Options
Homeless family
![[Deleted User]](https://w0.vanillicon.com/v2/0b1ccb7aa9697b3d2f7bd7ac9f1ba3f7.svg)
[Deleted User]
Posts: 1,163 Forum Member
✭✭✭
I cannot help but be moved by a heartbreaking eviction in Homerton East London on the Can't Pay, We'll Take it Away program on Channel 5, aired yesterday evening. The tenant, a mother of two, has lived in the flat for nine years but owes over £7,000 in rent after losing her job. The situation is out of her control and she had nowhere to go when she was evicted and social workers say that they couldn't help.
Eventually the local housing department sends her to live in some bedsit in Southend-on-Sea. She & her children will long be forgotten there. She has no income, her status as an immigrant means she can only work but not claim benefits even though she has paid taxes for nearly a decade, unlike some of those dole-bludgers who come here for the benefits. This woman is a hard working mother of two who fell through the gaps in the systems. How is she ever meant to leave Southend on Sea? Is she even still there?
I want to know is there anyway of raising funds and actually getting them to her and her family? I have no idea when the programme was made and where the lady is now? Any help suggestions or ideas and advice are all welcome. IMHO helping one person is the same as helping the whole of humanity and charity starts at home. I sincerely want to help her as I wouldn't ever wish to be in her position. I'm sure people would donate even if it was just a 50p or £1. Every penny or pound counts. Everytime I see something I say I will do X, Y & X but never do or get around to it. I'd like it to be different this time. Why can't I make a difference to her or her family?
++++++++++++++
Eventually the local housing department sends her to live in some bedsit in Southend-on-Sea. She & her children will long be forgotten there. She has no income, her status as an immigrant means she can only work but not claim benefits even though she has paid taxes for nearly a decade, unlike some of those dole-bludgers who come here for the benefits. This woman is a hard working mother of two who fell through the gaps in the systems. How is she ever meant to leave Southend on Sea? Is she even still there?
I want to know is there anyway of raising funds and actually getting them to her and her family? I have no idea when the programme was made and where the lady is now? Any help suggestions or ideas and advice are all welcome. IMHO helping one person is the same as helping the whole of humanity and charity starts at home. I sincerely want to help her as I wouldn't ever wish to be in her position. I'm sure people would donate even if it was just a 50p or £1. Every penny or pound counts. Everytime I see something I say I will do X, Y & X but never do or get around to it. I'd like it to be different this time. Why can't I make a difference to her or her family?
++++++++++++++
0
Comments
http://centrepoint.org.uk
http://www.shelter.org.uk
http://charity.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/donate/
Thank you for the link, a fantastic idea. I'm looking into it now
If you find her through them, they could be an intermediary for a fund-raising page or something. Sort of, donate funds that the intermediary then passes on. There's a bit of trust involved there, though.
...
You can't 'come here for the benefits'.
If you could then surely she would be entitled being an immigrant.
Your weird contradictory logic doesn't make sense.
There are plenty more like her and have paid taxes for decades ,some are not lucky enough to get a room or a bedsit as they are sleeping rough. It is a sad situation that is going on all over the country, some of them have fought for the country , the amount of ex servicemen living on the streets is a scandal and a disgrace, single people with no children are not offered even a room to sleep in
Missed the beginning of the program so might have missed something but it was said she came from Ghana and her husband had returned there.
She was from Ghana. Probably here for an easier life before her husband left her trying to raise two small children in the most expensive city in the UK to live in.
I have little sympathy. You can't expect to live rent free and not be evicted. I'd happily donate towards a one way ticket so the lady can rejoin her husband.
For all we know she may own a mansion back in Ghana, or perhaps she is an illegal immigrant......................................we really don't know and so should not take the situation on the face value of what was shown during the programme.
The thing that everyone should learn from the programme is that as far as Bailiffs are concern, the only ones who have any real power are the Bailiffs who are serving a High Court Order (hence their real title of High Court Sheriffs or High Court Enforcement Officers).
Any other Bailiff or Debt Collector does not have the power of forced entry or indeed a right of entry and seizure, and if the Police are called or involved the Police are only there to ensure there is no trouble and they are not allowed to be involved in any other way.