I hope someone in Government or with authority reads this story because 
a hard working woman’s life could depend on it. Maybe many other lives too as our economic downturn results in homeowners facing crippling debt just to survive, to pay their everyday bills.
I can’t imagine how dreadful it must feel to lose your cherished home, your four walls and roof over your head. Your place of security. Your castle. Especially when it is a home you have lived in for 30 years and never defaulted on a payment.
With mortgage repossessions soaring by 48% in the last year due to the credit crunch, more homeowners are likely to find they could end up in the street. Latest figures revealed that 18,900 homes were repossessed in the UK up until June this year. What happens to them, how do they survive and pick up the pieces? I have often wondered about this.
I shall highlight this by telling you the tragic story of a professional woman who is nudging close to retirement age. She always budgeted her money carefully, but suddenly lost her home after she was made redundant from her job in the financial sector and could not keep up the repayments. There was only three years left to complete her final payments.
Noclue said she could not fight the bank, they wanted their money and threatened to almost double what she owed in charges and legal fees. So she not only lost her home, she then only received a third of its value.
This is the story of Noclue, who at the same time was diagnosed with a hearing disability and then retrained as a care assistant in Devon where she lives. However, she is unable to find work because of her disability. Because of her age, she is not entitled to many benefits which pensioners receive.
Because of her savings, she was not eligible for a council house, she doesn’t tick enough of the right boxes to qualify. It has been very difficult for her to find rented accommodation with her beloved dog. The savings are coming to an end.
She cannot afford winter heating bills and eats one meal a day. Her future looks bleak – and she sees death as the only option. I wonder how many other Noclues there are in this country living in poverty through similar experiences. It is something she would certainly never have imagined during the height of her profession when she worked with British and American banks, experiencing two armed robberies. She even chased one of the armed robbers down the street thinking his gun was a fake!
These are her very poignant words today, as she faces a homeless future:
And so, come February 2009 I will be homeless. With no address means no benefits at all so the rest of my life will be spent sleeping in a doorway or on a park bench and when I am profoundly deaf how can I sleep never knowing if anyone was walking by or creeping up in the darkness?
I am almost at retirement age…..I have nothing to show for a life of hard work. I don’t deserve it and neither does my faithful ten year old dog…..I will be forced to Rhome her (she won’t settle) or have her put to sleep. I have no family and friends all live far away and are busy with their own lives and although sympathetic to my problems simply don’t want to know…..so next year I’ll take three months of my daily medication and opt out. It’s not a coward’s way out – the one thing at present that the bloody government don’t own is My life. I gave so much, I worked so hard, I never asked to become disabled, and I can’t get help to help myself remain independent…..a wasted life…..a totally wasted life.
The horrible aspect is that I am not alone. Pensioners and the plight of pensioners hit the news and make for votes. They have more money a week than unemployed do. Not the unemployed dole scroungers but the unfortunate unemployed people. The pensioners can be rehoused and have heating allowance and free travel vouchers….the legitimate unemployed nearing retirement age receive less money, no help, no travel vouchers, no allowance for heating, no council accommodation, no retraining…..does anyone deserve to live like this?
What is she to do? She highlights a very real and tragic dilemma?
Hat tip: Sally in Norfolk.
Thank you for highlighting this terrible situation Ellee. I was quite appalled and upset when I read this post last week. How can someone fall through the cracks in the system and not find help in Great Britain? I am hoping that somehow she will get it after all.
Yes Thank you Ellee, I knew you would do a great job of highlighting this terrible situation, which is why I told you about it.
JMB and Sally, it is a truly tragic story of life today.
It’s the sort of situation that looks as if it is becoming more apparent today.
It is so difficult Ellee. It is one of the reasons I was prepared to fight so hard at all costs for my workplace, to keep the jobs local. There were so many levels and so many reasons why the proposal was wrong, but the personal human ones as highlighted in your post were the most upsetting. Just thinking back on what might have a happened to some of the people upsets me even now.
With me in my current position, Ellee, was that the most tactful post? 🙂
Can the churches help in situations like this? Surely someone can help out by renting her a room – there are so many large homes in Britain!
She should bed down on the council office steps. Tip off the local press that she’s doing it and get photographed there with her sad dog. She should also play heavily on the fact that she’s deaf and has paid taxes all her life.
“Doesn’t tick the right boxes” yes. Teignmouth Scout Group, declined a measly £3k from the National Lottery knows all about that.
There is no way she should be homeless.
A side issue here is to stress how important it is to get yourself established as early as possible. One ought not to have a mortgage on approaching retirement age – it’s a huge risk.
I was minded this week to research how to trade up to a larger property by extending my mortgage by another 20 years. I definitely shan’t do it now having read this sorry tale.
well done Ellee – the awful thing is I bet she’s not the only one. There must be hundreds of others like her.
It’s obviously a very sad, sad situation and it seems to me to highlight another real issue that we’re beset with in Britain – the breakdown of the family support unit. While I have no idea of what this lady’s personal family circumstances are there is a growing trend for us all to live in our little boxes, with less and less interactivity – as a family and with other people. We live in a superficially connected world that just seems to highlight a real lack of personal connectivity. If David Cameron wants to find something to increasingly focus upon there’s no question that the values of a connected society that does so personally is just such an area. I’m fully aware of the irony of writing this on your blog Ellee, which will largely be read by people who have never met, never really interacted and maintained personal relationships with each other. The fact that politicians increasingly communicate from a TV screen, a Downing street web site, a blog, a text or whatever only serves to disconnect them from us and vice versa. We over communicate and under emote….let people and politicians look into other people’s eyes and recognize the reality of politics..
We are never that far from this kind of miserable existence. It is just very hard to rebound at that stage of life.
I lost everything, including my businesses and family home, in the early 1990s. Sometimes it doesn’t matter about qualifications, how hard you work or how carefully you plan your life, global or national economic conditions or other people’s mistakes can still catch you out.
Losing everything is a dreadful experience and one that will remain with me for the rest of my life, although now, after many years, I am once more relatively secure.
I just hope that nobody from the current government goes on television as John Major did in those dark days and say:
‘If it aint hurting it aint working …’
Even today, when he comes on the television, I still have to walk away into another room or switch the television off.
Struggling back from less than nothing was difficult enough. Learning to manage my anger at those responsible was even more difficult.
We live in a ‘winner takes all society’ where we accept that a million dollars can be earned in a two hour tennis match while others cannot afford to eat or have a roof over their head.
It is not a society anybody would create by design but it is most definitely the one we have and it is one that I believe we should change.
Rob, thank you for sharing that with us all. You are right about the “winner takes all” aspect of our society, it’s so fiercely competitive and harder times are now with us. I bet you don’t take anything for granted now, especially friendships. I’m so pleased you pulled through your darkest days, I hope the same happens to Noclue, and others like her.
Richard, I take your point about how familes and society are becoming disconnected because of new technology. That’s certainly one of the negative parts about it. Real life is about face to face interaction, not being concealed behind a screen.
Good post Ellee. I think the humanity of what being without money is exactly what people need to read – especially people in positions of power. Only then can we hope that stories like you have told will be unusual. Being in central London and seeing people sleeping in doorways reminds me every day how lucky I am. Thanks once again.
My heart goes out to No Clue and others like her. In Britain there is no help for people who just, somehow, fall through what is supposed to be the safety net. I nearly lost my home there several times, so I do know what I am talking about!
Just shows that absolute poverty is worse than relative poverty