Council want to house us opposite paedos!!

[Ilovepugs2017]

I’ll try and cut a long story short.
We are at risk of homelessness due to our landlord wanting to sell. Our section 21 ran out in July.
we have been bidding on properties every week with no luck.
The council bid on a property on our behalf in our local area (for personal reasons I didn’t bid on this particular property - issues with threats of assault from someone living on the same street as the one advertised).
anyway we were no.2 in the queue and couldn’t withdraw the bid which gave me huge anxiety. I’d even emailed the housing officer to say I didn’t bid for personal reasons.
2 weeks later which is today they have called and offered us the property. They have said if we refuse to take it they will help us no further!!
my partner has been to speak to a couple of the neighbours and they have said to be warned that a couple of convicted paedos live opposite the back entrance!

we have three young children how is this acceptable?
Im going to refuse the house and appeal!
anxiety is through the roof!! :(
anyone been through similar?

I wish I could afford three children while not working and my partner to go part time.

I truly hope you're still paying rent to your landlord while you're essentially squatting on his/her property.

Do you live on a different planet to the rest of us? You genuinely, honestly can't think of any reasons why there may be an increase in anxiety in the general population? Are you unable to access any form of news? You should contact your Internet provider about that.

It’s the medicalising of normal life, used as an excuse in many cases.

No-one seems to be able to just be anxious, or a bit down, or to feel sad about things that happened in the past when instead they can self-diagnose anxiety, depression or PTSD.

It can’t be good for people’s prospects to look at life through a lens like this.

You do have options.

*Move in with your parents as you have already said that they will take you
*Decide to take the risk of turning the house down and dealing with a bed and breakfast situation
*Take the house and stay in it
*Take the house and see if, at a later date, you can swap.
*Take the house and improve your financial situation so that you afford yourself more choice and can eventually move to somewhere you like better

You cannot support a family of five on one part time wage and expect to have a lovely three bedroom semi, with room for a trampoline, in a great area.

So, if you want that, you have to improve your finances.

I think people would have more sympathy if you had said that you were both working all the hours and were still in a shit situation. That does happen to people and there is nothing more that they can do,

You, on the other hand, have plenty of room to manoeuvre and can up the hours. Stop this college course now and look for work. Bring in two full time wages. Life will be better than it is on one part time wage.

If you don't want to do this, then accept your situation.

Good luck.

Where has the OP said anything about not paying her rent? The council insist on you receiving a section 21 notice before they'll consider helping re-house you. How on earth is she squatting? The OP's partner worked full time until recently and unless their kids are all babies then her circumstances have obviously changed.

I don't actually believe this is a genuine thread but your post is unnecessarily nasty.

You are in a stressful situation.

Many points have been raised

1. Potential to rent privately: this would be a difficult option. There is little point in others speculating whether a guarantor is normally required. It almost certainly would be in your case as your family relies on just one part time wage, so you are unlikely to meet even the most relaxed income requirements.

2. Your Local Authority is accepting its responsibility towards housing you as per the legislation. They should help when you are within a certain time of being made homeless. You are more fortunate than many who live in pressurised areas where the LA takes a more draconian approach, and sometimes this means families have to incur the stress and expense of court eviction, and then end up in totally unsuitable hostel accommodation, with no control over who they need to share common parts with.

3. Having accepted their responsibility towards you the LA has made you an offer. It is a house, which to many people reading this is like the Holy Grail. To an extent it doesn’t matter what the accommodation is, as long as it can be deemed ‘suitable’ for your family. If the LA is satisfied that the accommodation is suitable, and you ( and whatever help you can get from CAB, Shelter, etc) cannot convince them that it is unsuitable, you run the risk that they will decide that they have discharged their liability towards you, and make no further offers.

4. The only hope you have, which seems secondary in your posts, is the threats of violence from your sister’s ex. Bearing in mind that LA’s will not always accept threats from a close neighbour as a reason to move, you need to consider the actual extent of the threat he poses. I can understand your anxiety, but you need to consider whether there is actually a tangible risk, because that is all the LA will be able to consider.

5. No one wants to live near a Paedophile, although many of us probably do so without knowing. The property offered is a family home. If the LA accepts that no family can be expected to live in it due to its locality to sex offenders then effectively it would have to leave that house, and all of the nearby properties empty. Realistically it cannot do that.

Also, this is an Internet forum where people mainly post problems. Not very many are just popping in to tell us what a totally normal one they're having. Again, I think you need to widen your consumption of media.

Definetly a topic worthy of its own thread, and I say this as someone who can't even drink a normal cup of tea without it escalating my anxiety to uncomfortable levels (particularly premenstrually). I wonder if it is more to do with a general shift across society to decreasing self responsibility and ability in managing ones own symptoms rather than more people actually 'suffering' from what is one of our fundamental human (and animal) emotions.

@kirinm She's been evicted and should have left when the S21 expired. I hope she's still paying rent while remaining there illegally.

She hasn't been evicted has she? Do you know what the advice council's give, is? It certainly isn't don't pay your rent.

I agree with PPs who talk about a shift in society from an understanding that feeling anxious is a normal part of being human - life is stressful as an adult - and "having anxiety", pathologising (sp?) regular human experience.

I don’t think the OP and family can move in with her parents -as they rent themselves. They would likely to be in breach of their tenancy.

There's a convicted paedophile who lives very near me. Most people don't even know. Chances are anyone who lives in a built up area has one near them. At least you know.

This interests me too. It seems to have become accepted that anyone suffering from anxiety (who doesn't?) has an actual debilitating illness which means they cant work or take personal responsibility for themselves. What is the diagnostic criteria? There must be degrees of it. I feel anxious every day and have given myself IBS because of years of it, but I would never use it as a reason to not work. People think we are being harsh but it's hard to hear about when you suffer from it yourself but just crack on - but perhaps I am missing a whole other level of severe anxiety so am prepared to be corrected if so.

