What does a 62 year old man on just above minimum wage do when served with section 21 eviction notice and cannot afford anything on the current rental market?

[Mxflamingnoravera]

I have a friend aged 62 who has been living in a pretty awful but liveable one bed flat for six years. He works full time in a call centre on little more than minimum wage. The flat was recently assessed by the local authority as part of a new local licensing scheme for private rental properties in our city. It needs a lot of work done on it and today he was served with a section 21 order because (he was told) the builders say it's too much work to have him stay there whilst the place is brought up to standard.

He has looked around an there is nothing under £900 a month in our city. He cannot afford this. He has no car and cycles everywhere. So he needs to live fairly close to his workplace.

He is devastated, he cannot live in a shared house at his age. He is a very private, shy man, has few friends and no family.

I'm at a loss to know how to help him. He cannot live with me, i have no space and do not want a lodger.

There is literally nothing affordable in our city. He is looking at homelessness in January. What happens to people like him?

@IAmNeon thanks for this advice, I'll pass it on. He's in a bad way today. Very low, uncontrollable shaking, can't stop crying. He's stuck in fight/flight mode and seems to only be able to function if I call daily with a to do list.

He won't use has Army time to approach military charities or tick the ex services Box because he only served 4 months. He's embarrassed that he didn't complete in basic training.

FFS, talk about self-sabotage. SSAFA will help if you've received one day's pay. I grant that Army Benevolent Fund etc have a minimum service duration requirement, but SSAFA will still help.

@Mxflamingnoravera Im really sorry to hear this Try to convince him to contact SSAFA

Gosh I feel for him so much. The prospect of losing his home and not seeing a clear and easy path to finding another must be really stressful.

Do you think he might be open to contacting military charities and housing options if he prefaced it with something along the lines of 'i was only briefly in the Army and don't want to prevent anyone who has a longer, more active service from accessing your services because you are focussing on me but I do want to explore all options re finding a new home'

Just to get as many irons in the fire as possible.

I may have missed how it works but does he contact housing associations like Anchor, Housing21 etc himself or is it all done through the council / a social worker?

When my parents moved into a Housing21 place they contacted and met the manager of the development they wanted to live in and the manager assessed them for suitability.

If there literally aren't enough multi-bed flats, then yes, it may mean that someone without kids has to share, because in that case, the one-bed flats will presumably be allocated preferentially to someone with a child. A parent can sleep in a living room on a sofa bed etc. while a child has the bedroom, or may be able to share with a young child. I know more than one person who does this.

The housing shortage is shit and needs fixing, but in the meantime, hard decisions have to be made. If it's a choice between a parent with a child having to use shared accommodation, or a single childless person having to use shared accommodation, obviously it's the latter who will need to do it.

As for "parents on here"...you do realize this is Mumsnet, right?
Clue's in the name.

@Kokeshi123 There is an MNers without children board. The clue is in the name.

all because they havent got living proof that they have had sex without contraception.

And i think this needs saying again

AND im willing to bet that if the call centre he works in was open over Christmas AND it was his turn to have Christmas off and if some of the parents on here (telling him to expect less) were his colleugues they would be haranguing him to swap. Id lay money on it!!

And we have parents on here arguing to kingdom come when a single person gets allocated a two/three bedroom place. "thats meant for a family" is the usual lament.

Well a one bedroom flat is meant for a single person You cant have it both ways.

How has this become a parents vs single people debate? I don’t think over 55s housing tends to allow children anyway, so whether he has children or not doesn’t seem particularly relevant as that seems to be the most likely type of housing for this gentleman to get.

I’m glad things seem to be progressing, OP. Hopefully he’ll get something sorted soon.

Well... no. The rule is, when housing is limited, bigger housing gets allocated for larger groups of people. 2 or 3 bed housing should get allocated in preference to families when it's available. If only 1 beds are available, that would also be allocated to families in preference to flat-sharing. A single person can share a flat if they have to; a family with kids really can't.

Christmas? How the hell did we get onto that? Jennifer, if you want to start (another!) debate on "Why parents are evil and childless people are put-upon," I suggest you go and hold it over on the Childfree Mumsnetter forum. This thread is not really about this.

The doorways of London are full of men who've reproduced.

This is heartbreaking for him and for you to witness. There are so many shallow people on here making generic points about entitlement but I can't see how it's too much to ask for a working man with the need for privacy and dignity to have somewhere to live.

It makes no sense at all for him not to apply to sources of help connected to his military service.

If he fulfils the criteria, the case workers involved will not care how long his service lasted.

He should at least be in touch with SSAFA.

I would advise you to ring SSAFA yourself.

It's important that you don't get trapped in the middle of this; it's not fair for him to refuse to contact potential sources of help. If a caseworker from SSAFA could take on an element of what you are doing, that would be the right way to go. Give them a call today.

https://www.ssafa.org.uk/bristol-south-gloucestershire

He has now contacted SSAFA and has some pointers from them, I told him that I was starting to run out of steam and if he could get a housing adviser to work with it would take the pressure off me. That seemed to do the trick.

No thing new to add today apart from the usual thanks to the usual folk! 🙏

That’s great OP, well done

getting information to older people in private rented is a challenge and more should be done to communicate housing options to them.

sheltered/ over 55’s/ independent living for older people is all social housing for single/couples with no dependent children. It can be easy to access sometimes, mostly through councils, but some independent as well.

he just needs to keep looking, and talking to others and a housing officer checking up with him and helping him navigate his situation is a great idea and let’s you return to being a friend 👍

I'm struggling now, I'm his only friend, literally his only friend and he's spiralling down. There's nothing I can do apart from what I've been doing, he's not the easiest of men to spend much time with, he's very much glass half half empty and this has broken the glass. I want to help but I'm drained by his neediness now.
I know I need to withdraw a bit for my own sanity but it would feel like I'm kicking him when he's down.
Gah! Life is shit for too many people right now.

@Mxflamingnoravera you've done everything you could and have got him a great deal of help.

It's ok to withdraw for a while - a few days, a week, whatever feels right. Explain it to him and just take a breather.

@Mxflamingnoravera you’ve done so much! I can’t remember if Age UK was one of the help organisations suggested. Might be worth a call?

https://www.ageuk.org.uk/bristol/our-services/information-and-advice/

I know I've done loads. I don't know where he would be had I not spurred him into action. But now he expects daily calls to check in on him and they are hard work and can be quite exasperating because he always looks for the problems, never the solutions. Very Eyoreish.

But I'm not looking for sympathy. I have a life and I'm getting on with it.

Then you need to tell him that you can't check in every day, but you're happy to call again on Monday (or whatever). If only to help him to hopefully learn to cope a little better on his own for short periods of time. A partial withdrawal for short periods of time is kinder than getting to breaking point with it and having to step away completely.

(Of course you don't need to tell him anything at all, but YNWIM. Just concerned you'll burn yourself out and trying to advise that it's okay to safeguard your own wellbeing too )

Thanks @AllTangledUpInTitlesAndTiaras that's a good idea. Much appreciated.