Help B, a homeless disabled woman who has fled violence

Hi, I’m Rosie. Thanks for being here.

I’ve set up this fundraiser to urgently raise money for my great friend B, a clever, generous, strong and funny gem of a person, who is disabled and vulnerable and trapped in a spiral of homelessness.

We are fighting an ongoing battle for her to be safely rehoused, but in the meantime her fragile health has declined so much that she’s fearful she won’t live much longer without some respite.

It’s heartbreaking, and really scary. She’s only in her 40s.

There’s a long and complex backstory, which I’ll detail below, but the simple and urgent reality right now is:

B will be out on the street if she can’t raise the money to keep a roof over her head.

We need to raise at least £14,000 by the end of September 2024, which will cover her rent for the next six months. (This is the initial goal, although we will probably also need more in the longer term.)

We’ve talked about doing a crowdfunder for a long time, but we held off as it was always a last resort and, to be honest, a daunting prospect both for me and for her.

But she’s now totally desperate and dangerously unwell, and with the system failing her at every turn she is having to look outside the system – so here I am asking for your help.

B is currently renting temporary emergency accommodation in Brighton, having fled unsafe housing in another city where she was put in danger by a negligent Housing Association and subjected to terror, threats and violence.

Since arriving in Brighton, already exhausted, traumatised and injured, she’s lived in seven different temporary places – it’s all had a devastating impact on her health and made her much more disabled than before, and she’s simply too ill to be able to move again now.

Thankfully, the current landlord has agreed to extend her short-term tenancy into a longer term agreement (HURRAH!). However, the rent - incl bills - is £2300 per month (OPPOSITE OF HURRAH!).

In case you were wondering how six months’ rent could add up to £14,000, that's how!

We searched intensively for cheaper flats, but this was the only one that came close to meeting B’s accessibility and mobility needs *and* where the landlord was willing to rent to her. In the middle of this brutal housing crisis, it was like finding a unicorn.

If B can stay where she is for at least six more months, knowing that the rent is covered, she will finally be able to breathe, rest, do vital physiotherapy, and begin to rebuild her health. This will be genuinely life-saving for her.

And please see below if you want to find out more about B’s story; how she’s been forced into this position by the failures of a broken housing system; and our ongoing fight for her right to a safe home.

As mentioned, it’s quite a long and complicated one, so perhaps grab a hot drink and get comfy.

There are also some fun FAQs at the end, for the very curious among you or anyone who wants to try and help in other ways!

Thank you for reading, donating, sharing — and becoming part of the support network, community and safety net for B, a brilliant person who has been given much less than her fair share of all those things in her life.

**If you'd like to add a message of support, that would be lovely as well - if you donate, it will then tell you in your confirmation email how to add words of support. You need to sign in**

[Note: As B is fleeing violence, she's afraid of using her full name or picture – this is why the photo above is of her lovely cat, who she very sadly lost due to the effects of unsafe and unstable housing.]

Here is the longer version of B’s story, with some more background (well, the most relevant bits from the last few years, at least…)

I wanted to give a bit more background here about the events that directly led B to where she is now, because it can be hard to understand how someone could end up in this situation (and also because I am so closely involved with it all that it’s hard for me to tell what would be relevant, or not, to someone reading about it for the first time).

I personally hadn’t seen up close how impossible and cruel the housing system can be to navigate, especially for disabled and vulnerable people, until I saw my brilliant, clever and resourceful friend become completely beaten by it and need to enlist help from everyone around her just to fight for her survival.

B has a genetic connective tissue disorder called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, which means she is in severe pain every day and can easily be seriously injured by dislocating her joints (leaving her housebound or even bedbound for days). It also causes debilitating migraines, brain-fog, and problems with cardio-vascular, digestive, eyesight and other systems in her body. It’s not curable, but she can manage this condition, minimise injuries and slow the overall decline of her health if she has peace, rest, the right appliances to help with domestic tasks, and space to do specialised physio and strengthening exercises (all of which is impossible without - you guessed it - a safe home).

