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Please Help Me... (Housing - benefits)

Luke

My anxiety is skyrocketing at the moment due to housing issues.

I have lived with my mum and step-dad for the past 8 years or so.

My mother is a Methodist Minister, and housing is provided integrally to this job.

She has been assigned a new manse along with a change of location.

The new location will not be appropriate for me to live in - it is too small.

I also do not want to move away from this area, which has been a base for nearly 20 years.

For a long time a local organisation have been promising that autism appropriate accommodation would be available imminently.

They knew that the start of August 2014 was my deadline for moving out, ever since my initial application, which must be at least 18 months ago now, maybe 2 years or even longer.

Only now, at short notice have they confirmed that they in fact do not have any autism appropriate vacancies available, nor will they at any time in the forseeable future.

Up until this point they had always presented a rosey outlook on the availability of their services.

As such I am suddenly left in the lurch, struggling to source a local autism appropriate property, together with dealing with all benefits related issues and so-on, then move out, all within a time frame of weeks.

It is going ok I guess, I have a social worker assigned to me, and I also have the involvement of a local autism specialist charity.

My big problem at the moment revolves around housing benefits.

A disability advice organisation has told me that I can get housing benefits up to the amount of the average price of the average comparable property rate.

When I pheond the council helpline the council say I can only get the shared rate - around £58 per week.

I've only found one property that I could afford with that, and it seemed entirely inappropriate - I am quite scared by the idea of living there at the moment.

I have viewed at least 2 properties at about £80-90 mark that seem ok - there seem to be quite a lot locally, it is just the money that is the issue.

I am on ESA, I also claim low rate moblity DLA, but I am studying and still paying for that.

I think I might be able to top up my rent about £10 a week but I would struggle with much more than that.

I thought my social worker might help with all of this but at the moment he seems to have left it to me - with the help of my charity support workers.

I discovered Discretionary Housing Payments with an application form on the council website.

Do you think that this is what the Disability Advice organisation was referring to?

Please - what are other peoples experiences and knowledge around this area?

I would greatly appreciate it if somebody could share. The thought of being homeless, or in horrible housing is terrifying me - it is so frustrating that nobody seems to be able to help me or give me a straight answer.

I am just going round in circles and I can feel it making me quite ill.

Parents
  • Former Member
    Former Member

    Outraged, I think I remember you making some comments on a previous thread about how you decided to break out of your social anxiety hermit phase by deciding that it was about time to come out and play with the real world. Do you remember that or did I get it wrong? Have you any advice for Luke on dealing with his anxieties that are making his life hard to bear?

    From my own experience, I definitely got to the point of thinking that I couldn't do anything right and that everything was hopeless and that it got the point where there was no point trying to do lots of things. It seems to me that Luke is in this state because he appears to look for confirmation that he should be in an anxious state (e.g. the Attwood quote above) rather than entertaining the idea that he may be able to climb out of the "heffalump trap" of anxiety. I think Tony is suggesting that it is common, which it is, but I don't think he suggests that you have to have anxiety to be a member of our club. To me, if you accept and understand the triad of problems but then don't accept any of the other comorbidity as absolutely inevitable and insurmountable then you can get to a place where you can put those comorbidities in their place. Some of the comorbidities need special attention so, for example, I use noise cancelling headphones to make life in an open plan office bearable. I have made a lot of use of the mp3 player in my phone so that I can choose what I listen to (I prefer to listen to BBC's Life Scientific or SInead O'Connor) rather than having to listen to the cacophony that attacks you in the street or on a bus. I choose to think of my ASD as an unruly dog (see this thread for details). The condition is "for life" and not just for xmas but it doesn't have to ruin your life. Smile

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  • Former Member
    Former Member

    Outraged, I think I remember you making some comments on a previous thread about how you decided to break out of your social anxiety hermit phase by deciding that it was about time to come out and play with the real world. Do you remember that or did I get it wrong? Have you any advice for Luke on dealing with his anxieties that are making his life hard to bear?

    From my own experience, I definitely got to the point of thinking that I couldn't do anything right and that everything was hopeless and that it got the point where there was no point trying to do lots of things. It seems to me that Luke is in this state because he appears to look for confirmation that he should be in an anxious state (e.g. the Attwood quote above) rather than entertaining the idea that he may be able to climb out of the "heffalump trap" of anxiety. I think Tony is suggesting that it is common, which it is, but I don't think he suggests that you have to have anxiety to be a member of our club. To me, if you accept and understand the triad of problems but then don't accept any of the other comorbidity as absolutely inevitable and insurmountable then you can get to a place where you can put those comorbidities in their place. Some of the comorbidities need special attention so, for example, I use noise cancelling headphones to make life in an open plan office bearable. I have made a lot of use of the mp3 player in my phone so that I can choose what I listen to (I prefer to listen to BBC's Life Scientific or SInead O'Connor) rather than having to listen to the cacophony that attacks you in the street or on a bus. I choose to think of my ASD as an unruly dog (see this thread for details). The condition is "for life" and not just for xmas but it doesn't have to ruin your life. Smile

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