Refusing permanent council housing

[UFK]

I am staying in a temporary accommodation for 2 years given by the council and have just been offered a permanent flat by council on the 2nd floor.

I am a single mother of 3 daughters, all under the age of 7 and i do not have any family in UK. My ex partner is not giving me consent to take my girls abroad to visit my family, especially my elderly parents. My girls have never met my parents. I had made a court application to be allowed to take them for a visit without his consent but it was dismissed by the judge.

Now my elderly parents, both in their 70s and 80s have applied and received a 5 year visa to visit me and my girls in UK as we cannot visit them.

Both of them are incapable of walking up a flight of stairs and have to stay with me during their visits because of their advanced age and inability to speak English.

They will not be able visit me if I live on a 2nd floor. My girls and me will be isolated with no family in uk, no means to travel to them and for them not able to visit us either. I have on these grounds refused the 2nd floor property and requested for one with a lift or a ground floor one.

I have been warned that this is not a valid reason to refuse and the council could discharge me of the housing duty and I may get evicted.

What is the best way to deal with this if the council does indeed discharge me and I am evicted??

There are a lot of those people on the wait list too
The only ones I know who have gotten houses quickly are parents with SN children, and/or disability themselves. Loads of threads on here from people like that as well .
But then again I'm not a housing expert.

As I understand it being actually immediately homeless (as in no bed tonight, can't remember the legal description) plus DV will get you emergency level priority in most LA areas. So they've met her temporary need with a flat and she's stayed very high priority on the list. That much makes sense to me.

If you escape DV to a private let or your mum's house, it's probably not such a high priority banding that you're given.

Ah that makes sense.
I suppose the OP has no family as well. So she really has nowhere else to go.

Yes... lucky her, having to flee domestic violence 🙄

Eh?
I was defending the OP. A lot of people are haranguing her because they know how shit social housing is.
But it's been smoother sailing for the OP. So I can't blame her for thinking that there'd be a bit of leeway.

Also @CellophaneFlower the fact that OP's 'temporary housing' is suitable is also another factor, if allowed she'd quite happily carry on there while something 'mofe suitable' comes up. If you were in a BnB you'd obviously be more eager to get out and take what you can get

Yeah, that was my point also. Sorry, I misunderstood your comment.

No worries ☺️

Not just visitors. Her support network. Some people literally do have nothing and can't buy their way out of situations.

OP the thing you need to realise about home swapping is people will always have a reason for wanting to swap and that reason isn't always a good one.

If you have been allocated a good property, think twice about swapping.

Reasons people might want to move includes - having awful neighbors who terrorises them, struggling to find any job in that location, a property with a damp problem making it a health hazard to live in it, no good schools in the area, a property with an awful housing association (many are good, but not all) as the landlord who don't want to carry out any repairs, wanting to move to a nicer safer part of town.

You also won't be able to swap to a property that's bigger than the council says you need. It's possible you could swap your 2nd floor two bedroom flat for a 2 bedroom house with a small garden or for a 2 bedroom ground floor flat or one in a block with a lift.

This might mean moving area though and there's a lot more work in London than outside it, depending on where you go. You can home swap with anyone else in social housing in the UK I think, I don't think you have to stay in the same country but I could be wrong about that. Possible loss of work opportunities (depending on where you moved to) has to be weighed against the higher cost of living in London, but there's also more facilities and free stuff to do in London and excellent public transport. In many places public transport is useless and a car becomes more of an essential. Plus it's very multicultural and therefore foreigner-friendly in London, which other areas might not be.

So you need to think about the bigger picture of what a place has to offer your family and also what the downsides might be, not be fixated solely on getting a different property.

Thank you for your message. I am not currently focused on home swapping. I am hoping that I like where I am moving to in Southall.

The place they have offered me in Southall is much smaller than than where I m living now in Slough. In my temporary accommodation I m on the ground floor with a garden in a much bigger flat.