You’ll be aware we are living in a housing crisis, with a major shortage of social housing properties and many barriers to renting privately – especially for disabled people and the socially marginalised, and even more so those who, like B, have no family or wealth to fall back on. It’s basically impossible for her to rent a suitable safe home in the private sector.

Therefore B had to spend years fighting for her right to social housing, while moving from one dangerously inadequate temporary accommodation to another and getting more and more unwell.

Six years ago, after her case was taken up by a lawyer from the homelessness charity Shelter, the city council where she lived was forced to finally officially class her as homeless and recognise their duty to house her.

She was put on the social housing waiting list as an urgent priority due to her complex health needs, but it still took at least three more years for her to be allocated a home.

When she was given a Housing Association flat, it was a moment of huge relief and hope. She kept saying how she couldn’t wait to live in her new home and never have to move again for the rest of her life.

But this flat was not a safe home – it was uninhabitable. That fact hit her like a brick the moment she moved in.

This was due to her nearest neighbour - directly above her - and his extreme antisocial and threatening/violent behaviour (including direct threats to harm B and her cat), debilitating noise at all hours, break-ins to her flat, criminal damage to the property, and drug/gang-related crime and violence including men and women being audibly beaten up in his flat. And much much more.

The Housing Association were already aware of their problem tenant (but had done nothing about it), and were aware of B’s health issues and vulnerabilities, so they categorically should not have housed her in that property.

B had lived in many unsafe places before, out of desperation, but this was on a different scale. It could only be described as torture. It caused an immediate decline in her already fragile health, to the point where she could barely function.

Still, she stayed trapped there for almost 2 years, being forced to neglect her existing health and mobility needs, and all the while fighting for the HA to take action to deal with the situation and protect her.

The HA have not dealt with it, and have behaved shockingly. Even B’s Housing Advocate (who is hardened to this kind of thing) has been shocked and disgusted by their contempt and incompetence. They’ve continuously lied, gaslighted, and failed in their duty to B at every step. They have neither removed the offending neighbour (despite him being in regular trouble with the police, and recently briefly imprisoned for assaulting a woman and an emergency worker), nor offered B a suitable alternative home even though they acknowledged their urgent need to do so over a year ago.

Eventually, unable to survive there any longer, B fled in August 2023. I drove and picked up her, her cat, and as many of her possessions as we could fit into my car, and brought her to Brighton, where she has been living in airbnb/short-term lets at huge expense that she can’t afford, putting her in debt – currently in the region of £30,000.

Her plan had been to seek a couple of months’ rest and recuperation in Brighton, while the official complaints against the HA were resolved and they found her another flat she could move into permanently.

But neither of those things have happened yet, the fight has continued to drag on, and she has recently had to escalate her complaint to the Housing Ombudsman due to the HA stopping responding to her complaints altogether.

So she’s now been here in Brighton for a year and has not had a single chance to recover.

She’s had to move house 7 times in that year, sustaining ever more serious injuries in the process, all while continuing to try to hold the HA to account, and existing in an increasingly debilitating state of panic and trauma from not knowing where she will be living from one month to the next or how much longer she can actually survive through this ordeal.

It feels like it will never end. It’s really frightening to witness, and I can only imagine how it is from the inside.

Not having a permanent home, living in a different city from her official address, and being in a state where she is too ill to function day-to-day, means all of B’s problems and stresses are constantly compounding. It severely limits her ability to access healthcare and other essential services, so it’s a vicious downward spiral. She’s also unable to take care of life admin (including being able to claim or make use of all the disability benefits and social care provision she is entitled to); she has had to abandon most of her possessions; she hasn’t had access to her post for a year (but she suspects that her criminal neighbour has, and that he has been setting up credit cards in her name).

She also can’t maintain friendships and be part of a community, do the physio that she needs to do at home, or even go out for a walk alone as she’s become so weak and risks falling and being injured.

