Complaint to Torus

section one

part 3

written in 2022

From very early on in my tenancy, I notified you that I was being discriminated against by Phil Campbell, because I am mentally disabled, and that he also belittled my disability, as well as being generally unprofessional.

Every time I reported this I was told I was not being discriminated against, and that I would not be provided with an alternative point of contact as Phil was the tenancy officer for my flat, which was very distressing.

Suspecting that discrimination and abuse on the level I was experiencing it could not be hidden, I put in a subject access request and got back evidence of what I had been telling you all along, which was that Phil had been discriminating against me since my flat viewing. I believe this evidence is a very small fraction of the discrimination I was being subjected to by Phil within your office walls. If Phil felt safe to put his discrimination in emails, which he did, what did he feel safe to verbally say knowing that there would be no permanent record?

I don’t see how you were not aware of this behaviour. Either you didn’t care, or you made no attempt to investigate.

Therefore, you as an organisation have not only discriminated against me, but have allowed me to be abused by a person in authority, because I am vulnerable.

If I was in a wheelchair and I reported disability discrimination, would it have been taken more seriously?

How about if I was black, and reported a racist housing officer?

I don’t want answers these questions, they are for you as an organisation to examine?

You will find no matter how you answer these questions you as an organisation are in the wrong.

If you wouldn’t have taken these other examples seriously, then you are knowingly allowing your staff to abuse all vulnerable people.

And if you would have taken these other examples seriously, as an organisation you are saying you too do not believe the mentally disabled should be treated with respect, or given appropriate rights to disability support, and disability suitable accommodation, and that it is fine for your staff to abuse and mock us.

It is obvious that Phil himself was aware that his behaviour was unacceptable, as he tried twice to avoid sending me the information that I requested via my subject access request.

Personally, I feel his discrimination of me is criminal, in and of itself. Isn’t disability discrimination illegal?

However, it is my legal right to access my data, isn’t willingly attempting to deny me my legal rights a crime?

So what is trying to deny me my legal rights to cover up discrimination?

If I took this and the evidence I have to say a solicitor, what would they make of it do you think?

In my first subject access request, I asked for everything you held on me.

What Phil sent me was just letters I had handed into yourselves.

Therefore, I was forced to send in a second request listing specifically what I was after.

Phil then sent an email complaining that I had been given what I requested within the timescale stated to somebody (information redacted – why wasn’t I sent this persons emails about me? Is it because you still haven’t actually provided me with everything as I requested? If you haven’t why? I am the subject of these emails, so I am entitled to them. What are you hiding? If I got a solicitor to send you a DSAR asking for everything you hold on me, would I actually get it this time? – I would like everything you hold on me as it is my right under the subject access request laws. Everything. Absolutely everything. this is a data subject access request for everything you hold on me. And I would like somebody other than Phil Campbell, or anybody named in this complaint, meaning an impartial third party to deal with it.)

This is a lie.

Therefore, Phil is a liar.

This email seems to be a request from Phil to ignore as he puts it “what he finds excessive to say the least,” as though his opinion matters in this case. The law states I can request it. Therefore it is not excessive. However, it has been proven that it was not excessive because I got what I expected – evidence of Phil’s discrimination, belittling, and unprofessionalism.

This email is proof that Phil is unprofessional. It is it is his job to deal with DSARs, and I expect to do so without complaining about it and trying to get out of it.

Phil knew I was going to get proof of what I had been saying all along about him, and he tried to prevent that happening.

Complaint to Torus

section one

part 2

However, I believe you were aware of the existence of this document all along, due to the fact that just days after filling out the request, Phil Campbell made allegations that my mother was verbally abusive to him on several occasions, which was not true.

Either, Phil Campbell is unable to differentiate between a person raising their voice because they are distressed, and a person raising their voice because they are being aggressive and/or abusive, or he was simply unwilling to deal with me and/or my mother, and no longer had what he believed was a valid excuse not to speak to us -denying me the support I need, because I am severely disabled, which is my mother speaking to yourselves on my behalf, knowing if he did this I was incapable if doing it myself and therefore he didn’t have to deal with us.

Regardless of which it is, Phil Campbell is not suited to his role, which I am sure brings him in to contact with many vulnerable disabled people every day. He is a danger to those people.

I do not believe it was a coincidence that Phil made these allegations just 21 days after that request was stamped by yourselves.

My mother admits that she raised her voice on the phone, but it was because she was distressed by having to deal with Phil Campbell, we both were (and I’m going to go into why later in this complaint).

As for the incident he says occurred in March, it didn’t happen at all. Me and my mother have never screamed Phil’s name out in the reception, why would we when we had been asking for anybody else to deal with instead? We had made it clear that we needed another point of contact. We literally wanted nothing to do with this man, as evidenced by your letter, where you say he will still be dealing with us.

There was no CCTV of this incident. And, I am sure if it had indeed happened, we would have been asked to leave the office, a record of the event would have been officially made by the staff who witnessed it, and Phil would have refused to deal with us then, as it was blatant, and had been for a long time, that he was looking for any excuse not to deal with us.