I would just want to know about home swapping should it ever become an option. I would be happy to home swap to a ground floor house/flat in London after a year but would people swap their ground floor flat/house for a 2nd floor apartment? Is it something I would struggle to find?

Thank you to a few those who are finally seeing my point, as few as you are, Thank you.

I am living in a much bigger flat in Slough on the ground floor with a garden and I was given this ground floor flat in Slough because I requested it and rejected the flats that were being offered on higher floors on the grounds that my kids were really young 3 years ago.

So while living in a refuge, without having any disability I rejected properties on the higher floors and got one on the ground floor. I wasnt considered intentionally homeless or were my children taken by social services.

Now about this 2nd floor flat, I discussed it my housing officer, who is not a part of locata team that makes decisions about housing, who advised that I have a valid reason and can provide all the proof, I.e court documents, parents medical reports, their visas to the locata team and check if they will accept

It's only after talking to the locata team, the ones who allocate homes and makes decisions, who also understood my reasons btw, but warned me that I could still be discharged. She said "could" not "would".

After reading the messages here, I have gone back and I accepted the offer but I can't help but thinking that maybe I would have gotten a ground floor flat this time as well like last time had I persisted.

I would try not to think "what if I persisted?"

You might have eventually got a ground floor flat but there was also a risk that you would be discharged.

You've got a safe place to live with a secure tenancy now.

Yeah seems a bit of lying may be involved...

Glad to hear you've accepted the accommodation Op. Does the council know that 2 extra people will be living in the flat? Will you have to inform them? Is 5 people living in a 2 bed flat classed as overcrowding?

Also if your parents aren't well off how will they afford to live in the UK? Will you be paying everything for them?

As the talk of my town has become my parents visa and how will they fit in a flat, how they afford to travel, afford to stay here, lets answer that.

Its a 5 years tourist visa, they will be visiting and staying for 2-3 weeks 4 times in a year. They will not be living here.

Being an airlines employee before retirement, my father only has to pay 10 percent of the ticket price for both tickets. So ticket will barely cost anything.

They will still be receiving pension and can pay for themselves even when they are in UK, so they can afford to pay for themselves.

Council is aware that they will be staying with me, children have their own bedroom, parents can have my bedroom which has double bed, I can always crash on a sofa. I have done the same with other guests visiting from abroad and this arrangement has worked out really well. Infact, my kids love having guests around as I am only adult in their life and they are longing to meet my family.

Read my latest post love

if your parents can barely afford the plane tickets how are the funding themselves when they get here?

It's not only that it'd be hard to find. Because disabled tenants would be priority for ground floor and your parents aren't the tenant, you are and you're not disabled.

It's the reason why someone wants to swap. You possibly won't find this reason out until after you've moved and by then it's too late. Because some people lie so you'll swap with them. Or eg if they're noisy alcoholic and so are their neighbours too, they'll say the neighbour is great, because to them that kind of person is great. But you might find living next to a noisy alcoholic to be hell.

People with good property and nice neighborus don't give up their property without very good reason, because of these risks. So for you, your reason would be wanting your family to stay over for extended periods of time and ideally needing ground floor to do this. But what's the other person's reason? Maybe it's something like they have a smaller flat than you so they're happy to swap because they get a bigger flat out of the deal. Maybe it's because your 2nd floor flat is also on the top floor and they prefer living on the top floor (no noise from above). Maybe they want to move areas so would swap their house for a flat just because they get to be in London.

So there's good reasons for swapping but there's also plenty of bad reasons like I put in my last post eg bad neighbors they want to escape from, mouldy property affecting their health etc. If you swap property it's always a risk you'll end up worse off. I'm not saying don't do it, just be aware of the risks involved and consider carefully if it's a risk worth taking.

I can see how if you're happy in Slough, uprooting to move areas to a smaller flat that doesn't suit you as well because it's not ground floor, is an annoying thing. But life goes the way it goes. Hopefully you'll be happy in the new place. You won't always have young children and when you return to work at least you'll have lots of opportunities. A friend of mine lived in Slough and rode to work in London every day on a motorbike even in winter. At least you won't end up doing that. Wishing you luck with it all.

