Benefit Street, Brighton.

The black dog that crawled back up on my shoulder 2 years ago has been a teacup  Chihuahua until recently.  About ten days ago I realised he’d morphed into a good-sized Labrador. I think now he’s going for Irish Wolfhound. Now that black dog is not exclusively the property of Winston Churchill, or Robin Williams or even National Treasure, Stephen Fry. Without even having it explained, every bi-polar person instinctively understands what it means the first time they hear it. Because, perhaps, that feeling of carrying an actual physical burden is so familiar?  At times it feels like a sack of wheat on one’s shoulders which is pretty grim – but an old, familiar dog? Smelly and noxious nowadays maybe, but intimately known: - he ain’t heavy, he’s my black dog? Now, even before I was clinically diagnosed at the age of 12, I knew what it was like to feel weighted down – until finally one ends up supine; unable to rise up high enough to get out of bed...

I went to a meeting last week.  Our landlords (Seaside Homes) were there, as was one member of Council’s Temporary Accommodation Team.  The subject of Mears (inevitably) came up.  And the crowd went wild. It was admitted that our place was the poster-child for Mears inadequacy, blunders and SNAFUs. However, the stories from people living in other buildings administered to by Mears, once again proved that it’s not just our happy band who have had enough – so have other Council tenants across Brighton and Hove. ( Recent research has also shown that  dissatisfaction with Mears, in fact, is rife across other parts of the UK where they operate.) The question of the length of Mears contract with Council was raised by a choleric and indignant tenant of another building.  That’s one huge elephant in the room whenever discussion throws up the word “Mears”: -  It’s a ten year contract.  TEN YEARS!  I’ll admit that my direct involvement in ...

There are persons everywhere who would find the juxtaposition of the words “Respect” and “People on Benefits” very strange. Their knee-jerk response would be that people who choose to waste their time in school, have babies in their teens, and live off everyone else’s taxes,  are not deserving of respect. Hell, I might even have been one of them, once. The first time I ever heard about Council tenants  and people living off benefits was in the Isle of Wight, where I had taken my two sons for their summer holidays to stay with their grandmother. We were living in South Africa then and had no experience of the Welfare State. Though I can’t remember who he was, I remember walking down my mother’s street towards the Cowes Ferry and chatting with some bloke.  We passed a small, two storey nest of flats with open balconies and summer flowers spilling from window boxes. “See them there?” my forgotten companion asked rather redundantly as we were right in front of ...

As tenants in our lovely old Victorian villa we all had a lot of time to get together and swap stories about the behavior of our contractors, Mears.  These initial conversations took place usually in the early hours of the morning, the middle of the night or around the babies Bath n’ Bed Time. Those were the times when the fire alarms in various flats would suddenly go off. Mums would whip screaming babies out of hot baths or warm cots; grab a couple of towels or a blankie and stumble off into the cold, dark front garden to await the fire-brigade. That never took long.  The first couple of times they came in with sirens blaring, back-up, and grim, business-like faces. Then they started not to bother with the sirens. And finally they would arrive with bored faces and frequent references to the value of their time.  Because there never was a fire. Often no-one was even using so much as a toaster.  Being woken to flashing lights, ear-piercing alarms, and ...

I haven’t simply forgotten about the story of Our House. That’s impossible as we are all living the story as it unfolds.  But things are changing a little deep down here – a small ray of light has started to reach us. The past 19 months, since the Old House finally shook itself and got ready for a new lease of life, have been so eventfull, so compelling, and so full of drama that half the house is now on anti-depressants. But out of all that, maybe something good is happening right now.  I think we might just have taken a small step for humanity. We’ve become an Association… And so – to go back to the beginning… This completely gutted and re-vamped Victorian villa, which comprises 16 households, is the product of a scheme undertaken by Seaside Homes in conjunction with Council, to assimilate People Like Us into the community: rather than confining us to the ghettos that ring that community. So the building and surrounds had to meld into the  middle-cl...