You state in this letter that I would still be able to contact you, but I was not able to contact you, as I am severely disabled, and part of my disability is that I have severe communication difficulties. Even if this wasn’t the case with my communication difficulties, I could not have dealt with Phil Campbell myself as he was discriminating against me because of my disability, which was terribly distressing for both me and my mother.

You also stated that I would need to arrange for another family member or friend to help me if I needed to come into the office. I have nobody else. You were aware of this. You asked me several times who I had to support me before I moved into this flat and after, and we told you nobody. I believe I would never have been moved into this flat if I had other people to support me. I believe you saw two vulnerable, disabled women and decided to take advantage of the situation, and put me here in this flat you knew was an awful unsuitable place, knowing that we had nobody to help us, and so I would be stuck here in this flat you were unable to rent to anybody else.

If during this six months, say my boiler had stopped working, I would have had no choice but to go without heating or hot water for however long it took me to feel up to contacting yourselves, and if I had then struggled to communicate with your staff in a way your staff felt was “appropriate” I might have just been hung up on, and had to go however long it was before I felt up to calling again. I do not mean hours to days, which would have been bad enough, I mean weeks to months.

You put me in a very dangerous situation, because you sided with a man in a position of power and authority over me with very little evidence to back him up, who was making false, malicious claims about me and my mother because he dislikes mentally disabled people, and in doing so you contributed to his discrimination and abuse of me, and put me in a very dangerous situation where I was cut off from you for six months.

Complaint to Torus

Section one

Disability Discrimination by my housing officer

Part 1

For several years, you denied me the right to appoint my mother as a point of contact on the basis that I am the tenant, even though I am severely disabled, and one of the reasons I am classed as such is because I struggle to communicate with other people.

In particular, Phil Campbell insisted that he would not deal with a third party on my behalf under any circumstances, while also stating that if I struggled to communicate with him when needing to speak to him, he would not deal with me, which is discrimination alone.

After filling out a request in your office, in the presence of a staff member, stating that I authorise my mother to deal with you, which was also dictated by the staff member and stamped, you then claimed no such authorisation existed, and yet, it has been sent to me as part of my subject access request.

Not only has this caused me difficulties and distress with having no choice but to try to communicate with you, it has restricted my access to get help with things when I desperately needed it.

A better look

On moving day, after the moving company left, and I finally got to have a good look around, I was shocked to find that the flat was much filthier than I thought it was on the day of the viewing.

As we tried to clean, it became obvious there were bigger issues than simple dirt, and the longer I lived there, the more I learned those issues included several life-threateninginfestations.

All of my guesses at what the crap covering everything was, was certainly correct to a point, for example, the inside of the toilet was covered in human waste, so I expect the outside was to some extent too, however what other parts of the crap was, I never could have imagined because I had never lived in a slum before becoming a Torus tenant.

Now I know the bath and tiles in the bathroom weren’t dirty, they were mouldy, as were the blinds in the bedroom, which I couldn’t replace, due to the window they were covering also being mouldy, and in such a bad condition we couldn’t get it off.

Probably, predicably, the carpet didn’t look like it had been cleaned, but that could also have been mould, and it was infested with flees.

There were bloody handprints smeared along one of the walls in the bedroom. I found the source of this blood when the flees forced me to rip up the carpet. Whoever had fitted it, had cut themselves badly on the carpet grips, bled all over the flat, and never cleaned it up. And just to show you how much blood had not been cleaned up, it was obvious they cut themselves in the Livingroom, yet there were puddles of dried blood all over the hallway and bedroom floor, underneath the carpet.

Behind the door in the bathroom was a heated towel rail that was so rusty we couldn’t remove it all.

The entire flat was covered in either male body hair, pubes, or a combination of both.

When we were cleaning the kitchen, I noticed these hard, weird black lumps that sort of resembled instant coffee grounds, but which felt like they were glued down, and theywere in only the lower cupboards and not the cupboards up on the wall. The reason for that, I found out later, was because it was mouse crap. Which means the brown puddles next to it must have been mouse piss.

The first time I tried to open the top draw of the kitchen cabinet, it fell off and almost took my toes off with it, it smashed me in the foot that hard.

The previous tenant had left behind grimy, rusty pans, a mouldy shower curtain, and a virgin media box, none ofwhich Torus removed, because the probably never even inspected the flat before letting me view it, or after.

Reassurances

During the viewing, Phil, the housing officer, must have caught me either staring at the mystery crap stains in the kitchen, or pulling a disgusted face as I accidently touched one, because he assured me the flat would be clean when I moved in.

Like an idiot I believed him, even though with hindsight it seems obvious it wouldn’t be, as it should have been clean when I viewed it.

And as if to confirm he was telling the truth, a man carrying a vacuum cleaner turned up while I was there and said he was going to clean the carpet.

What I noticed about the condition of the flat at my viewing

The bathroom

Around the base of the toilet, on the lid of the toilet seat and around the toilet was, was black and brown chunky dirt, that resembled faeces.

There were orange and black grimy looking stains all over the bath and on the white tiles around the bath.

Over the sink, on the black tiles, were hard yellow lumps which appeared to be glue.

I did not go inside the bathroom, just observed from the doorway.

The bedroom

Another room that I did not go inside and just observed from the doorway, was the bedroom.

Other than the blinds, which looked dirty, from the outside, the rest of the room looked fine, and I planned on getting my own curtains anyway.

The kitchen

Although the kitchen work tops were darkly coloured, so hid most of the crap that was on them, I could tell it was there, as they were sticky wherever and whenever I touched them, and the cabinet doors, which are a lighter fake wood design, were splattered in crap, in a variety of different colours.

The living room

Like the bedroom, the living room appeared pretty much ok, other than some paint that was missing from the wall where it seemed a TV had been mounted.

The carpet

Excluding the bathroom and kitchen, the entire floor of the flat was carpeted in this dirty looking white shag carpet.

A successful suicide on Gubbys third floor

It happened just before the implosion of the penthouse crew.

When Mel told me about it, she claimed it had traumatised her. Yet, to me, she seemed completely unaffected by it, but I acknowledge that my judgement of her here would be both ignorant and hypocritical. After all, I am apparently empathy impaired meaning I struggle to, and sometimes cant, read peoples emotions and intentions, and due to my borderline personality disorder, I don’t behave how people expect a person to behave, ever, but especially in stressful situations.

It happened, if I remember correctly, on a Saturday morning. The residents from Gubbys other third floor, which was where Mel lived, had been out the previous night in central London.

The girl whose screaming woke the entire third floor that morning had brough her boyfriend along, as he was visiting her that weekend.

By the time Mel, who lived opposite her, made it into the corridor, several of her neighbours were already out there, trying without success to force open the unlocked door of the room the screaming was coming from.

“She’s behind the door, and she wont move,” one of Mel’s neighbours explained.

Another was speaking to the girl behind the door, trying to find out what was wrong, and persuade her to move away from the door.

Mel was a larger woman, both tall and sturdy, yet even when she charged the door, it didn’t budge.

It took several of the largest women to open the door just wide and long enough for the smallest of the group to squeeze through.

What she found inside had caused her to leave university, because she most definitely was traumatised.

At some point during the night, while his girlfriend slept, the vising boyfriend had hung himself from the hinge of the door, which made sure it shut and locked behind you.

Panicking, she had pulled open the door while he was still hanging there, desperate to flee, but instead closing the hinge, which severed whatever it was he had used to hang himself, causing him to fall on top of her.

Ways in which it was obvious my flat was not suitable for me part 1 Its a perfect place to hang yourself

Despite housing options being adamant that they would not take my disabilities into consideration when rehousing me, which they didn’t, they did inform LMH that I had recently been sectioned for a failed suicide attempt.

I also told them this, at the viewing.

Yet, there are several places both inside my flat and in the communal area, that are perfect places to hang yourself from.

1. The stairs in the communal hallway.

The staircase in the communal hallway has a metal banister, and no mesh guard on the first floor. This means that unlike a wooden banister, that you would have in a normal home, it wont break under the weight of an adult, and because there’s no guard rail you can jump over the banister, possibly snapping your neck in the process of hanging yourself. However, there is a bend in the staircase in between the ground floor and first floor that is high enough for five foot me to hang myself from.

 

2. The closing hinge on my front door

The is a reason psychiatric hospitals do not have those v shaped hinges at the top of doors that make sure the door closes behind you, which the one on my front door doesn’t even do, so it is useless, unless of course you want to hang yourself from it, which bring us full circle as to why these types of hospitals don’t have them, they are perfect to hang yourself from.

In fact, I knew of a person who successfully hung themselves from one of these before I was even sectioned the first time.

3.The heated towel rail in the bathroom.

4. The weird square handle on my cupboard door in the hallway.

Journal Entry

Saturday 14th October 2023

I have taken a quick look at my first few complaint entries, which I wrote in 2022.

It seems I thought that the best place to begin was with my first housing officer, Phil, and how he discriminated against me because I am disabled and abused me.

Current me agrees this is the best place to start. However, while doing this I believe I need to include information not relevant to this part of my complaint, rather to the part about the condition and suability of my flat, because both Phil and LMH completely ignored all this when they should not have at the time they offered me the flat and allowed me to move in.

So, here is my current plan on how I am going to approach my complaint.

First, I am going to talk about the parts relevant to the conditions and suitability of my property that both LMH anPhil ignored, which were obvious issues at the time of my viewing and when I moved in.  These will likely be straight to the point lists.

Then I am going to tell you about my first housing officer. This will probably be in my usual style of autobiographical stories.

After which, I am going to go straight into my complaint about my housing officer, including any evidence I currently have.

Dissociation Type 2 The out of body experience

The second type of dissociation I experience is much stranger, and is the “out of body type”, which is apparently common among suffers of borderline personality disorder.

What isn’t common apparently, the way I experience it.

Others say that during this type of dissociation, they watch themselves do things from outside their own body.

For me, it is how I image a playable game character must feelwhen somebody is playing as them. It is as though I am trapped inside my body, while somebody else is controlling it.

