Tag: hidden homeless

Stand & Deliver: Modern Highway Robbery! Your Money or No Home!

Stand & Deliver: Modern Highway Robbery! Your Money or No Home!

Last week, I looked at a ‘Beautifully presented, newly refurbished, modernised home’. It lived up to the blurb in a way not many things ever do. It was indeed beautiful. It was well presented, and newly refurbished. Its brand new kitchen and bathroom, oak laminate, and white-painted smooth unmarked walls set pictures of Home Beautiful and Good Housekeeping magazine floating peacefully through my head, as cellos played and gauzy white nets fluttered in a gentle breeze. I could see modern sleek furniture in the ‘spacious’ living room. The front room, with its closed off fireplace, was already my new study. In my private little dream, I saw the beds placed just so, in each of the three double (mould-free) bedrooms. It was, in short, a dream home. And the rent, at £875 a month, was average and just within budget.

The agency fees, however, were not. As anyone in the private rental sector knows, as a tenant, you are expected to hand over a deposit (normally one month’s rent, plus another hundred. In this case, the deposit would be £975). You are also expected to pay a month’s rent in advance, which is all fine and dandy. All letting agents have ‘admin fees’. Normally, these will range between £125 – £175 per tenant. So, for myself and my husband, this would generally work out around £300, and include an inventory, tenancy agreement, and a handover of keys.

I used to work in a letting agency. The tenancy agreement is a word.doc; a bog standard bit of wording with a ‘fill in the blanks’ for address and names. Takes 5 minutes. I could run one up on this computer, right now, and it would be as legally binding as any given to me by an agent, so long as it was signed. But, of course, the agents need their income, so they charge. Kudos to them, but it’s extortion, right?

However, the agent I met with last week, to view the whitewashed paradise of this terraced house? They wanted a little bit more than the costs stated above. Take a deep breath, and hug your wallets close. Ready?

  • Rent                    £875.00
  • Security               £975.00
  • T/agreement       £300.00
  • References         £225.00
  • Admin                 £150.00
  • Check-in             £120.00
  • Guarantor chk    £100.00
  • Pet Clause         £75.00

A grand total of £2,820.00, to save you adding it up. £970.00 in fees alone. But it gets better. They required a ‘Good Faith’ payment of £500.00 to hold the property while they did credit checks. Checks I informed them I would not pass. My credit is shot to all buggery, and I have more chance of accidentally discovering a way to teleport humanity through black holes, defeat the Borg, and live without religion, than I have of passing anything like a credit check. This is why I have a guarantor.

The £500.00 is non-refundable, if the credit check is failed. So they get five-hundred quid, and I get to still be imminently homeless. That’s nice, isn’t it? (They said, when I kicked up a bit of a stink over this, that they would of course refund me, because I had been so open and honest with them. I asked for that in writing…the fact I do not have that house to move into gives you their answer.)

Now, you would at this point be forgiven for thinking this was one of those backstreet agents, like the abortionists and money-lenders of old. You know they’re there, but good people don’t have no truck with them. But it wasn’t. It’s a massive High Street chain, with offices all over the South of England. The smaller backstreet guys are generally more honest, in the case of lettings. They have more to lose, if people complain. Their reputation is all they really have, so they make themselves good enough that people want to do business with them.

Shelter, the homeless charity, have also noted the unfairness of these fees. They have a petition to sign, if you want to click this link and head on over to their page.

Disheartened, unable to pay nearly £1000.00 in agents fees, I walked out of the beautiful house that may have been a home, and went back to pounding the streets. My home is out there, I have no doubt, but I can’t justify paying all the money I have in the world, donated by people who are kind enough to help me, to a Highwayman of the Modern Era. The difference between these agents and Dick Turpin is, simply, they are breaking no law. Everything else, though? There’s not much between them. You have to ‘Stand and Deliver’, or you will be on the streets. There is no choice, but to pay, if you want a roof over your head and a life worth living.

So, it’s back to scouring the web, the papers, and the streets for me, and I’ll continue to believe there is something better around the corner.

Kathleen Kerridge is a Fantasy Fiction Writer. Her books can be found on Amazon here. Or here, if you are not in the UK.

