Cut and Shut

I saw the envelope being pushed under my door. It’s usually bad news when that happens.
The staff are so upset about what’s been going on that they can hardly look us in the eye, let alone hand us an envelope. It’s not their fault –we all know that, and it’s no consolation to know that when we’re moved on, they’ll be out of a job when the hostel closes down for good in May.
Up until this week, Wandsworth Council had been a stalwart to the hostel’s cause, which is a privately-run charity, part-funded by local government.
Now, though, after thirty years of working together to find long-term housing solutions for alcoholics and addicts, Wandsworth Council were calling it a day.
Contrary to earlier verbal promises, the letter stated that Wandsworth’s duty of care would only be honoured to those whose place of origin was Wandsworth. Of the thirteen in the hostel, none are from this borough.
The best they could now offer would be rent deposit schemes, where a private landlord is found and the recipient is helped during the first year. After that, you’re on your own and it’s anyone’s guess how long the tenant lasts. If he or she has found a job in the first year, chances are the wages won’t be enough to absorb the rent, council tax and bills. Forced back onto the scrapheap, he/she will have no alternative but to leave the job and sign-on again, just to keep the flat (for however long the landlord can stomach having a ‘doley’ on their portfolio).
It’s the ultimate conundrum and the biggest kick in the teeth for a person with a strong recovery; that work pays less than unemployment. Self-defeating and nonsensical, the system serves only to undermine recovery.
Perhaps the council had done their homework, and perhaps not, because what’s happening here is no different to anywhere else in the country.
Hostels, treatment centres and anything where local government is remotely connected to alcoholia and addiction are being shut down to help pay off the national debt.
With a 32% rise in under-18 drinking over the past five years, it appears that this coalition government has finally abandoned the most vulnerable and ill-equipped by sticking its head firmly into macadam.
What’s even worse is that interest rates are expected to rise to cover inflation, triggering ordinary families to be systematically squeezed out of their homes and onto the streets in wholesale repossession. Their former homes will leafleted for the better-off to snap up as the insanely cheap bargains are piled high in auction houses.
Once bought, these homes are likely to be left empty until the market presents a reason to sell, putting yet more pressure onto councils in re-housing the new breed of homeless. This demand for housing is advantageous to the better-off, because it helps to keep property prices buoyant and rentals desperately out of grasp.
The long-term effects of the cuts will cripple the worst-off families, spawning new members of the chemically dependent and emotionally disturbed for future spiritual poverty. We are fast approaching the end-game. It seems that Generation Z is only a whisper away.
As weird as it sounds, an active addict is more economically viable to the government than a recovering one. The active one has to find more money to feed the addiction, which spins money (and therefore VAT) around quickly, whereas the one in recovery seeks help, which costs, and spends less because the fruitless addiction has been arrested. That the active addict is infinitely more likely to die young only strengthens this argument.
Even with all the criminal activity and court-time taken into account, the active addict is a more lucrative member of society. If insurance companies iron out financial responsibilities, why should the government care? When they put premiums up, more VAT is paid!
We, to the government, whose laws and injustice have consistently betrayed us, are now just a legion of wild horses on the precipice of a deserted landfill.
Until today, this dry-hostel had a formidable reputation for making sure that all its residents were found a roof over their heads to reconstruct their lives with some dignity, fully aware that without a home we are destined to an early and miserable death.
We come from all walks of life, but the one thing that bonds us tightly together is a common purpose to stay clean. That we stand no chance of being housed if we slip and return to old behaviour serves to reinforce our plight. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel.
Having said that, it can prove to be a trick of the light that can shadow a trigger for relapse.
Imagine sitting in your own living room for the first time after being surrounded by people in a hostel. You’ve never had a place to call home since leaving your parents. Now, finally, you’re alone in your flat.
Unaccustomed to the new environment, complacency may set in, closely chaperoned by an immovable sense of loneliness and dark foreboding. Attendance at AA and/or NA meetings may slip away and the message of sobriety may soon seem like a distant memory. Where a drink or a drug was used as company to elevate the wreckage of the past from the mind, hopelessness and fear fill the air.
Relapse is only around the corner for the still tormented sufferer. My biggest fear is relapse at this time, although I’m not sure I’ll ever even get that far.
I arrived at the hostel all singing, all dancing on January the 6th.
On the 7th, we were told that the place would be closing down in May. The staff had known in December but thought it best to let everyone enjoy Christmas, which is a notorious time for relapse.