Dissociation Type 1.D Floating memories

So, finally, here it is, the new form of memory dissociation, that writing my post about my flat viewing caused me to discover I have, and what has made it impossible to write about so far, I have floating memories that my brain can’t put in order at all.

The only way I currently have to describe it, which I admit doesn’t come close to explaining well what I am experience, is if we use the alphabet method.

I have the event, in an order I am not sure is correct, which is let’s say –

BDOSGKXRQ

But I also have

The number one, a triangle shape and the colour blue.

When I recall the viewing in my mind, my mind tells me things happened in an order I am not sure is correct, but there are other memories that are definitely from the viewing that I cant place at all, just floating along the event timeline searching for the place they fit but never finding it.

Recovered memories

Doctors have told me this type of dissociation, meaning dissociation that effects your memories, is caused when your brain purposely chooses to hide memories from you.

As I understand it, my brain makes the memory, retains the memory, but buries the memory for whatever reason.

Whether this is true, I’m not qualified to confirm.

However, based on my own experience, I would say it probably is true, as I have at least one recovered memory.

This is a missing piece of the episode that led me to be sectioned in 2018,d and was missing up until around 2020 or 2021 when it hit me how I imagine flashbacks hit people.

Dissociation Type 1.c A single event with missing and/or mixed up pieces

By the August of 2018, when I was sectioned for the second time, I was experiencing another form of this type of dissociation, which seems to occur exclusively as a result ofsevere borderline episodes, at least in my case.

This form does not affect me in the moment. Instead, it affects me when I recall the even, whether that be on purpose oraccidentally. When I do, pieces of the episode are missing and/or mixed up.

If you want an example of when this has happened to me, in regards to the missing pieces, you should read my story about the second time I was sectioned.

In regards to both the missing and missed up pieces, this will be discussed in my post about my flat viewing, which I am currently in the process of writing, and which prompted me to write todays posts.

However, I am still going to explain how this affects me here, just using a different technique to an anecdote.

During the time I was sectioned in 2018, I was told by a student psychiatric nurse that these types of episodes are common in patients with bi polar disorder, and that I described them in the most understand and accurate way anybody had ever descried it to him, this is the way am about to describe it to you now,

Imagine my episode is the alphabet-

Sometimes the memories I have of it are similar to-

B D G K O Q R S X

Whereas sometimes the memories I have of the are similar to-

B D O S G K X R Q

Dissociation Type 1.B Memories that I don’t even know are missing until I find evidence the that event I’m missing took placeA series event

Around the time I was diagnosed as having borderline personality disorder, I was having thoughts that did not feel like mine, that in the moment I found funny and euphoric, which told me to

1. Slit my throat.

2. 2. Set myself on fire

3. Set my house on fire, lock myself in the bathroom, then set myself on fire.

One trigger in particular, was opening my post.

I would sit there sometimes for hours staring at my post trying to fight these thoughts, that wordlessly, told me, I did not have to open my post, as I could open my throat instead.

When I came out of these episodes, I was understandably frightened and distressed by them.

On the morning of the day I was last sectioned, I put the post that had just arrived on the pile of unopened post that lived on my coffed table. It was a mess of a pile, completely disorganised and scattered, with other items unintentionally mixed into it. As I placed the new letters on top, the pile shifted, and as the letters began to fall, a knife slid out.

Horrified, because I knew, I had sat there prepared, or preparing, to end my life instead of opening my post, but having no memory of that event, I decided I needed to go to psychiatrist crisis team right then.

Dissociation Type 1.B Memories that I don’t even know are missing until I find evidence the that event I’m missing took place

Quite possibly the scariest form of this type of dissociation, at least that I have experienced, is having no memory that an entire event even happened until I stumble upon evidence of ithappening.

It begs the question-
What things have I done, or what things have happened to me, that I will never know, that I did, or that it happened?

These events can be as mundane as doing a load of whaling, or as serious as a suicide attempt.

Dissociation Type 1.B Memories that I don’t even know are missing until I find evidence the that event I’m missing took placeExample of a mundane event

As you may know, if you follow me on social media, I took up cross stitching the July of 2022.

A few weeks ago, I was working on a larger piece, which I was only a few hours away from completing, and I had picked out the next piece I wanted to do.

After a really stressful couple of days, I decided to do some cross stitching to try to calm myself down.

When I went to pick up my almost finished piece, it wasn’t there. In its place was the piece I planned to start next, and it had a good few hours of work put into it.

Now, even more stressed than I had previously been, I looked inside the box where I keep my finished pieces, and there it was, folded neatly on top of the pile.

GP’s Don’t Give A F*ck

For weeks, the event I’ve just recounted plagued me. I couldn’t stop thinking about it and how scary it was that I had been walking around in public doing stuff I had no memory of doing.

Eventually, I went to my GP surgery, and saw a doctor, who we’ll call doctor Harding , because I actually think that washis name. I described the event and the impact it was having on me in great detail.

His response was that I was just tired, and he didn’t seem even slightly concerned.

Still, to this day, I wonder what happened during my first experience of missing time.

DissociationSubsection 1.aA fully missing chunk of time, that I realise is missing during the event itself -Example

To set the scene

Me, and my then boyfriend, were buying a house on a very stressfully rent to buy scheme when this took place.

This scheme gave us six months to save up a six thousand pounds deposit, while living in, and paying rent on the property, at a reduced rate.

If we did not have the six thousand pounds for the deposit by the end of the six months, we would lose both the house, and our credit ratings.

What made this period of my life worse, was that as soon as entered into this agreement with the property developers, my previously friendly colleagues began to bully me.

The event

(Which, I am going to tell in exactly the way it felt like it happened to me.)

On this particular day, I had not had time to make a lunch for work, so being both on a tight budget, and at this time being an undiagnosed binge eater, I decide it would be sensible to take just enough money with me to buy a sandwich and a bottle of water.

I left the office, went downstairs, outside, and next door, to the Sainsbury’s, where I had gone regularly to buy my lunch before being on such a tight budget. I headed straight for the “meal deals” section, grabbed a sandwich and bottle of water, but not a snack, as I didn’t want a meal deal, then joined the queue.

Sitting back down at my desk, I immediately realise something was wrong. Not only did I have the sandwich and the water, I also had snacks and all the money I had taken with me. 

What I did not have, was a receipt and memory of being served.

This caused me to panic.

What had happened between me joining the queue, and sitting back down at my desk?

More importantly, had I paid for my food?

There are probably thousands of scenarios, I just can’t imagine, that could have led to me having my food and the money I took with me, but in the moment all I could think was that I must have left without paying for them.

Because this was the first time I had ever experienced this type of dissociation, I was an emotional mess. With a mixture of fear, worry and distress, fuelling me, I gathered my items and ran back to the Sainsburys.

When I asked the cashiers if I had just been served, one of them actually remembered serving me.

Part of me felt so relieved, I wanted to cry.

Another part of me wanted to request to see the CCTV, to see how the event had played out, but I knew I would be allowed to, and the cashiers were already looking at me like I was weird, so I just thanked them and left.

DissociationSubsection 1.aA fully missing chunk of time, that I realise is missing during the event itself

Since before I had a mental illness diagnosis, I have suffered with, and been aware I suffer with missing time, that takes a few different forms.

The first form this takes, is that I realise I am missing a chunk of time while still in the even the chunk of time is missing from.

I have been told by doctors that this is a very common form of dislocation.

DissociationType A – Memory Problems

Explaining dissociation in an understandable way, can be extremely difficult. It’s hard to not only get across the severity of dissociation in comparison to normal, everyday memory loss, but also the severity of the impact it has on your life, as well as your mental and emotional state. For these reasons, I have decided it would be best to explain how this type of dissociation impacts me in subsections, then, where needed give examples of when it happened to me, or how it affects my memories in general.

DissociationWhy here? Why now?

Before I go any further with my autobiographical stories and complaint regarding Torus housing, I need to talk about a symptom of my illness, called dissociation, and how it affects me.

There are two ways, right now, that I am aware of it impacting me, and I am going to discuss both, however, at the moment, only “Type A” is important for you to understand while you are reading my posts directly preceding and following todays. I have spoken about this type before on my blog, if I remember correctly, it was on my post regarding my second suicide attempt (when I count my suicide attempts, I only count those I have been sectioned for, which is two. I won’t explain why now, but I will in the future) which happened very close to the events I am currently writing about.

So, why do I want to discuss it again?

Several reasons-

1. I don’t want to keep repeating myself, and I’m sure you don’t want me to keep repeating myself…

2. Also, it takes me off topic.

If I write a stand-alone post on it, I can add the link as and when it needs explaining, then new readers can follow the link if they want to.

3.While writing my account of what happened at my flat viewing, I discovered a new way “Type A” effect my memories, which has made it very difficult to write.

If I have a stand-alone post and this happens again, it will make it much easier for me to add new information.

4. I want to document how my illness affects me, while it is affecting me, for advocacy and educational purposes.

With all that said, let’s get started.

Housing Options update -2

 

Also, I remembered I requested information on how to get a DSAR from them, and they did not get back to me, so I will be following that u as I believe they aren’t allowed to ignore my request.

Overview of my experience with housing options

These are my thoughts since writing about housing options.

1. The city council staff are referring vulnerable people to them without being honest as to why, what it does, or that it is the city council.

2. They are turning people away who meet their criteria for help.

3. Their staff either don’t have the correct, or adequate, training in what disabilities are and the appropriate support needs for certain disabilities, or they are choosing to ignore disabled people, and their support needs.

4. Five years on, because they chose not to take into consideration that I am disabled, and need appropriate disability accommodation, I am in a much worse situation that I would have been if I had allowed them to refuse me help like they wanted to.

Housing Options update – 1

After I wrote about what happened with housing options, I attempted to do some research on them. I did not find much but here is what I found-

1. They are Liverpool City Council, and not a separate organisation.

2. They should have helped me without acting like they were giving me special treatment as I was sure that the house was going to go into the process of being sold within eight weeks, as we had already had repeat viewings by the same people at this point.

