How to get a council house

Watching this now .
What a depressing programme !
i don't know what to think .
Poor people who lose control of their finances can't pay the rent.
They always seem to be single women with children who have low paid jobs as cleaners .
Most get housing benefits already but don't pay their rent.
Others like the Barbadian woman would be happy with a ticket back to Barbados to her family
I really don't know why they didn't buy her one it would be better in the long run than paying for a bed and breakfast for temporary housing for weeks .( it said at the end her family DID pay for her and her son to go back to Barbados)
Single men have no more chance than fly of getting a house as they are way down on the needs list .
There needs to be a innovative solution to this problem .
Horrible B&Bs charge astounding rents for ghastly rooms .
Single women get huge amounts in housing benefits where are the fathers of these children ( there are 100,000 children in B&Bs)don't they help their offspring ?
All seem to blame the council for everything .
The people are wretched and in dreadful situations but what can the council do it can't conjure up houses out of thin air .
Most are inadequates -come from dysfunctional homes themselves
They can't really live with out support .
They are like children who want all their problems to be solved by someone else .
Difficult to see how they will ever be able to live independently
It's desparate .

I have never seen this programme before but it would seem that their is not a single council officier in Hounslow council who is white British .Most of the applicants are not either .
Is this yet another result of multicultural Britain ?

Re: How to get a council house

My thought was the "Talking Heads" behind the plastic screen seemed a bit lacking in compassion, strange how a job hardens you, unless of course, you were hard to start with.

Re: How to get a council house

It is very depressing how many fit and able people seem to rely on the state for everything and assume it is their right to do so.
Some don't seem to have the initiative to sort anything out for themselves. The flat with the mouldy walls, I would have scrubbed every inch of the walls with bleach and kept the rooms ventilated.

Interestingly when it came to the crunch most of tonight's participants were able to make their own arrangments, why didn't they do that in the first place.

Why do so many people cling to London, living elsewhere is so much cheaper.

Re: How to get a council house

Spitty I think many people doing that job for a long period of time would eventually suffer from compassion fatigue.
Some officers do seem to have an unnecessary almost sarcastic turn of phrase though which doesn't help the difficult situations.

Re: How to get a council house

Yes, compassion fatigue, never seen an NVQ to cover that.

Re: How to get a council house

The couple in the mouldy flat - two 19 years olds with a baby seemed like two five year olds.
The unemployed father had been brought up in care himself in several different homes.

Re: How to get a council house

The advice the lady gave to this couple was to open the windows, she may have not been to far off, the location of the flat, and the area did not seem too bad. Location, location, location applies on many levels.

Re: How to get a council house

Oh dear I am watching this programme again .
It's following three cases
A Romanian man who brings his wife and five children and expects someone to home them all.
One can see the desperation on his face and no doubt he has a hard life in Romania ( in that case why have five children ) but why is it Hounslow councils fault?
They did however eventually get given a home .
Another lady is sick and comes from Bermuda for a more comfortable life .
Eventually her mother pays her fare back to Bermuda .
Another couple ( Ugandan and Polish) are being evicted wih their children for rent arrears.
They are put up in a. B&B
Apparently Houndslow has the greatest number of homeless and the lowest stock of council houses .
However how can their ever be enough if people come in from everywhere ?

Re: How to get a council house

The astounding thing is he came over here in September and couldn't get a proper job and somewhere to live so what does he do, he goes home to Romania and comes back with his wife and 5 children. Madness .

Re: How to get a council house

I am gob smacked by it all.
How is he going to support them all on job seekers allowance ?
They have found the family a four bedroomed council house in Birmingham .
Costing £750 pm .
While he looks for work housing benefit will cover the rent .
So any European jobless person plus children can come to the uk and be given a house and benefits ?

At the end of the programme a council official said more and more applications are coming form people coming in from overseas .

As Meg says this is madness .
And whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad.