A Little Gone News

Frantic writing for IVP continues, so only a small hello and an encouragement from me today. I’m about to head off on my annual pilgrimage to the Proc Trust Minsters’ Wives conference. I shall report back on what the well dressed vicar’s wife is wearing this season.

But I wanted to let you know that we briefly saw Gone in church on Sunday morning. He was happy and tidy and seemed well and hadn’t been drinking. He waved his house keys at us but said he was having a little trouble budgetting his electric and his bacon had gone off in the fridge. We were very pleased to see him. The Vicar asked him to come back later so he could put money on the electricity card for him but he headed off before we were able to do that.

So he’s managed about 3 months in a house and is keeping himself together. Good news!

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Glad Tidings for Gone

Good news came in about Gone tonight. He’s been sleeping in our outside loo for over 2 weeks following a similar amount of time under our hedge during some truly atrocious weather. We’d got quite used to his taps on the kitchen window asking for a hot water bottle to be filled. More tricky to get used to was him leaning on the doorbell for far too long, usually when the kids are already in bed.

He’d managed to burn almost all his housing bridges in our area, and we were beginning to despair of finding a solution for him. Even Betel said they couldn’t take him before Christmas, when all their teams are busy fundraising, as they said they wouldn’t have the people needed to support someone so vulnerable.

But somehow Gone has managed to find some accommodation that will take him. And our friend the lovely Rev Very Benevolent spent all day today driving Gone about to find the necessary paperwork to sign into his warm new room. We are grateful to God for this provision for Gone, who we have become really quite fond of. He’s almost like an extra child – sweet and frustrating in pretty much equal measure. And now it’s time to think of some strategies to keep Gone in his new home and away from our damp and uncomfortable hedge.

We pray especially that Gone would have the support he needs to deal with his cycle of alcohol, homelessness and frustration. And that all those who have been concerned with him (there are a good many of us I can tell you, from churches, council and other agencies) will be able to get together to put some of this support in place. Next year I don’t want to be posting another pre-Christmas story of how Gone has just found somewhere to live after spending weeks sleeping in our garden.

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Gone on the Step Again

Gone, our occasional hedge lodger, has been under the hedge for the last couple of nights. Brrrr – very chilly and damp in the fog. He rang the doorbell very drunk on Wednesday evening, but we didn’t chat for long. This morning he was on the doorstep as I took the boys to school and there again when I returned. I was despairing about his housing situation.

Not the comfiest bed

As usual, he was drinking a bottle of Frosty Jack and listening to a cheap radio on headphones. But he was also mellow and happy. He asked me to take care of his new debit card that allows him access to his benefits. I declined, thinking that he’ll forget what he’s done with it, but I gave him a wallet to keep it safe.

Wonderfully, I also found out that he has does have somewhere to live – he’s in a hostel and has his own room. But he’s been too drunk to get himself home the last couple of days – hence the hedge sleeping. I’ve made a note of his address and am hoping we’ll be able to keep an eye on him. And that he’ll manage a winter without prison this year. The needs of the homeless are always complex, and Gone is extremely vulnerable, so I am very thankful that our prayers for him have been answered at last. And am praying that he’d keep it together enough to keep himself housed. He knows that he needs to but the confusion and anger brought by drink and mental illness always means that his home situation is precarious.

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Gone Going?

One of the lovely things about the Midlands Women’s Convention last weekend was the opportunity to catch up with friends from around the region. I was able to have a good chat with another vicar’s wife from the Black Country who has been sharing with us the unusual experience of having Gone sleep under the garden hedge.

Mrs Very Benevolent and her husband live in another Sandwell town, just a few miles from here. She told me that Gone has been supplied with a sleeping bag by a local Food Bank and has camped out in their garden for the past few weeks. Another vicar nearby sometimes allows Gone to use his bathroom to spruce up. So he’s surviving. As usual.

Mrs VB is finding that Gone is alternately awful, abusive, threatening and foul and then repentant, sweet, thankful and charming. Same mix as ever. But the good news in all this is that the local police have decided that enough is enough and have demanded that the local housing office sort it out. Since Gone is without doubt the most vulnerable person I have ever met, I am thankful that at last some people in authority are taking responsibility.

My friend said that the first option will be to get him to Betel, although we all know that Gone struggles with trusting others, so the Betel community may not prove to be the best place. Whatever happens we are praying for a good solution for him. But at last there seem to be people in the ‘system’ watching out for Gone and there will be other options if Betel doesn’t work out. Keep on praying for him – we would love him to to feel secure in a home.

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More on Gone

Gone was on our doorstep at 6.30am today (Polly heard him, thankfully the Vicar and I were still asleep). He rang the doorbell on and off from 6.55am, but was gone by the time we were all downstairs from breakfast at around 8 o’clock. The Queen’s bedroom is just above the front door and she told me that he was singing loudly about chocolate. There were two bottles of Frosty Jack on the drive.

Yesterday we tried to help him get sorted out with the benefits system. He said that noone was able to help him.

If you don't know it, you're in a fix

Gone has forgotten his National Insurance number because he’s suffering from alcoholic dementia. He has no identification documents because he’s lost them all, so is struggling to prove his identity. Without an NI number he can’t claim benefits and therefore can’t even get a place in a homeless hostel. He’s frightened, ill and frustrated. And I don’t blame him.

