ON Tuesday morning, a Corringham family, on the verge of being evicted by their landlord, are going down to Thurrock Council to try and plead to be housed.
Sometimes, these matters can be very complicated and there may well be a number of sides to the story.
So, YT has asked, Jesse Robertson to keep running diary of events as they unfold.
Firstly, here is an overview of the situation that Jess and his family are in.
Jesse’s Diary: Day One
"My mother and myself first went to the council in August 2014. We informed them that we have little money left and our tenancy at Woolifers Avenue will end on January 2015 and after that our family will thereby be homeless.
They asked us to bring in bank statements and receipts, many of which they later claimed they had not received or they have not logged it on their system even though we had receipts to prove we have brought the before mentioned documents.
My mum completed an application over the phone for housing benefit and we later received a ‘copy’ of the application form and all of the information on it was incorrect.
The application claimed a lot of things that was not true such as that I did not live at the property but most importantly it claimed that my mum said she had £10,000 in her bank account which is not the case.
We told the council that the letter was completely incorrect and they removed all the information on the form except this untrue statement about this £10,000 we’re being accused of having.
We have given them bank statements to prove we don’t have it but they still insisted that we have the money.
We invited them to investigate us and they said that was not necessary. They have no proof of this mysterious £10,000 and they are not giving us housing benefit based on this £10,000.
They also told us that they will not house us unless the landlord evicts us. They told us not to leave the property in January and wait till the bailiffs come to kick us out.
But we were later informed by the housing department in Thurrock Council if we left in January they WOULD have housed us and thus we wouldn’t be in debt as we are now.
Furthermore the council has told the landlord that we have £10,000 stashed somewhere and were refusing to pay the rent which was completely unacceptable as they know the history of harassment from the landlord,
I believe that they are giving away confidential information and they don’t have any basis to make the statement.
We have received the eviction notice now and we have to be out by the 2nd June but the council wants us to wait for the bailiffs to come but the fact is I have severe mental health issues, my mum is chronically ill, my godfather (who we look after) has dementia and my two brothers are minors and we have informed the council of this and we don’t need to be put through anymore turmoil because the landlord has already been sending emails saying he is going to kick us out at midnight and to be quite honest my family has had enough.
The council has to stop playing games and help us, they have had plenty of time to investigate our claim so we are planning to go to the council on the 1st June to present ourselves to be housed and what we need you to ask them is why they are refusing us housing benefit to us without proper investigations to our claim?
Why are they giving out confidential information? Why are they putting a vulnerable family through so much stress and turmoils for nearly a year?
A couple of weeks ago because of all this turmoil my mum tried to commit suicide. Enough is enough and the council need to do something.
