AIBU? Council repairs leaving my 86-year-old mum with nowhere suitable to live

[WhiteWinePls]

I am my mum’s full-time carer. She is 86 and has lived in her council home for all of her life. She has agoraphobia. That home has now fallen into such a dangerous state that it is uninhabitable while major repairs are carried out — likely for around 6 months.

The council’s “solution” has been to offer temporary accommodation that is completely unsuitable for her, given her needs. My mum, who has paid rent faithfully for decades, is being left with nowhere safe to go. At her age, with her health, this upheaval feels cruel and frightening. They’ve adopted a ‘like it or lump it’ position with no negotiation.

I have managed to find a flat that would keep her safe and stable until she can return home. I can also stay with her to provide the full-time care she needs. The problem is that the landlord is asking for 6 months' rent up front plus a deposit, and I do not have that kind of money as I am a full-time carer.

AIBU to ask if anyone has advice on where to turn — such as charities that could help or schemes like Discretionary Housing Payments — I would be so grateful. Also has anyone ever tried setting up a fundraiser in this situation, and do you think this would be appropriate here?

Grateful for any advice. Thank you.

In anycase op one person in a 3 bed council house is massive overoccupancy. Can't you ask for her to swap to a little 1 bed more suitable for her? She doesn't need a 3 bed house anyway.

How old are these 'youngish' children? Assuming you don't work given all this upheaval @WhiteWinePls? What's your main income?

This makes no sense at all...again. From an 'agoraphobia' point of view.

A 'hotel apartment'...fine.

A flat...fine.

Your house...not fine.

Somehow she will be cuckoo'd again if she was moved somewhere else, but only of in a flat and not elsewhere. Surely if she was in a flat you could 'camp out' there is the same way you do now? Why does she need a 'hotel apartment'?

Your replies just do not match up at all.

Op people are looking for information to help you push for the best available outcome for your mum.

It might not be the outcome you want because thats basically not feasible. If people can understand the barriers to different options they can help you push for an outcome better than the rat infested house or unsuitable temporary accomodation, even if its not your perfect solution.

What are the negative posts? The ones suggesting you're refusing sheltered housing for your mum because you won't be accommodated where you want in London?

it could be months or years before the refurbishments are done on the current housing. Your mother just needs to be moved, possibly permanently. The way you were posting, it sounded like the council wanted to put your elderly mother into a 6 story walk-up b&b.

If they gave offered her a flat, help her get set up and work with social services to arrange a care package so this home stays in decent repair and someone monitors her health.

You should not be in this role for many reasons. Talk to the hospital before her discharge and let them know you are stepping back and they need to put a package in place. You can still visit frequently, but you should not be her carer.

If they gave offered her a flat, help her get set up and work with social services to arrange a care package so this home stays in decent repair and someone monitors her health.

This - there's a route here where you can bolt on care that makes what the council can reasonably provide, a workable solution for your mum (ideally one that reduces the direct burden on you).

I don't think people realise just how vulnerable elderly people are to cuckooing. The chap who had the flat before my Dad, in so called extra care sheltered accomodation no less, fell victim to it and ended up dead. It's a big scandal going unaddressed and largely unreported, so what the OP describes isn't as far fetched as some are making out.

I've done some digging in my area, and it seems that some council run extra care sheltered accommodation developments seem to include flats for sale, which is not clearly advertised. There's a murky side to some of the housing provided for "vulnerable" over 55s.

If an elderly person is deemed to have capacity, it is incredibly difficult to get help and support. People with capacity have the right to make unwise decisions, and in my experience if relatives try to get involved, officials can be extremely difficult, and will often use the MHA as an excuse to pass someone with complex needs round and round between agencies like a hot potato. You rarely speak to the same person twice, and nine times out of ten they're on annual leave if you try.

Spent most of last year dealing with this sort of thing on my Dad's behalf, and between bureaucracy and my batshit SM they drove him to his grave quicker than was necessary with the constant stress of it all.

I’m not trying to be mean but the updates just add further mystery to this thread. It doesn’t add up.

You must know what needs to happen here.

Your mother is 86 and, you say, on suicide watch because of her dreadful housing which is no longer habitable. (There are many unanswered questions there)

You have your own young family living presumably in your home, elsewhere.

you either - bring her to live with you. Or - strongly advise her to move into a care home if the local authority will pay.

You cannot hope to maintain her tenancy but you must know that deep down.

there is a huge volume of advice on here for you to consider.

@WhiteWinePls what do you mean by 'suicide watch,'? Is she detained?

No, I don’t.

If she has been living in such awful conditions for years, then possibly there is a cumulative impact there.

Her daughter has been living in her own home with her young family. How close is that and for how long has her mother been bed bound and what sort of care has she been receiving ?

This also raises the question of why her family didn’t intervene earlier?

If it’s such a rat infested mouldy crumbling hellhole then anything she can be moved to must be safer than this so yabvu to say anything else is not safer if it’s not what she has allowed or you as carer allowed her current home to become which on your own description sounds less
safe than anything else on offer. Either pay it up or accept the councils help for a minimum time and don’t let her home get in that bad of disrepair again .

OP I'm not sure what negativity you're seeing. We're trying to understand so we can help.
Why can't you still stay with her in the flat if that's what you want? She's in the living room and you in the only barely habitable bedroom.
If the issue is that you don't want to, or can't continue to care for her then that is better dealt with somewhere clean and safe.
I'm struggling to get my head around why anyone would stay in that house a day longer than necessary. You'll make yourself poorly.

Hi, not sure why MNHQ deleted my post, but I don't think I am explaining myself well as most of the replies are irrelevant to the situation. I don't want to waste any more of your time. Thank you for your help, but I need to work this out myself. No matter how many times I post, someone always gets the wrong end of the stick. I need to work on how I communicate as people don't really understand what I am saying.

If you take anything from this thread, please talk to the hospital social workers while your mother is there. Let them help both of you.

Try shelter or age uk

Yes the hospital discharge planning social work team are the people to help you on this. They cannot provide housing but they can arrange care packages and speak to housing. If your mum had carers coming in multiple times a day this would put off any cuckooing people. Usually they are fairly easily put off and don’t bother to follow people out of area because sadly they prefer to move on to other vulnerable people.

Honestly OP, it’s not that you’re explaining it strangely, more that your posts contradict each other. You started off by saying you’d found a place for you all to live together but didn’t have the money for 6 months rent. But then you said you already had a house of your own but your mum couldn’t move in with you due to agoraphobia. But how was she going to move into the private rental if that was the case?

Anyway, this is not meant to be an unsupportive post - seems like the situation is complex and there are big chunks of information that are being excluded. Assuming the OP is genuine then I hope she’s able to get it sorted.

My guess is that this is about succession.

And there's no way on god's green earth that social services would insist that someone's got capacity when they're 86, living in squalor, have been starved, are so severely agoraphobic that they can't move in with family, and are currently in hospital on suicide watch.

You need help, OP.

Why does her agoraphobia mean she cant come to live with you?

But she could live in this other rental that the OP wants to crowdfund for? Where would the 'young family' (that there was no mention of earlier) be living then?

I do t understand this. And I don’t understand how she’d be less prone to being cuckooed just because her home is an aparthotel. Noe do I understand how she wouldn’t be agoraphobic there but would be if she lived with the op - so much so that she can’t move to be with the op.

i also don’t understand where the young family came from who haven’t seen their mum all summer.