This cycle of homelessness and constant upheaval also caused the very sad death of B’s lovely cat, S (pictured), her beloved companion who died earlier this year as a result of a liver illness which was most likely caused by lily pollen in a supposedly “pet-safe” airbnb. B spent over £2500 on vet bills, but she couldn’t afford scans or access consistent care due to her unstable housing situation (she was even refused the services of the PDSA, an organisation specifically set up to help vulnerable people like her, due to being in a different city from her housing benefits).

B is devastated by the loss of her cat, but she has not been allowed to grieve properly due to the constant state of emergency she is operating in.

It’s also distressing to know that what happened to S is a reflection of what is more slowly being done to B by this lethal cycle of homelessness.

So, here we are: the only option for B at this point is to somehow cover her rent for as long as it takes for her to be permanently rehoused in social housing in Brighton, where she now needs to stay. We hope the Ombudsman will eventually compel the Housing Association to cover B’s rent costs during this period until she’s permanently housed. But that is not a given, and the judgment could take a year.

That’s why, to give B some peace of mind in the meantime, we’re fundraising for at least six months’ rent money and hoping to get more like 12 months’.

So once the initial £14,000 target is met, we will leave this fundraiser open indefinitely to keep on doing its thing and hopefully raise double!

I'm conscious about how much I'm writing here, because I've never seen such a long crowd-funder text, and honestly I feel a bit silly about that... but I can’t see any other way of putting it across. In fact, what I’ve said here barely scratches the surface.

I've been alongside B throughout this whole years-long process, and it’s much too complex to tell in full here due to the mind-boggling array of multi-systemic failures and negligence from so-called "services" that has led to this point.

That’s how vulnerable people like B become invisible – the story becomes so long and complicated, so farcical and unbelievable, that it’s impossible to tell.

We’ve involved advocates (shout out to B's current housing advocate who is an absolute godsend and will be the reason we win this when we eventually do), lawyers, the council, police, MPs, and many more authorities and services, and nobody has been able to put an end to this harrowing ordeal yet. Everybody says they are working towards a resolution, but the processes are broken, and in the meantime B stays in limbo.

With all the paid professional hours that have been spent not sorting this out, they could have bought her a new flat.

But instead, she has no life to speak of, and she hasn’t been able to properly eat, sleep or exercise in years, so her already fragile health is destroyed and getting worse every day.

Frankly it is amazing, and a testament to B's incredible grit, strength and ingenuity, that she has battled and continued to live through this for as long as she has. But nobody should ever have to exist like that.

B comes from a tough background, and has faced a lot of trauma and obstacles in her life, but she managed to overcome it all, travel the world, and have a varied career as a professional journalist, artist and teacher - all before she was 40. No challenge was insurmountable... until she tried to access safe housing or have any of her basic needs met since becoming disabled. This is the hardest thing she’s ever tried to do.

I have become acutely aware, when I see people who are street homeless, that they all have a story and that probably the only difference between B and them is that their last pillar of support fell away.

I am determined to stay here as that last pillar for as long as it takes (as are B’s other close friends who help to support her), but often it feels totally hopeless and overwhelming.

Because I’ve been lucky (touch wood) with my own good health and affordable housing, and I’m self-employed, I’ve been able to reduce my workload so I can support B with time and energy, practical help, advocacy and moral support – but this is not sustainable forever for me, and it’s also not the solution that B needs.

Besides, this situation has now reached the stage where it comes down to cold hard cash, and quite a lot of it!

So this is why we've now had to cast the net wider and ask you for your support as well.

This housing ordeal is just a snippet of the incredible challenges and experiences that B has lived through. We’ll have to save the rest for the books that she will hopefully write one day – when she’s safely housed, rested up, accessing healthcare to manage her disability, and able to give her amazing talents to the world once again.

FAQs (nearly there now!)

OMG so glad you asked! Please read on…

Yes please - let’s talk!

Yes please - let’s talk!