 

I was correct about this, and I had to leave as soon as the process began.

If you would like to learn more about housing options, heres a link to their page on the government website.

https://liverpool.gov.uk/housing/homeless-or-at-risk/at-risk-of-becoming-homeless/

What I Overheard

For this short post, we are going to jump ahead by around a month, to the day I signed my tenancy agreement with LMH.

What I overheard, that morning while I was sat waiting for my appointment, confirms everything I speculated on in my previous posts, about the city council enabling housing associations to abuse vulnerable people.

When this happened, I honestly didn’t know what to make of it, in terms of whether the potential tenant was telling the truth. Regrettably, if you had asked me to guess, having no experience as a Torus tenant yet, and growing up in a housing association property that was immaculate, I would have guessed she must be lying. Mainly though, what would have swayed me more than anything else, would have been my incorrect belief that housing associations would not have been allowed to rent out dangerous properties.

The woman in question, arrived visibly upset, pushing what appeared to an almost newborn baby in a pram. She was very young. She looked to me to be in the age range of sixteen to eighteen years old.

Despite being a literal child and extremely distressed, she managed to explain her predicament particularly well to the advisor at the public help desk. Her and her daughter (the baby in the pram) where homeless and currently living in a homeless shelter, which we can all agree, is no place for either a teenager or a newborn baby. LMH had offered her a flat, which she did not bid on, and when she went to view it, it had a serious damp and mould issue in the bedroom.Understandably, because a damp and mouldy flat is not a safe place for a newborn baby to be, she had refused the offer.LMH had then gone to property pool and claimed that this literal child, who was doing what was best for her newborn baby, had refused a perfectly good property. As a result of this, because she was in band A, property pool had removed her from their website, basically sentencing these two literal children to indefinite homelessness.

When she complained about the state of the property she had been offered by LMH to property pool, to try to get back on their website, they told her that she needed to get LMH to notify them that the property they had offered her was not suitable for her, which is why she was there that morning, to request that they admit to property pool the flat they offered her was unsafe.

From what she said I immediately understood the situation she was saying they had put her in, which I now believe they had, and what she was requesting they do, yet the advisor didn’t seem to, as she kept referring the girl back to property pool, adamant that not only would they not have let her view a flat in that condition, but what ever problem she was now facing was a property pool issue, not an LMH issue.

Now, I know, due to my experience with Torus and the state of my flat not only when I viewed it but when I moved in, the advisor understood perfectly well the predicament this girl was in as a direct result of their actions, she just didn’t care.

She did not care that these two literal children were now going to be indefinitely homeless because Torus tried to take advantage of the fact they were vulnerable, and she didn’t let them.

What would baffle me about this, if I wasn’t aware of how petty and vindictive Torus staff, and Torus as an organisation are, is why they would turn away what was seemingly a long-term tenant. They could easily have offered her something suitable, right? But, they didn’t, because all their properties are dirty, run down, dangerous slums, which is how they want them, probably because it means less work and more profit for them, and if you try to defend yourself against their abusethey will punish you in any way they can.

Even if you are literal children.

My Experience With Direct Matches in 2018

Direct matches, in regards to housing associations, are when a housing association directly offers you a property that matches your needs, without you bidding on it.

At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work, apparently.

However, as you have probably guessed, that’s not the case.

In my experience, what they actually do, is identify the most vulnerable people and offer them hard to let properties.

I was extremely vulnerable when I was offered the flat that I am now going to die because-

• I’m disabled mentally.

• Had just tried to kill myself.

• Had just lost my job due to my mental disability.

• Was losing the house I owned due to both domestic abuse and losing my job.

Direct matches are the other part of how I ended up in this dangerous and disability unsuitable property.

Torus offered me this a direct match, and as you know form my property pool post about 2018, I had no right to refuse it, and if I had, I would have been removed from property pool, and been left to become homeless indefinitely.

My Experience With Property Pool In 2018

Property pool is a UK government/city council website, where housing associations put up their available properties, then desperate, vulnerable people bid on them.

In my opinion, property pool is awful just for that reason.

However, it has a lot more issues than that.

1. How are actually homeless people meant to access the internet?

2. In band A- which is for homelessness, a lot of the available properties aren’t even built yet, and in most cases won’t be for over a year. At least this was the case in 2018.

3. You have no property refusals in band A. Which means you can’t refuse any property offered to you for any reason. This leaves some of the most vulnerable people open to abuse by housing associations, because it means they can offer you run down and/or dangerous properties, and you have to accept them, or you will be taken off property pool. It also means that disabled people can’trefuse a property offered to them that isn’t disability suitable.

 

This is part of how I ended up in a dangerous disability unsuitable property myself.

Journal Entry

This entry is to say thank you to everybody who read todays post. I know I am very rusty at writing, and that this is not gripping subject matter, however I need to get it out there, and as quickly as I can, so I apologise that my writing is probably not going to improve while I detail everything that I have been through with Torus Housing, as my focus is on getting it written and published, but I hope you will look beyond this for now, and come back to read each post, to support me,

Love as always, 

Pixie.