As the news reverberated through the house, staff kept us upbeat by suggesting that we were potentially in an even stronger position for housing (eleven of the thirteen are homeless, two fear intimidation from local bullies and dealers when they return to their homes).
‘Wandsworth have a duty of care to re-house you, so keep your spirits up,’ they said, white-lipped.
That was until the envelope this morning.
I’d waited five weeks to move into the hostel after completing primary treatment nearby, so I arrived in high spirits, imagining that this would be the final fence to jump to satisfy the authorities that I was genuinely seeking housing.
Having been homeless for a year and a half already, I’ve dreamt of being able to keep a job and a flat. Without the lion’s share of my wages going to a private landlord, I’d stand a good chance of paying maintenance, bills, rent and the rest.
That’s what had always killed me off before, and this was my chance to find a low-rent bolthole.
The last flat I had ended in total chaos. The crash hit and with no work I signed on in December 2008. Utilities and debt started to hike and the maintenance still needed paying, so I sold everything; the work-van, tools, artwork, furniture, cameras, the lot. Then came the loans, the store-cards to pay for the children’s presents, and more hefty loans from family members.
I started to drink heavily when the ex told me I couldn’t see the children unless I paid more maintenance, so I decided to take the plunge and leave the flat. The idea was that I’d sofa-surf, miraculously find a reasonable flatshare, work to top up the maintenance on the sly, and hey presto! I’d be back in the game and off the dole.
After three months, I was a broken man at the YMCA.
I’d have happily signed off to become grey matter but I knew that if I did that, I’d be out of the system completely, unable to qualify for legal aid to fight for the right to see my children.
By this time, I had become acutely aware that their mother suffered from what I believe to be a severe case of parental alienation syndrome, but although one in four children suffers from this heart-wrenching, mind-numbing syndrome in the UK, the justice system still refuses to recognise it. The view of the judiciary is that they have an obligation to safeguard the emotional well-being of the primary carer. With the absent parent a stranger to rights of any kind, the primary carer’s inalienable right to brainwash the children against him is given more time. What the court won’t recognise is that it is the primary carer’s state of mind that is the cause of the children’s emotional abuse. In a scary twist, it is the judiciary that authorise this form of child abuse, leaving the children fatherless and confused.
After years of clever bullying from their mother, in which she quietly distanced me from the affections of my children, I needed treatment for alcohol and cannabis, which have been a problem since I was a teenager.
With a housing association or social housing, I knew I could work and have a roof over my head and be able to invite my children to visit once I had the right to see them.
Some people think I’m strange to want to work when all I have to do is play the game, smile and present myself as suitably downtrodden in order to meet criteria.
But things have changed now. Those days are well gone, mostly due to a lethal concoction of lawless Wild West banking, untenable property inflation, reverse-psychology human rights lobbying, the emotional disempowerment of men, the commercial enslavement and manipualtion of women, the slow denigration of the mind, spiritual disintegration and unprecedented immigration.
When I started treatment four months ago, it was suggested that I do some volunteering so I quickly found a children’s charity that recycles furniture and household items for needy families. I sanded and painted tables, wardrobes, chests of drawers and chairs, but when I returned a week ago, the place was like a morgue.
Only a month ago, I’d served tea to a visiting peer of the realm. Now, staff had handed in their notice.
The cuts know of no boundaries. No one’s safe.
My solicitor called yesterday to tell me that I’d been lucky to get Legal Aid this year, because that too was on its way out. Without representation, I’d perhaps never see my children again.
The other charity I volunteer at has no ties with local government whatever. The owner is a property developer who likes to invite his flock of volunteers along to openings to unveil his flash new developments.
He can never remember our names but I’m sure he sells more units to his well-heeled client-base by exhibiting us as his philanthropic recipients.
The charity shops he rents to himself also acts as a tidy, no-questions-asked tax-loss.
I think I’d better hand my notice in.
To finish, I’ve always wondered about something.
If all the countries in the world are in debt, to whom do they owe the money? Aliens? Some universal head of finance accounting for a renewal on the planet’s lease?
I just couldn’t work it out, and then I heard about Julian Assange receiving two discs from a Swiss banker that held information on offshore accounts apparently containing some £15 trillion (that’s £15 thousand billion!)
It was then that I realised who had all the money. As I’d always known, it was the power elite.
If we do nothing about their corruption, right now, the separation of rich and poor will happen, and when it does we will have a fight on our hands.
Unfortunately, we will be left to fight amongst ourselves once they’ve taken out enough of us.
After that, they will be able to start afresh, the planet their new reconditioned toy.