So after a few suggestions here we are.. I will try to bring it up-to -date with our last few years that bought us to this point in time.. please bear with me.. so this is our story so far...
April 2000 - hubby becomes a residential school caretaker with Birmingham city council
Dec 2000 - we move into the attached house.
We have a few head teachers.. no problems, a few more kids, I work here and there, a few pets, a few bows.. life is good!
July 2014 - hubby has a dodgy knee, hospital say it's bakers kneee
Over the next year or so legs get worse, as does mental health due to chronic pain.. drugs are tried and dismissed, in the end arthritis and a knee replacement is on the table..
Jan 2015, new head, hubby works for an hour before being diagnosed with mental health issues and is signed off sick..
Over the next year, we have social services turn up (the plumber? Reported to school we have no stairs, doors and animal excrement everywhere, all accusations are proved to be untrue, but it's horrible when someone is going through your cupboards to see if you feed your children, we were also warned that under section 50 (I think it was) hubby could lose his job if accusations can be upheld! The social worker did his checks and left us with lovely comments on how nice our children are and that we were doing a good job with them!
Lots of other things happened but I'm not going into those here, but it was obvious we wouldn't be staying, so I put us on the housing register oct 2015. I also contacted my local councillors at this early point to say we would be needing help to find a new home.
Jan 2016. The council accept homeless duty towards us and we start bidding..
We try and keep school as informed as we can through every step..
Over the next year we bid on approx 58 properties, with no luck, the council say we need 6 (then 7) bedrooms due to our childrens ages, we say we need 4 as we are already living in 3 bedrooms.. it's fine! We include all three of our councillors and our mp in our plight and they write letters but we have no luck with a new home. The head of the council suggest our two older children find their own homes, so we wouldn't need as many bedrooms (the ones we didn't want anyway) so the councils suggestion is to make two children homeless to re-home the rest.
One of the toughest conversations you can have is with your children regarding what to do if we end up on the streets, where they can borrow a sofa or floor for the night.. these are kids that work, have never been in trouble and look after each other! And we are disgusting if we are split up what we can do to stay safe. I pray that we never have these discussions again and that no-one else ever need to.
March 2017. We are taken to court for possession of the house, (not something we have ever denied, we just need somewhere to live). The judge give us 14 days to leave.
April 2017. We have signed out cats and dog over to charities as we can't take them and farmed small pets out to friends to look after.. the most upsetting thing is handing over our 14 year old cat.. knowing she may be to old and cranky to be re-homed but it has to be done.
We with the help of family and friends manage to store some things, the school provide a skip for us and we have to leave everything big like beds, sofa, tables, bedding... we don't know how we will replace these but can't worry about it for now.
We have told the council we need emergency housing and have been told to wait till after 11.. when someone will call us to tell us where we can go..
No comments:
Post a Comment