More of a misunderstanding I think. OP moved from a homeless shelter into a flat. She thought it was a permanent tenancy and has only just found out the flat is temporary accommodation. She thought her parents could easily stay with her. Maybe that's not legal if you're renting, to overcrowd your home for an extended period, but if that's the case it sounds as though OP didn't know this. That's not the same as someone blatantly lying to obtain a visa.

So while living in a refuge, without having any disability I rejected properties on the higher floors and got one on the ground floor. I wasnt considered intentionally homeless or were my children taken by social services.

I can see why, having had this experience, you thought there were more options. What you need to realise is last time you were very very lucky. Usually when people are offered temporary housing it's a "take it or leave it" situation, regardless of whether it's suitable or not. If you don't take it you're often classed as intentionally homeless and then the council won't help you.

After reading the messages here, I have gone back and I accepted the offer but I can't help but thinking that maybe I would have gotten a ground floor flat this time as well like last time had I persisted.

That would have been one hell of a risk to take, turning the flat down. If they did consider you voluntarily homeless, you'd have been on the streets and your children either in care or living with their dad. It's honestly not a risk worth taking if you have no backup plan eg friends/family you could stay with until you got a private rental. Unless you've got money, social housing is so much better than private rental anyway because however awful it is at least it's a secure tenancy and you won't be homeless again.

The rental situation has changed a lot, even in the few years since you got your last flat. Just read some of the threads on here about people with a partner and they've both got jobs and they're offering to pay a year's rent in advance and they still can't find anywhere to live that's even vaguely near their work place. As someone living on benefits (presumably, if you've 3 children under 7), with no upfront rent, no guarantor, no job, not enough income to pay the rent (or maybe to pay it, but not to pass the income checks of having double the rent available or whatever the criteria is now), you would have had zero chance of being given a private rental.

Thank you so much for your advice. I can see what your saying.

I just hope that I love where I move to. It's just the lose of my parents not being able to visit and my girls not getting to know them.

I will explore my options on house swapping, find more about it out as I have a year before I am eligible. Alot of things change in a year.

Pension

Maybe your parents can visit less often, so saving money on the tickets and affording a hotel for a week instead? I don't know what the tickets cost and hotels in London are expensive but it would surely be better to see them once a year for a week than not to see them at all. If they can travel on public transport they could get a cheaper hotel on the outskirts of London and travel in to see you (or you travel out to see them). From outskirts of Zone 6 into central London is only around a half hour train journey (plus the time for the walk/bus/taxi to the train station). Maybe Air BnB would be cheaper than a hotel too. Booking.com is a good website for hotels, I've found. Also LastMinute.com for discount rooms is where hotels advertise rooms for "right now" and "very soon" which are empty so they'll give you a cheaper than usual price.

There's lots of parks and free museums etc in London so their trip needn't cost much at all, food would be the biggest expenses. It would be cheaper if you brought sandwiches for everyone that you'd made at home for your day trips, they could buy cereal and milk to eat in the hotel room for breakfast and you could lend them a bowl and spoon, then it's just an evening meal in a restaurant or takeaway they need to pay for. A weekly travel card each, which is paid for, would let them go all round London on buses/trains/tubes for free.

When you've got the address of your new flat and the rental charges, go on Rightmove website and look up the cost of private rentals in that street or nearby. You'll realise the flat you've been allocated isn't a joker-prize, it's gold dust. I hope it's a good property, but if you decide you hate the flat/London life then at least being in London there will be someone who'd love to move there who will be willing to swap with you. It would be a major plus-point for lots of people looking to swap.

What exactly do they have to fund that's so expensive?
They are here to bond with their grandkids, not have a tourist jolly. Presumably OP isn't charging them utilities and/or rent. Cooking at home is pretty cheap.

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