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There is now a Go Fund Me page, a friend set up, to help me cover the cost of moving. I am, as always, overwhelmed by the generosity of people.

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Homeless Doesn’t Mean Cardboard Boxes.

Homeless Doesn’t Mean Cardboard Boxes.

I don’t have a lot of material goods.  I don’t own my home.  I’m not rich by even the wildest stretch of the imagination.  Yet I do have something in my life, which right now, is a lifeline to a friend of mine.  I have a two-seater, second hand, 15 year old sofa.  It’s the only seating in my house, except for wooden kitchen chairs.  We used to have a leather three piece suite…clawed and scratched up by a previous tenant’s cats, but serviceable.  It belonged to our old landlord, though.  When he sold the house from under us and evicted us with only four weeks notice, he refused to let us take the suite.  He wanted £200 for it.  It had cost £30 second hand.  So, we had only the kitsch old sofa I’d bought years ago.  It’s small, beaten, weathered and ugly as sin, according to my husband.  I bought it (and a three-seater which unfortunately died) as more of a joke than anything else.  It was in a charity shop window and it was so hideous I felt sorry for it.

Now, that old battered and beaten sofa is my friend’s new home.  I wrote before, about a friend made homeless due to bereavement.  That same friend has once again found himself with nowhere to turn.  Much as poverty is hidden, so is much of this country’s homeless.  My friend, who shall remain nameless, has numerous personal issues.  One of which is another ‘hidden’ and ‘shameful’ blight — depression.  He needs help, which is proving difficult to get.  Suicidal Ideation is present and, when he told his doctor he wanted to die, he was told he had to want to help himself before he could expect help to be given and to go back in two weeks.  Isn’t that lovely?  A homeless man, out of work, no close family, nowhere to turn, suicidal…told to go away and come back in two weeks.

My sofa isn’t the comfiest thing in the world.  It sags and can cripple anyone with a back injury.  But it is under a roof that can keep off the rain and it comes with love and an ear attached to it.  It also comes with a meal a day.  I will need to juggle and get creative, but that one extra mouth needs feeding, so fed it shall be.  Until we can jump through all the hoops of ESA/JSA, and get him some kind of benefits.  Until we can get council help in finding him a place where he shall not need to be able to produce a deposit, as well as one month’s rent and £150 in agency fees.  To be able to be housed, this man — homeless, without money, without savings and without, right now, hope — will need to find about £700.  To some, that sum will seem insignificant.  To those in his situation, it may as well be a million.

His is a world where, when benefits come to him, he shall be living on a pittance.  One so small, that when he gets a bedsit, charged at an extortionate rent, after he has paid utilities and bills, he shall be left with pennies to survive on.  They are pennies he is grateful for.  A small amount, but one he appreciates.  His health and mental state make work an impossibility.  This is his life and will likely stay his life.  It’s not one he would choose, but it is his and it is worth keeping.  Worth fighting for.

This is where friends rally around.  Where we will sit with him as he wades through the minefield of legal gumpf and fills out enough forms to fill a wheelie-bin.  We will be at his side to help him find a small, cramped, cheap bedsit.  We will find him items to cook with, so he can eat.  Right now, he has a duvet and clothes from his life ‘before’ it was all lost.  We shall prop him up whilst he is too weak to stand, and we shall cheer when he takes those first steps into a new future.  We will be there for him for as long as we are needed.

So will my small, insignificant, beaten up, battered, hideous old sofa.  Because this is the world of the hidden homeless, and that sofa will mean he is not vulnerable.  On the street, left to the elements and discarded from society like a worthless old bit of junk no-one wants in their life.  That sofa, as ugly as it is and as uncomfortable as it might be, is his new home.  The sofa is more than an item of furniture.  It is a promise that it will be there, to hold him safe at night and keep him warm and dry.  It means there is a roof, not the sky, above his head.  It means he is not alone.

It means there is hope.

I am a Fantasy Fiction author (too much ‘real’ in my life as it is, thank you) and my books are available on Amazon.  I am Independently Published — my ‘team’ are my friends.  My début novel ” Into The Woods” can be found HERE (UK) and HERE (rest of world).  Links to my Author Page and other books can be found through these links.  The paperback for Book #1 of the Searching For Eden series can be found HERE.  Book #2 shall be available shortly.