Kwajo Tweneboa’s piece about how bereaved relatives are immediately evicted from social housing struck home (The secret social housing scandal: when your parent dies – and you are evicted in days, 16 July). When my mother died in 2000, we had a week to clear the flat on the estate she lived on with us for 40 years. Just about time to clear the kitchen and bathroom, and dispose of her clothes. Twenty-two years later, it still hurts. Now, I worry about my sister – her adult daughter lives with her in social housing and she has Crohn’s disease. But her name is not on the flat lease. So when my sister dies, her daughter will suffer the same fate as Tiana in Tweneboa’s article – homeless and disabled. It’s a scandal that needs addressing.
Name and address supplied
• My local council does still allow successions of tenancy, but this depends on the type of property. If it is underoccupied at the time of death, or would be if one person were allowed to succeed the tenancy (largely decided by bedroom number), the council will work with the person who could succeed to find them a smaller, more appropriate property so that the larger one can be let to a family.
Many families are overoccupied and this causes problems for children, especially teens. It is unfair on families on the waiting list if a single person is allowed to succeed to a two- or three-bed property.
Having been a volunteer with my council for 14 years, I am shocked to hear that any council would evict someone on such short notice. That said, when my mother died in 2020, I was given one week to clear her flat or I had to pay the rent. I negotiated with them and they gave me longer, but it was still not easy with all the things that needed to be done following her death, especially during Covid. Compassion costs nothing, but seems to have vanished from our society.
Jan Bailey
Swindon, Wiltshire
• Kwajo Tweneboa’s accounts of hardship are examples of injustices that would be eradicated with the setting up of a National Dwelling Service (NDS). This would establish the right for everyone to live in their current dwelling until either their death or such time as they choose to move out. This right would apply to all, regardless of age or wealth.
Once the last person living in a dwelling at the time of the establishment of the NDS has died, or moves out, the dwelling would become council housing and be administered by the local authority. Anyone born after the establishment of the NDS would be able to apply for council housing in the area they wished to live in.
On the creation of the NDS, the stock of council housing would be immediately increased by the transfer of all unoccupied dwellings to public ownership. (Lest that seem too radical, recall that in 1948 whole hospitals were nationalised.)
Safe and secure dwellings for all would result in so many injustices being removed, so many social issues being resolved and so many health concerns being avoided that the nation would be transformed.
Peter Gray
Chesterfield, Derbyshire
• Re Kwajo Tweneboa’s excellent article, the new government could change the law so that bereaved carers who have been living with the person they are caring for are automatically regarded as being in priority need for rehousing by the local authority. This would prevent many carers from facing immediate homelessness.
Teresa Walshe
Bedford
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