Housing Options

Let’s start at the very beginning, with my visit to an organisation called housing options.

It was Liverpool city councils one stop shop who referred me to them, instead of helping me themselves, when I went in to enquire as to how I could get myself on the list for a housing association property.

This was just days after I had been discharged from the psychiatric hospital, I had been held in under a section two, for making an unsuccessful attempt on my life.

Around the august of 2018, I had been forced to resign from my job at Santander UK, due to them denying me disability support, my doctor and psychiatrist had requested, several times since around the July of 2016. Due to how long and hard my battle for reasonable adjustments had been, the disability I was requesting support for had gotten significantly worse, and because I had not been able to work for a large part of those two years I spent fighting Santander, I had run up what felt like a huge amount of debt in order to eat and pay bills.

In the weeks between my resignation and suicide attempt, I had been receiving temporary EAS payments. On the morning of my suicide attempt, I had received a letter telling me it was going to be stopped.

I was desperate and panicking when I went into the one stop shop. As well as having zero income and mounting overdraft, I was having to sell the house I co owned with my abusive ex-boyfriend, and had nowhere else to go, once it sold I would not only be homeless, I would lose everything I owned including furniture I was still paying off on credit.

The reason the man who worked for the city council, said he was referring me to housing options was due to me being both vulnerable, and having a disability, which would need taking into consideration when it came to offering me a property.

So, trusting that I was going to be helped by this organisation I had never heard of, I allowed him to make me an appointment with them.

What actually happened was the complete opposite.

Like the majority of the borderline episodes (meaning borderline personality disorder related episodes) I have suffered in public, I remember very little about the actual event, however I do recall enough to know that I was not treated with the appropriate care, and which gives me reasonto believe nobody else was/is being/or will be where housing options is concerned.

Upon my arrival, at 9am, there was already a man, aged roughly twenty, who appeared to be highly agitated, sitting in the tiny waiting area. His mum was at the desk, enquiring asto how long they would likely be waiting, as her son had a mental illness which caused him problems remaining “calm” and in one place for even short periods.

The receptions was neither understanding, nor compassionate. She forcefully replied that if her son left he wouldn’t be given another appointment, and ordered her to sit back down.

After timidly giving my details to the same receptionist, I was called into a private room.

On edge, due to how the other woman had been spoken to, I sat down and tried to explain to the man my appointment was with that I have memory issues, and asked could he please note down any important information or advice that he gave me in just bullet points, such as go here, do this.

His attitude had been off when I entered the room, like I was inconveniencing him by making him do his job. Yet, I did not anticipate the reaction I got. His expression changed to a level of annoyance I feel even I would struggle to reach, and he very aggressively barked at me that he could not do that as there simply was not enough time, then he shoved a leaflet at me and sort of sighed exasperatedly, “Why are you here?”

Honestly, I didn’t know why I was there. I had never heard of them before the man at the council referred me there, and the staffs’ attitudes had caught me completely off guard, so I just stared at him unable to answer, wanting to say that I had expected him to tell me why I was there.

For a few awkward and endless seconds or minutes that stretched out forever, he stared back at me silently, until I blurted all of that out, then began recounting my conversation with the man at the one stop shop.

He stopped me almost immediately, notifying me that I would not be put on the housing association waiting list until my house actually sold, and I was literally homeless.

This caused me to break down into hysterical snotty sobbing as I rambled in circles about how I would lose everything I owned if that happened.

This is the first occasion I lost time.

My next memory is of me sat in that same room alone, only now I wasn’t hysterical or afraid, I was furious, and I knew I had acted under the influence of that fury. 

I waited for over fifteen minutes for him to return. When he finally did, he was in a mood that I was unable to interpret. He could have been angry, worried, or some other similar emotion. In a tone that confidently suggested he was doing me a favour he shouldn’t be, he said they were going to start helping me straight away. His expression did not match his voice.

Though I am missing a bit more of the conversation here, I think its more due to nothing memorable happening here and the passing of five years, rather than dissociation.

The next issue arose when he questioned me on my disabilities.

When I answered that I had borderline personality disorder, he told me in the same manner that he greeted me in, and I quote, “We don’t take mental health into consideration when rehousing people, because everybody suffers with mental health.”

I attempted to explain to him that borderline personality disorder is not a mental health issue, it’s a very serious mental illness, and that mental health and mental illness are not the same.

For some reason, he took offence to this, and snapped at me. It must have been far worse than when he had previously snapped at me, as I don’t remember what he said, just the shock of being spoken to in such an aggressive manner by a person I was asking for help.

The next memory I have is leaving the office in tears.

Introduction To My Series on Torus Housing

Hello.
Welcome back to the psychotic girls guide to surviving the human apocalypse, though, for now, not exactly as you know, may remember, or might like, it.

The content I will be writing certainly isn’t what I want to be writing, but it is now or never, as at best it might save my life, at worst I hope it will secure murder convictions for all those who are responsible for ending my life.

I understand this probably sound dramatic, but I assure you I am not being dramatic at all. If I don’t get the help I desperately need soon, these words will likely be coming to you from a body that can no longer speak and write, or beg and fight for help, because instead of residing in a mould and anti-social behaviour infested flat, it will be residing underground, cold and rotting. 

