Council housing: my story

Written by Pauline Baxter

In the end, it’s all about personal liberty, the freedom to live my life the way I choose. Of course that does mean within a moral code. I grew up crazy about animals. Particularly I wanted a dog. I wanted to be responsible for my dog. I did not want a husband and children. I’d seen nothing but unhappiness in the ‘mother, father and two children’ home. Nor did I want to own my own house. There’s the mortgage to be paid, who has worked to pay it and who therefore should ‘own’ it. All that had caused unhappiness and misery in my family. Apart from which, the area our family home was in really had nothing to offer that I wanted from life. I felt trapped there. In fact it wasn’t until my mid twenties that I broke free. It was a hard struggle and I’m justifiably proud of myself for getting free, for escaping!

Of course I’ve made bad decisions in life. I’ve done silly, even morally wrong actions, though I have tried to put the wrong things right. But that is rather ‘beside the point’, the point being that it is my life and, providing I am not doing harm to anyone else, preventing them from living their life, I should be allowed to live my life as I choose.

But what has happened? What have other people done to me? What has been the attitude of ‘society’, of ‘institutions’, of landlords, councils, law makers, bureaucracies? Well, I’ll tell you. How dare I be ‘different’? I’m obviously ‘wrong’ because I’m not like everyone else wanting a partner and children or a career and good salary, leading to my own house, partner and children.

Here are some stories of what happened. At first I was living in a basement bed-sit with one dog and two or three cats. The landlord was actually better than most. It sounds worse than it was. You see it was at the back of the house, not on the road side and there was waste land out the back door.

First I think it was fleas. Of course it was my animals that had caused the flat above to be infested with fleas! Err . . . excuse me, I use flea powder, fleas don’t jump that high and there was actually a cat in that flat –  of the last tenant. Added to which, in those days fleas used to lay their eggs in fridge motors to hatch out. ‘Oh, o.k. I didn’t know that’.

Next, well, I had to go to work so the dogs were left at home. The window was bolted open for the cats to come and go. I’ve left bits out: it was actually 2 dogs by then. I’d got them gradually used to being left alone and checked they were not barking, whining, destructive or otherwise being a nuisance. They only barked if disturbed, e.g.by someone sticking their nose into the window or trying to get in! But some other, spying tenant had to do just that – and reported me to the landlord.

That bedsit was deteriorating towards being a slum. The cellar had flooded. It was damp anyway, even before that. The ‘facilities’ were not adequate by the then modern standards. Obviously I’d looked for alternatives. Private landlords in Sheffield were, naturally enough, mainly supplying student accommodation. If I moved to one of those I had to sign a tenancy agreement: No Pets. Council properties for single people – flats: no pets!

Meanwhile, shock horror, I’d got my own horse. She lived in Derbyshire. We were members of the Hope Valley Riding Club. Through a friend from there, I got the chance to rent a Farmhouse. There was no land with it. In fact it was boxed in, surrounded by farmed land. Access by gated track across the fields. It was just along the road from where my horse was then living. (She’d been moved a few times.). So, I took the chance. Well various things happened or went wrong. I finished up with no horse. One dog, Meg, the daughter of my first dog, and one cat, Thompson, who had done an essential job clearing the house of mice!

Because I’d worked locally I was entitled to be on the Council Housing list. A friend had given good advice on what to specify, to get onto the list fast, because what was on the list was not popular. When the farmer got awkward, money grubbing and nasty it was a close shave but, just in time, I got a first floor flat, in a village in Derbyshire, with fields out the back – and pets were allowed!

Now surely this was ideal. I had my own front door. At the side was a bit of garden that I was responsible for and there was access through the hedge into the fields. Downstairs had most of the front garden, just one narrow strip at the side was mine and downstairs had the garden at the back under the windows. What could possibly go wrong? So I installed a gate in the gap in the hedge, also fenced and gated ‘my’ garden at the side when that became necessary. I even got a bit interested in some types of gardening.

I can quite see why that village was not a popular area! Probably, to begin with, because there was a lack of shops and other amenities. The Council then marked it down as a ‘dumping place’ for people they were forced to rehouse but who were, for one reason or another, rather ‘difficult’. Not that they were a problem to me. Being a bit of an oddity myself I tended to get on with other oddities. 

I lived there a good many years. Various ups and downs. Who lived below me was obviously the most important issue. Also there was the matter of car parking. That is always contentious. The turning point I suppose was when ‘he’ moved in downstairs. Up to that time it was definitely the case that there was no right to buy those flats. I’d checked through the tenancy agreement. Little did I know that ‘he’, ‘Sir’, had strings to pull on the Council. Lo and behold, after serving his time, 5 years I think it was, ‘Sir’ was able to buy his flat. Would you believe, the Council didn’t notify us tenants even then about the changed policy!

‘Sir E’, I’d better call him, probably still acts like he owns the whole road. He is a prime example of that attitude: No one has the right to be different to the way he is. Since I was the nearest victim and kept myself to myself, I was the obvious target for him to bully. He was also good at manipulating others into joining in. I’m not going into details – suffice to say I actually fought back and gave as good as I got. I even shot up the list for re-homing to my present bungalow. He was ‘known’ to the police for harassing me from what he thought was an anonymous mobile phone. The Council saw evidence of him piling snow outside my front door.

Odd snippets of gossip I’ve heard tell me that ‘Sir E’ has come a cropper in several ways. He fell foul of the Dangerous Dogs Act. His dog has to be kept on lead and muzzled. He lost his job as a school-run bus driver at one point, for chatting up an underage school pupil. He’s been in trouble for ‘blocking in’ the present upstairs boyfriend’s car. They’ve even built on the field at the back right outside ‘his’ windows!

So there you are. What goes around comes around. I’ll say it again: provided I do no harm to other people I should be free to live my life the way I choose, local tyrants notwithstanding.

Photo by chrisinplymouth