Seriously though. If anyone would agree to rent B a property - or donate the money for her to buy one outright - that she could live in until her death and never have to move house again, that would save her life. (There’s a reason why this is the aim of social housing - if only there was enough of it, and the organisations administering it were fit for purpose). You could make an agreement to have it back after she’s gone. Or alternatively, B has all sorts of ideas (did I mention that she’s a totally excellent genius?!) about how if she had a flat, she would then ensure that after her death it was left in trust to a grassroots homelessness organisation or privately passed on to another vulnerable disabled homeless person.

Asking for £325,000 or a flat is a huge thing to do, obviously. Obviously! And therefore it’s not the primary ask of this fundraiser - but we can’t help imagining a world in which it’s possible to put an end to this ordeal in one very big, but very simple, stroke.

Yes please - let’s talk!

Yes please - let’s talk!

Sure - we can keep you really busy! Let’s talk!

[Ok so, full disclosure: those ones above aren’t technically questions that we’ve been “frequently asked”... but would love it if someone did!]

B has Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a rare genetic connective tissue disorder. More info: https://www.ehlers-danlos.org/. Her other diagnoses include complex PTSD.

B previously lived in Brighton for about 20 years, before she was forced to move away in 2017 following a no-fault eviction from her privately rented flat and then a period of sofa-surfing, short-term rentals and effectively hidden homelessness due to the housing crisis. She then took an offer of work and accommodation in a new city, but six months later another no-fault eviction set in motion a combination of failing health, homelessness and ultimately the events outlined in the story above. Due to her fragile health, combined with the PTSD from what she has endured, B is now heavily dependent on her support network in Brighton (that’s me and a few other close friends) and can’t really be anywhere else.

If we do manage to find another flat in a few months’ time that is cheaper and meets B’s needs more effectively than this current one, and IF she has recovered enough to be able to move again, she will cross that bridge when she comes to it. She’s acutely aware of needing to stretch any funds raised as far as they can go, but she can only prioritise that once her health has recovered to a safer level.

Because she is fleeing violence, it would put her in danger. We are hoping this fundraiser will get shared far and wide in order to raise as much money as possible. Therefore there’s a massive risk of the wrong people seeing it.

There’s also, to a lesser degree, a need to disguise some details of her circumstances from her current landlord. This is a shame as the LL genuinely seems a very lovely and reasonable person, but sadly B has learnt the hard way that people can get confused and spooked by her complex and harrowing backstory - or misunderstand what it means to be disabled and on benefits - and feel it might be easiest not to be involved with her and withdraw their offer of a home. The stakes are too high to risk that. So she needs to just ensure she always has the money to pay the rent and keeps an air of mystique.

Due to ongoing criminal investigations into the neighbour, as well as B’s accusations and formal complaints about the Housing Association’s misconduct and negligence, we can’t name the city due to the risk of identifying either of those parties and fear of recriminations or jeopardising those processes.

Yes - unbelievably, yes she is. It seems there’s no obvious way to opt out of this without losing her right to social housing.

Currently, it looks like all the money raised will just be going towards renting privately in Brighton while B waits to be permanently housed. There is a chance that the Housing Association will be forced to repay B that money - plus more for distress and damages - once the lengthy dispute is resolved by the Ombudsman, but even IF that happens, there are still tonnes of important things that B needs money for in order to get her life back on track. These include:

• repaying the debts incurred during the last year of temporary accommodation

• urgent healthcare

• disability equipment

• a service dog to help her have quality of life in future

• private healthcare on an ongoing basis (because her condition is complex and not easily treated on the NHS).

Ironically, one of B’s first tasks on the to-do list for when she moved into a safe home was to set up a crowd funder for her healthcare needs. But due to this housing emergency, all that focus had to be diverted to fundraising for a roof over her head. So once she is safely housed, she will still need to start the process of accessing and paying for crucial healthcare treatments.

That, I think, is actually the end of this thing.

If you’ve read this far, I love you and I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and so does B. And we do have big hearts, in spite of everything, so that is really a lot of thanks.

<3

Rosie (and B)