If you have read my blog in the past, or follow me on social media- mainly twitter, you may recall I took a break from writing my blog, around the June or July of 2022, to gather evidence for two on going issues I was dealing with. One of these issues I was gathering evidence of was the anti-socialnoise coming from both the flats directly above me, and next door to me, but in the block of flats that joins onto the side of my block. This noise was, and still is, exacerbating and triggering my disabilities – which are borderline personality disorder, non epileptic attack disorder, and (now) asthma.

My reasons, and plans, for gathering all this evidence was-

1. To give to the police (who said they wanted it, then never followed up)

2. To give to the housing association (in a way they could not deny I had evidence, and which would be availablefor an inquest into my death.)

3. To write a huge complaint to my housing association, which I would send privately by email as well as post a copy of on my blog, so that I left-
a. proof I sent it in, as it would be in my emails sent box

b. publicly available proof of what was in the complaint- again for an inquest.

c. but also to eventually send to the housing ombudsman.

You see for five years both me and my mum – on my behalf, have made complaints to my landlords/housing association, who are Liverpool Mutual homes/Torus, about both the mould and antisocial behaviour that have at best been ignored by them, and at worst has resulted in them saying I am the problem because I am disabled, while making derogatory and stigmatising remarks about my disability and how it affects me, and accusing my mum of being abusive, when she is  reasonably and understandably upset, and just sounds upset, all because we are asking for my flat to be made disabilitysafe/suitable, and when you understand the issue are noiseanti-social behaviour, mould and rats, it becomes even more clear that Torus are abusive and should not be allowed to be anybody’s landlords, as nobody, not even an non disabled person, could live in my flat and not become physically and mentally unwell, but I am not a physically or mentally well person to begin with.

Yet, when we then go to the housing ombudsman, we are told that have not given Torus sufficient opportunity to resolve my issues, and if my issues are in fact real Torus will deal with them as they are legally obligated to do so.

In the November and December of 2022, I resumed writing my blog, which included currently unpublished parts of my complaint, however I was too sick to keep it up.

Now almost a year on, I am forcing myself to start writing my complaint again, as well as hopefully some anecdotes of what has been happening to me over the last five years. 

These posts will have no schedule, in regards to when I write or publish them.

My intention is to write as much as I can when I can, while also gathering evidence, then publish both my writing and evidence once the part I have been working on is complete.

I would love to post it daily, but with everything that is going on and how sick I am, that’s probably impossible. It would be good if I could post weekly, but again that might not be doable every week. So, if I can only post some parts monthly, that is what I will do. 

If you are reading this, then my first piece is either up now for you to read, or will be up later today, depending on whether the mobile phone data gods are angry with me on the day, because as you probably already know, or have been able to guess, I don’t have home internet, and if I did have it, it would be money going to waste, because I have been trying to move out of that flat, and have gone through several periods where I have been unable to stay there over the last five years, that means I can’t get home internet, so have to use mobile data and Vodaphone aren’t happy that I only use my data.

Please, if helping me, is something you have the power to do, do it.

You won’t find anybody who will be more grateful for your help than me.

If not, I ask for your support in anyway you can give it. Please interact with these posts, and the links you followed to get here- comment, like, share, so that I can raise more awareness of my situation, and hopefully reach people who do have the power to help me.

Dms between me and the police about the antisocial behaviour nextdoor

Me: Hi youv asked me to dm you but the noise has stopped now its all the time tho im not well and keep being passed around you say go to the council the council say go to torus torus say go to you so nobodys doing anything

The police: good evening, if they are just making noise being loud it would not be something we could deal with but if they are violent or aggressive with each other or towards yourself then it is something we would take a report on

Me: theyv attacked me before so please give me advice what do you do when you have a medical condition that they are triggering that could kill you but no body wants to help and you cant ask them to stop yourself do I just wait for the seizures that kills me? Its a genuine question do i just wait here to die because nobody wants to take accountability?

The police: was it reported to police when you were attacked?
what noise issues are they making from the address when the incidents happen?

Me: ye and you came out to arrest me for being attacked then said if i wanted to pursue charges against her youd charge me to

The police: there will have been a lot more to it than you being arrested for being attacked you would not just be arrested for being attacked by someone.
what noise issues are they from the address, what do they do?

Me: i phone you 100 times you said you wouldnt come out like you have tonight so i went round and knocked on the window and while i was talking two men jn side she came out snd attacked me from behind she admitted she came out to “move me” i had in juries and your officers turned up and said they were arresting me so if you know what part of it im missing please do let me know

The police: for noise issues police would not attend, the officers who will have spoken to yourself and the neighbour would have advised you on who to contact about the problems but it isn’t something the police can help with. if you are unhappy about how the attending officers dealt with the incident then you can make a complaint but we are unable to help regarding the noise sorry.

Me: So thats a yes wait to die of seizure then ok thank you for the clarification that as far as merseyside police are concerned I wait here to die. have a nice night good bye

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