Exactly, and then using it as an excuse. Reminds me of people who claim to be "Non binary" apparently believing that it's something special and unusual not to relate to all the stereotypical traits allotted to their sex. Everyone has "anxiety" or if they don't, they're leading a charmed life.

This thread is depressing because so many people are missing the point...

But what’s the alternative?

Refuse this home and get removed from the housing list.

Be housed in some shitty temporary accommodation potentially hundreds of miles away from their workplaces, schools or support systems.

It is not an ideal situation and I would speak to the council but a refusal is usually classed as a refusal regardless of circumstances and she needs to decide what’s more important - having a permanent council home (which she can move from) or uprooting their entire lives and potentially having a much worse lifestyle.

Isn't there some connection between 'spending too much time on screens' and 'depression, anxiety, etc'? I don't know anybody IRL who goes on about anxiety.

MN never used to be like this, it's a fairly recent thing.

@Ilovepugs2017 well done for being so restrained in your response to some very unpleasant posts. If you can still bear to visit this thread, I've come on to wish you good luck.

You've probably picked out all the useful advice. So take the house, move in and find the good people in the neighbourhood. There are many more good people in the world than bad.

If you can and have the time and energy, please do something regularly that gets you out without the children, and brings you into contact with other adults. Could you volunteer at your local library? In a charity shop? You're in S Wales: cd you join a community choir?

Finally, as a way to gain perspective, though you may hate doing it: try a thought experiment. Imagine you'd arrived here as an immigrant or refugee: what would you have to do to make a success of your life, as so many do, and what would you be grateful for?

I'm sure you are just as capable! I hope all goes well for you and your family.

As someone who had to abandon buying a property because the previous tenants refused to leave and the landlord could not het them out, I am kind of on the fence here... You had lots of notice to leave, the owner has a right to sell property.

I symphatise with this but I dont get the entitlement to stay. I do hope you manage to sort things out and get a good property, I would also ask around other neighbours about thr situation just in case as well.

Was he taken the Court purely for the threats made against you or was it in addition to something else.

Was a PIN issued against him relating directly to you and your family?

Over the past few years threatening behaviour/words/alarm/distress etc have been dealt with via Public Notice Disorder tickets, not through Court in order to cut down on Court time

The only reason I ask is that unless he was in Court relating to matters directly to you the Council may not see that as justification to refuse the property (as in you just got caught up in it).

I understand its a shit situation, but these are the questions you may be asked.

Hope it all works out OK ❤

I’ve reported the thread, not because the OP isn’t genuine, that’s not for me to say, but because of certain posters and their aggressive and condescending posting style. Regular offenders, too.

If you’re a landlord, you’re scum, and if you’re a council tenant, you’re also scum apparently.

The reputation this place has is deserved.

''Of course you can't move in the same street as someone who has threatened you in the past and who you fear will assault you again or make your life a misery in other ways.''

''@Novum But equally a council can't run its housing policy on the basis that this is a clincher.''

My initial comment still stands.

The Council has a duty of care to the people it houses and it would be very silly for a local authority to house a tenant who has warned them in advance that want to avoid a specific area due to previous threats.

Common sense tells you that if a tenant would later be assaulted after having clearly shared their concerns in writing the Council would be guilty of negligence at best and putting someone's life in danger at worst if anything were to happen.

Councils re-house victims of domestic violence or sexual assault for example and there are safeguarding processes in place to make sure they don't find them a housed in the same street or anywhere near their abuser...

There were stories in the news of people who successfully sued housing association as well for sticking tenants next to someone who had racist views and who harassed them because of their ethnicity. The HA also failed to move them to a safer location even when they were made aware of the threats and had to pay damages.

Or if you were escaping a family that was trying to force you into an arranged marriage the Council would again need to make sure you were sent somewhere safe where you would not come across any relatives.

Seriously is that too hard to grasp? The concept of safeguarding and duty of care?

As for the previous poster who also did not grasp my point about the point not needing to be about whether there is a peadophile or not in the area. Let me try again: the OP does not need to make her objection to the Council allocation on this new basis. She can simply remind them that she explicitly stated in the past that she could not be re-homed in a particular area due to safety concerns about the behaviour of a specific individual who is known to her. That is all she needs to do. No need to make this about a new issue...

As for the people who are using this thread to criticise the OP for needing social housing or for not working, maybe one day you will find yourself in a tough situation too and you will realise the last thing you need is a gaggle of self-righteous people trying to kick you when you are down...

A former police cheif inspector did tell me that there is a sex offender in most streets in most towns so maybe we should all be more aware when we let children out to play so we can have five minutes at least you "know" who yours are to keep your kids away and safe

Thank you for a thoughtful response. Thermo has done the reactive 'you need to read more' base response. I don't, actually, I read very widely. We all know about Covid/cost of living/ poverty etc: it's obvious why people worry more, I'm referring to the actual labelling of oneself as having 'anxiety' as medical term. Is it endemic because of societal shifts in understanding/ diagnosis, or due to more informed individuals?

It was not meant to be goady, and noone else took it as so.

Very few people will deliberately stay on in a property when they have other options, squandering the chance of getting a good reference from their landlord.

If someone can’t find anywhere else they can afford to move to (and this happens a lot - demand for private rentals is high, housing benefit is insufficient to cover average rents), they have no choice but to seek homelessness assistance from the council and they CANNOT move out until the council has found alternative accommodation for them or until the bailiffs arrive. They are doing what the system requires them to do.

I know of people who have been in your situation and it sucks but it’s just one of many reasons that property purchases fall through and has to be considered as a risk when buying a previously rented home.