actually get one of these properties and she needs to compromise, but she says that if you don't ask firmly you don't get. Is this how it is now? I don't know what to make of it.

She sounds younger than her years and with a poor insight into reality, to be honest.

Just nod and smile and don’t get involved

Thanks for all the responses. I used to watch her living this free and easy lifestyle while I was paying the mortgage and working FT and envy her and wonder what it was about her that gave her the courage to live freely like that. I guess I wanted to learn from her. I didn't envy the times when she came back from Hawaii or wherever and had to live in her car or sofa-surf with friends, but somehow something always came up for her. She has done a lot of volunteering in the last decade and is supportive to others. When I broke my leg she came to visit for a few days and mowed my lawn and cut my hedges and scrubbed all my hard floors, which I couldn't do.

To whoever said I don't like her: I think it's come home to me, with a thump, how ruthless and self-focussed she is. She's always been this gentle-hippy-chick type: easy going, peace and love to the world. But when it comes to a two-bed bungalow, she's prepared to elbow someone disabled out of the way if she can. It's opened my eyes to how essentially different our values are.

Very laid back, getting by on benefits and subs from friends and family

Run far, far away. Once you take a step back, she will move onto the next person.

she's prepared to elbow someone disabled out of the way if she can.

She will have a lot of trouble trying to convince any LA, that her housing needs are based on disability, if she has no record of having any. They require proof!

Wow, people like this really make me wonder why I've worked my nuts off over the years. She's a proper CF.

This, I don't see what you'd actually be doing?

I also don't get OP's outrage at someone wanting to live in a particular type of property, don't we all want to be able to choose where we live?

First post nailed it.

she sounds unbearable, to be honest.

Her previous lifestyle sounds amazing.

But please don't assist her in gaming the system to someone else's disadvantage. Especially when she has contributed so little herself ( teaching period aside).

She's just one of life's takers who has never taken responsibility in her life.

Yes but not if we are using taxpayer funded resources that have been allocated for a vulnerable group. No decent person takes that route to getting the home they want.

No harm whatsoever in wanting what she wants. No harm in asking for it either. Very few people get what they want in life because they're the most deserving of it, many enjoy their lifestyles as result of a combination of luck, taking advantage of others and pushiness. The difference tends to be that they call it their career.
I very much doubt how ever firmly she asks or what she spins she will secure a bungalow designed for a disabled person unless she can prove she has a disability. The exception may be if (as in my town) the number of this type of property is higher than demand, so they may be more flexible and she may drop lucky. Its no harm to you either way and if you don't want to help her, just tell her no.

She won't get one if they are for the disabled - does she want you to lie and say she has a disability ? She would need much more in the way of proof, my son lives in purpose built accomodation for the disabled and it took years of negotiation with the Health and Social Care Partnership

I also feel the need to add that she only twice asked me for help before this time. Once she needed some money to pay a bill. I lent it to her and she paid me back within the month. And once she asked if I would allow her to stay for one night and have a bath and a hot meal while she was here. She'd been on one of her trips and had been living in her car. I volunteered the use of my washing machine. It's how we stayed friends. I didn't see her as a CF.

If it's actually Bristol she's looking at then she'll be lucky if she gets a 1bed flat in a tower block. The housing situation in the city is dire , evidenced by the number of van dwellers.

As I have always told my girls, the only way to really drop out of society and be a hippy is to be rich. Other than that, you end up like this person.
Honestly, if she suggested I "help", id start laughing and then when she says no, I mean it, she would be met with, "gosh no, i wont be doing that".

End of conversation. And most likely friendship.
Cant be doing with that carryon at all.

I think there is something about needing to prove a connection to the community, and that I could be helpful with that. I presume that when one of the properties she wants in this area comes up (possibly not for years) she'll asked me to... I don't know. Offer a reference? Make a statement? She still has plenty of contacts around here. She comes back several times a year to do house and dog-sitting for a couple of people she's known forever, so there are a number of people she could ask.

“I didn't see her as a CF.”
“She wants a bungalow with two bedrooms, so she can have a yoga/ meditation/ craft room. She wants a south-facing garden she can tend. It's got to be within walking distance of a decent town, but somewhere quiet and peaceful with a green outlook. And parking because she has a car.”

OP, she’s a CF. She wants what she wants, and at everyone else’s convenience, and doesn’t care who she elbows out of the way to get it. Entitlement doesn’t even begin to express what she’s got. If she wants to pick and choose like this, she needs to do so on her own dollar. Do not be complicit in stretching the truth so that she can have accommodation that’s designed for some poor person who NEEDS a second bedroom for a carer, or a partner if disability stops them from sleeping in the same bed. It would really put me off someone if they behaved like this - she is the cheekiest of CFs, and her attitude is outrageous.

@MariadeiMiracoli you didn't see her as a CF? But did you wonder how she paid bills?

She sounds perfectly nice, if possibly unhappy and restless, and the opposite of a freeloader, as you say she has worked for free and lived often homeless as a result. Her values sound excellent, as she has put supporting others and a sense of community before wealth.

There's nothing in your post or your updates to suggest any evidence she's trying to con the housing association. She sounds naive or unrealistic in her hopes, yes, because there are likely to be many disabled people on their waiting lists and if she hasn't a severe enough disability (she might have invisible disabilities or a fluctuating condition you don't know about) she's unlikely to get a place. No harm at all in asking if she fits their criteria, though.

I think there's a huge amount of identifying info in your posts and it's unfair on your friend if what you say in them is true.

I have an aquaintance a bit like that - she keeps saying all she wants is 'a wee cottage in Skye or Lewis to grow vegetables' and complaining about not being able to afford it but to me the whole point is the properties are hugely popular ( and expensive) because of their scenic locations - I mean who wouldn't want to give up real life and potter on a Hebridean beach ! but to her it's a sign of humble and simple aspirations that the cruel world won't enable

Same round here. Which is why I was stunned by her assumption that she had a hope of getting what she wanted, rather than what she needed.

Like most people I'd like a Cotswold manor house/ a flat in Kensington/ a villa in Antibes/ a place in the Hamptons/ a superyacht in the Med/ a private island / insert your fantasy of choice. Instead I settle for what I need.

Don't have anything to do with her application, she doesn't need 2 bedrooms; these 2 bedroom places should go to those who do need them. Also, she is a qualified teacher so she could work as a teacher or get a job in a supermarket etc.. She sounds like a very manipulative, lazy person.

🤔
I don't see how she stands a chance, especially if there is nowt on her medical records to substantiate owt.
When I applied for an adapted flat, I provided a letter from GP, Consultant's letter, one from my MH recovery worker (also an OT) and one from a SW.
All HAs differ, but they do need documentary evidence from apposite professionals.

Well, I don't really see a dilemma then. She asks you to confirm something that's true, you do it. She asks you to confirm something that isn't true, you don't. I don't see why all the context about her life to date is relevant.