As promised I’m back to tell the rest of the story.
Yesterday whilst finishing off one wall this lad came up to me and when I asked him how he was, He told me he had been kicked out by his girlfriend and was sleeping rough. He looked much thinner than before and mentioned that he hadn’t eaten for about 2 days. I was a bit sceptical of this to begin with, but I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and try to get a feel of whether or not he was telling the truth.
He told me the council housing officers basically told him they couldn’t help him as he had been to the Cornwall County Council one stop shop trying to see about emergency accommodation that morning.
I mentioned that I was hungry too and asked him if he would mind fetching me a pasty from the bakers around the corner, and he could get himself one for his trouble. I gave him a £5 note thinking that if he disappeared with the £5 he needn’t show his face again. About 5 minutes later he returned with two pasties and handed me the correct change, thanking me for his.
Whilst he was gone I contacted the council at their head office and spoke to the housing department, and expressed surprise that they couldn’t help. They agreed to have a housing officer call me back and speak to him on my phone.
At the time I was trying to prep a shillet (slate and rubble) wall for rendering. I asked him if he’d like to help me, he agreed. So, after not being able to find my wire brush, I sent him off again, with another £5 to the hardware shop near the baker to go and buy one. I asked him to get a receipt as I would need it for my books. Again 5 minutes later he appeared with wire brush, correct change and receipt. I set him to work on prepping the wall with the wire brush and a pick. Much paint needed stripping off.
Shortly after he started helping me the housing officer phoned back and I passed the phone to him. He was asked to go back to the local office at 1pm. He had about 90 minutes wait. So he carried on helping me. During this time I got talking to him and basically his story became more plausible as he settled down and spoke. I figured that an hour or so of chat would have probably tripped him up if he was also trying to work if he were lying. I thought it unlikely that he was.
With about 10 minutes to spare I suggested he went on his way. As well as actually helping me get the job done, his involvement on my job did two other things – firstly it settled him down so he could feel he’d actually done something useful, and secondly I now had a way of helping him without it appearing like charity - I handed him a £10 note. I wanted him to feel that he’d earned it. I didn’t want him to think he could tap me for a few quid every time I was in the area. He got it because he’d helped me.
He was clearly very grateful for it, though he didn’t need to be. He saved me some work. A pasty was hardly payment for that. With that he went off to the local council office.
On his return he told me that he had had a bit more success. They told him that they couldn’t find him a place but if he were to find a place they would pay his bond (deposit). He would then have to sort the rest out. But as a recipient of Income Support with no savings he would also be eligible for Housing Benefit.
The rest of the day saw him walking around the town looking for phone numbers for lodgings/flats etc, then borrowing my phone (contract with several minutes included) to call up about them. As I made good progress, unfortunately he didn’t. He was becoming more despondent.
Eventually it was nearing 5.00pm. He had no luck whatsoever. He approached a hostel that he had stayed in before. They would only take him via a council referral, but gave him more phone numbers to call.
Astonishingly, he must have had the misfortune to get the most inept out of hours Housing Officer on the planet. I won’t go into the details but suffice to say that she knew of a landlord in the area who would take him in but didn’t have a phone number for him. What is the point of an out of hours service when all the information needed for her to do her job was at the office?? Annoyingly I didn’t know that she had said that until the call had ended. Otherwise I would have pointed out that we were right outside the hostel in question and the phone number is on the door!
We were promised that if all else failed she would call him back the following day. The only problem was that she would try and call him back on my phone. So I knew he would need to be around to takethe call off me should she call today.
To be brief, he was now facing another night on the streets, unless by some minor miracle, she had somehow stumbled across the centre’s contact details, assuming then she could be bothered to call them!
The following day (today), I met up with him again only to find out that my suspicions were correct. He had spent another night on the streets. His only hope would be a phone call from the council for him on my phone. Hence I had made sure it was on and fully charged.
During the course of the morning he had been told about a landlord who may be able to help him, but he had to go to an estate agent to get his number. One walk later he had a phone number and a 2.00pm meeting was arranged at the agents.
At about that time after the lad had gone, by sheer coincidence I was approached by a well spoken gent who asked me what types of work I did. As we got talking he mentioned that he had a few properties in the area. “Are you *****?” I asked. It turned out that he was the Landlord that the lad had spoken to earlier! The lad had missed him by minutes. Whilst we were talking he got a phone call from the young lad at the agents. So they met up back at the agents.
This is pretty much where this story ends, apart from that the landlord had a room available in either one of two 2 bed flats. The Landlord wanted the OK from either one of the other occupants to be agreeable to him moving in. He was happy to take the council bond and give the lad a chance to get his housing benefit sorted out, but importantly, having an address would get him back getting his income support.
They had agreed to meet up again at 4pm to talk to the occupants of the 2 flats to get their agreement for the lad to take the 2nd room. Each flat dweller had mentioned that they were struggling with the bills and having someone to share them with would make their lives easier. He only needed one flat dweller to OK it.
“I’ll try and get you in tonight” the Landlord said to him.
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