The Vicar let Gone use the phone to speak to the Job Centre that he’s always dealt with, but because he can’t remember his NI number, they were unable to help. You need two forms of identification – you know, utility bills, passport – and he doesn’t have them.

Later, after Gone had left, I spoke to our local Job Centre Plus, the West Midlands Probation Service (Gone is less than a month out of prison but is without a probation officer), Walsall Probation office, Sandwell Adult Social Services, Aquarius (the Sandwell alcohol service), a Sally Army hostel, the Birmingham homelessness team, the local housing office and the local emergency homelessness team. Everyone I spoke to was sympathetic and helpful, but were stumped about how to help.

The emergency homeless team said they might be able to do a bit more with some more input from him, so next time he’s here in office hours I shall call them so I can mediate for him. In the meantime I’m going to call the central National Insurance office and the mental health services to see if there is any more advice available.

At the moment he seems to falling through a hole in a system designed to stop identity theft. He’s not trying to steal an identity. He’s just forgetting his own.

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Polly and the Baby

Polly and her baby are staying with us. They became homeless the weekend of the Visitors, and moved into council funded emergency accommodation for a week. It was clean but horrible – noisy, rather smelly and insecure (she could open her room by shoving on the door).

Aaah

I’d known Polly for a while and get on well with her. She is from Eastern Europe and all her family support is back at home. Her baby is only five months old and she was exhausted. We have a whole floor of the Vicarage which is unoccupied because it’s dilapidated. I don’t think the rooms have been used for at least twenty years.

So I invited her to come and stay in the attic whilst the council sort her out with housing. Since she’s now officially homeless, we’re hoping it’ll not be toooo long. She’s going to paint the attic room and we already have the promise of a bed for her – at the moment she’s in the spare room.

So now we have two extra people to stay. So far it’s been great, but it’s also coincided with a whirlwind of meetings and people in distress calling at the Vicarage.

My head is buzzing and yesterday evening, as we passed each other at the front door, the Vicar said to me ‘See you on Friday’. (He’s not actually going away anywhere.)

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Credit Crunch Snapshots 2

The house next door has been sold at auction after it was repossessed. Our neighbour who is on the case with these things found out the price from the auction house. It went for less than half the price that was originally paid.

This is bad news for neighbours who want to rearrange their mortgages after coming off fixed rate deals. The value of the houses has dropped so much that they can’t go anywhere else, but have to stay with the original mortgage companies on the (most expensive) variable rate. We are thankful for living in a tied house, even if it confuses people when we fill in surveys and applications.

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The disconnection of Radio 4

This morning I was running a bit late, so I heard ‘Thought for the Day’ on Radio 4. Dr Mona Siddiqui was talking about how the slowdown in the housing market makes people feel frustrated because

“We have taken the buying and selling of property as a costly but essential part of our lifestyle choices.”

This is one of the reasons for all the repossessions in our neighbourhood: people bought into the lie that everyone should own their own property and then just couldn’t afford it. Where families are still managing to pay their mortgage there are difficulties here that you don’t see in middle class neighbourhoods.

Our neighbours, the Jollies, very rarely spend their annual leave together, as they can maximise the free childcare by taking it in turns to take their holiday. I see Arthritic Granny, obviously in much pain, struggling with the pushchair to the school gate, as her son and daughter-in-law are out at work all day and she is left with three little ones to watch.

But mainly I don’t think it wouldn’t occur to most of the people in our parish that having a mortgage was ‘an essential part of our lifestyle choices’. People don’t have that choice in the inner city. But then, they don’t listen to Radio 4 either.

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The echoing crunch…

The other week we had the bailiffs round. Not calling for us – the Church of England isn’t in such a bad state yet. Sadly asking about our next door neighbour who disappeared at the end of February after telling us he was going on holiday.

The following morning the bailiffs were here again, breaking in next door and going to repossess two doors down too. That makes the fourth house in our development of forty or so houses that have been claimed back by lenders.

Wolverhampton has one of the highest rates of subprime mortgages in the country. It’s been so sad to see what’s happened to our friends, who have been trapped by plummeting property prices so they can’t even sell up and go back to renting.

This week the repossessed house next door got its ‘For Sale’ sign. It joins around five or so in the close that are up for sale. If you’re looking for a bargain priced property near to a good bible-teaching church and an excellent church primary school, this is the place to look. A two bedroomed terraced house on the road up from ours sold for £60,000. Just don’t get a sub-prime mortgage…

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It’s the neighbours

Mimi is a smiling mum I know from the school gate and is looking to move house. They want to buy somewhere for the first time. They’ve just had a second child so their two bedroomed house is too small. But mainly they want to move because of the neighbours.

‘Are they noisy then?’ I asked, thinking of ‘normal’ reasons for the neighbours to be difficult.

‘It’s the drugs.’ she replied. ‘And it’s so dirty, I won’t even go down the shared passageway between the houses.’ She scrunched up her face in disgust.

Private landlords mean that you can’t just call up the council to remove your neighbours. You have to move yourself in the end.

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