brumous wrote:to: any staff
have you ever had to make a really really difficult decision? like, questioning your moral code? what was it like, and were you able to overcome it?
- When I was still in secondary school, I was homeless. As I was under 18 years of age, I could have been put into accommodation by the council, but if I did so, it would have meant my mum would have been homeless and without me. We're incredibly tight (even if it didn't seem like it during the ordeal), and I knew that the waiting list for a single adult to get into council housing would be 5+ years. So my choice was get accommodation but leave my mum to suffer alone, or suffer with her and hope that my being with her would speed up the process. My teachers and school desperately wanted me to accept the council's offer and take up the accommodation, but I couldn't do it. I couldn't leave my mum alone, not after everything she's done for me. So I stuck with her, and we lived in a hostel for a year before being housed. Then, two years later, we became homeless again. That time I wasn't young enough to be suitable for accommodation alone, and as a 'young adult' we were looking at a 5+ year waiting list again. So we sofa-surfed and slept where we could for another year, before one of mum's work colleague's moved to a bigger property and said we were welcome to rent their old one. That's where we are at present (or my mum is, I'm in Hong Kong studying!), but I suspect we'll be homeless again before the year is out.
Homelessness is difficult because it's a very oily slide. Once you've been homeless once, it's incredibly hard not to fall back into it just because of the way the housing market works. I can't say whether what I did was right - who knows, if I'd accepted the offer for housing alone then maybe I'd never have been homeless again. But I couldn't leave my mum. She raised me as a single-parent, and I had a magnificent childhood. I owe everything to her, and to leave her? All I want is to be able to support her so that she doesn't need to worry about being homeless ever again. But it was a horrible period; being pressured by school and teachers who wanted the best for me, but who were telling me to leave the only person I trusted. I just had to trust that I was doing the right thing, even if it didn't seem like it at the time.
<3