Housing ideas for elderly aunt on housing benefit

[Nightmanagerfan]

My DH's aunt is in her 70s and came to the UK before Brexit on a European passport, having lived her entire life in another continent. She has settled status and various relatives here. When she arrived she spent a couple of years living with a relative, but that broke down and she presented as homeless to the council (South London). She was given two temporary places, and this week on being told she needed to move again she was offered a place she didn't like as it had some shared facilities. The council have now told her to look for private accomodation, which i understand will be covered by housing benefit.

her budget is £1000 a month, which is tricky. we have looked at retirement flats but the waiting lists are long. she has hardly any money, no UK pension.

Does anyone have any ideas of what might worj for her? Thank you

Shocked that she can get £1000 housing benefit when she hasn't lived here most of her life or worked here !

Me too to be honest!

We have rentable housing association flats here specifically for people over 55. I suspect the problem maybe housing availability in London ?

@ShinyAppleDreamingOfTheSea yes there are similar here but they all have long waiting lists, which is understandable. I am sure there are no magic answers but I wanted to see if we've missed anything obvious.
The private rentals around that price are few and far between.

Anchor Housing

Thank you! That is one of the options the council suggested and she's now on the list, but there are about 100 people on the list for each location, so it seems like a pipe dream.

Does she need to stay in London ?

Would you prefer a person granted settled status had to live on the streets?

Don't forget UK citizens settled in Europe get equivalent support - we could instead pay for those ex-pats in Europe but there are far more of them!

This obsession with denying anyone any money is stupid. You just end up with high street homelessness.

This person, at 70, is in an extremely vulnerable position. £1000 per month is not enough for housing in London.

Well the obvious solution was for her to have accepted the place she was offered. I very much doubt she'll find anywhere privately to rent for under £1k.

I don’t think she can afford to live in London on a budget of 1k a month. The solution is to live outside London since she doesn’t work there.

If I moved to France as a vulnerable 70 year old I wouldn’t expect to be able to afford to live in Paris 🤷🏼‍♀️

The OP moved here pre-Brexit, they weren't 70 then.

What are the housing benefit equivalents for France? Paris is much cheaper than London.

I don't actually know what the housing benefit situatiin is in France, but I wouldn't assume it is worse following UK benefit attacks over many years, plus the extreme housing issues and costs in London.

There are an interesting number of obscure benefit threads just recently.

Coincidentally the government has launched another attack on benefits this week.

I think one is allowed to have slight incredulity at a system which allows retired people with no income to move to the UK when they are clearly going to be needing welfare support.

It’s not so much an obsession with denying “anyone any money” as a recognition that there is not an endless supply of working population able to support such a system.

Well they are in their 70s now so may have been around 70 when they moved to the U.K.
I don’t know what the benefit equivalent is in France I just know that I wouldn’t expect to get enough financial assistance from the French government to comfortably live in their expensive capital city.

You do understand that we used to be in the European Union?

Why are you incredulous that people did what we were all entitled to do?

How do you think Spain ended up with so many British pensioners??

Not just Anchor but any similar organisations. My Dad lived in a studio flat with Housing 21, very affordable. They also had one-bed flats. He was in a rush to move but luckily had a choice of two flats in South Yorkshire.

Most civilised democratic nations pay housing support to eligible people.

France has lower housing costs and stronger tenants' rights. It would therefore be easier to live in Paris than London.

One reason is the UK government allows empty properties to be owned by overseas purchasers who never intend to live in them.

This anti-benefits obsession is an easy distraction for some.

I’m not aware of the statistics as to the number of retired British people who moved to Spain with no British pension or ability to buy a property once there and thus made themselves vulnerable to a Spanish welfare system - are you?

Yes there has been a spate of them.

Possibly people trying to stir up trouble rather than actually trying to help an elderly aunt or friend but we’ll never know, they equally could be genuine.

I’ve given my advice to consider cheaper areas than London on the assumption the post is genuine. Probably not worth engaging any more in this thread as it has already moved into a wider debate.

There's loads of people being supported by other European States in all sorts of ways. The UK government were extremely worried if we had a no-deal Brexit they'd all return at once and need state support! They don't all own properties, or the properties are extremely low value.

Op, your relative needs to ensure she is on the waiting list for sheltered housing/ housing for over 55yrs.

she may have to wait for a few months, but likely no more than 6 months.

if she is in housing need, she needs to accept the offer she has been given until she is offered sheltered.

otherwise she try’s the private rented market. And the council will have 1 less to house.

social housing is on its knees , there are no easy options, but she will get a sheltered/over 55 flat if she waits it out/ extends her options.

Two options:

She moves in with you.

Or

All the family members who live here club together and agree to all contribute towards a non terrible rental, with HB making up the difference.

I dislike most of my family, but if any of them were 70 and in her circumstances, I would still contribute towards putting a decent roof over their head.

It's what all my uncles and aunts had to do for my nan in her later years post 70 years old (8 of them). Half of them didn't particularly like her either. It's just what family do for members in need.

Thanks all - this has created quite the debate.

I'm not here to get into the morality of the situation!

I did make a mistake in the original post - she has pre-settled status, not settled status, which I think means she's not technically eligible for housing benefit, but she has been told otherwise. I read the guidance and it looks like there are some exceptions, but she doesn't meet the criteria for any of them.

Private rental is the best option from what I can tell - the retirement housing is all massively oversubscribed.

To the poster who said she should live with us or we should chip in to help her - we have no room; it's not our responsibility and we have absolutely no spare funds to help, so those options are not realistic.

I also feel that she needs to take some personal responsibility for coming here without the necessary funds or plan in place for accommodation. I also agree that not everyone who wants to live in London should be able to - it's one of the most expensive cities in the world. However, this is what she says she wants and even though it's not that simple, I'm not responsible for changing her mind. Thanks all.

There are some very unpleasant people on this thread.

Have a look at www.housingcare.org i managed to find a place for a family member when they were made homeless.

Good luck

There are almshouses as well as housing associations that have properties specifically for the elderly. I'd look at them and also contact CAB, Shelter and Age Concern.