My Flat Viewing

Part 7
A Real Life Game Of Would You Rather

At some point in the viewing, for some still unknown reason, that I can only speculate on, Phil decided to tell me that immediately after I signed my tenancy agreement for my flat, my ESA would be stopped, so that I could be swapped over to universal credit, as the property was in a universal credit post code, and that the process of swapping someone from ESA to universal credit usually took around two months.

As soon as he told me this, I began to panic. However, I just about managed to hold it together enough that I didn’t melt down, at least not at first, because the postcode he gave me when saying the flat was in a universal credit post code, was not the properties actual post code.

For example- If the post code of the property was L1, he sat it was L20.
(These aren’t the real post codes, rather the postcodes I will use here, in this post as a stand in for the real postcodes.)

When I pointed this out to him, he exploded on me in this really weird way, where he didn’t shout at me, rather he very forcefully put me in my place, while both staring at me in disgust, yet managing to also be wearing a furious expression.

The best way I can describe it, is that his reaction made it very clear to me that his opinion was that he was above me in social standing, and that I had no right to question him.

It was, as I believe he intended it to be, very intimidating.

He said it didn’t matter that the post code he had given me was L20 but the actual post code of the property was actually L1, because both those postcodes covered the same area. This directly contradicted his entire reason for why me ESA would be stopped, which was that ESA and universal credit are post code, not area, dependant.

If I could have dropped the subject, I would have, but I couldn’t, because he had basically just told me I had to choose between having money and being homeless and having a home but no money.

This is a choice nobody should be forced to make, but especially not a person who has recently been discharged from hospital after being section for a failed suicide attempt.

Much more timidly, I explained my situation to Phil, then requested that he please check that the information he had just given me was correct.

Again, he forcefully insisted that he didn’t have to check, because he knew the information he had given me was correct.

This is when I began to cry, but I still wasn’t hysterical, just overly teary eyed.

I turned to my mum and addressed her only, and nobody else, telling her I didn’t know what to do, because if refused the property I would be removed from property pool, but if I accepted it, I wouldn’t be able to cope financially, and therefore mentally.

Nobody allowed my mum to reply.

The cleaner must have a psychiatric degree, seeing as, according to him, people just have to tough out difficult stuff sometimes.

The word impossible, rather than difficult, would have been an understatement when describing this situation LHM were more than happy to put me in.

I wounder if he would have felt as qualified to give a wheelchair user the same advice on walking up a hundred flights of stairs every day for two months.

Clara agreed with him, because everybody these days is a mental health expert, yet nobody seems to understand that mental health and mental illness aren’t the same, while being adamant a person disabled by mental illness should be able to do what a mentally capable person would struggle to do.

Sighing before he responded in a pissed off voice, Phil asked why I wouldn’t be able to cope, as though my reaction was completely out of order.

In my, more qualified opinion, being the only person there that day who has a mental illness, obviously based on their reactions, even a mentally well person would have been upset by the choice I was facing, so to me either option was literally a death sentence, as I am not a well person, I am a disabled person, due to serious mental illness.