By Janet*
When I moved from Northern Ireland to Camden 26 years ago, I thought I’d left boundary disputes, 24/7 video surveillance and bitter, long-running conflicts behind me. But over the last six years these problems have returned to haunt me on account of my prying and territorial neighbours and my ineffective housing association – One Housing.
It was the murder of my husband in domestic quarrel and the death of my father soon afterwards that finally prompted me to leave the Falls Road in Belfast after I’d lived through the Troubles there for my whole life.
I wanted a better life for my three young sons.
For a long time, things went as I’d hoped they would. We lived free of violence and my children had stable lives and eventually got good jobs. One of my sons became a plumber; one became a car mechanic and the other son is an electrician. Later on, I had a fourth son, who is now also a plumber, and a daughter, who is doing her GCSE mocks at the minute.
I wanted a better life for my three young sons.
The problems started six years ago when the parents of the two siblings living below us came back to their flat. They’d been away at their farm for 15 years but returned when they heard one of my sons had cleared our overgrown communal garden. He’d spent nine months doing it, coming in after work in the evenings and hacking through the tangled foliage.
The parents immediately took away some of my pathway into the garden by planting flowers and plants that created a new border line all along it and made it harder for me to move in and out.
They also installed CCTV cameras underneath our bathroom and kitchen windows and facing our bathroom windows. Three CCTV cameras in total!
They took away some of my pathway into the garden by planting flowers and plants that created a new border line all along it.
We complained to One Housing, the police, social services, teachers and solicitors but no action was taken. In fact, One Housing added another camera to the garden to monitor the damage being done to our area, which meant my family’s movements were being tracked by four cameras around the clock.
Life over the last six years has been a living hell for my family. We have had no privacy for years, our parcels and mail have been getting stolen by the neighbours and two years ago, on Halloween night, they poured weed-killer over section of the garden and tore out all our plants and flowers.
Life over the last six years has been a living hell for my family.
By making me feel uncomfortable about using the garden the neighbours have really affected my quality of life because my impairments mean the garden is the only space I can easily use to get some outdoor time. My mobility issues, incontinence and the chronic nerve pain I have all over my body make it hard for me to get out and sitting in the garden is about the only outdoor activity I can do.
But my mobility issues have gotten worse over the last three years and nowadays I need to use mobility aids to get about. This means I haven’t been able to use the garden at all for a couple of years now because the pathway isn’t wide enough for a wheelchair or crutches. But if I had the part the neighbour took away it would be wide enough.
The stress of it all also impacted on my relationship with my long-term boyfriend Tony and caused us to split up.
I have been so let down by One Housing as a vulnerable and Disabled tenant.
Last year my mobility and health issues got even worse and an OT recommended that I have an upstairs toilet installed and that the garden pathway be put back to its original way so I would have wheelchair access to it.
I have been so let down by One Housing as a vulnerable and Disabled tenant.
But One Housing did not want to upset the neighbours and just ignored the OT for months.
In October this year they finally installed an upstairs toilet, but it has no handle on its door and its walls are so damp paint is peeling off them. I had to make a complaint about both the upstairs toilet and garden pathway and I believe they only took action to install the toilet when they did because they wanted to avoid the complaint being escalated to stage two.
I am still waiting on work to start on the garden pathway and the complaint I made about that is at stage two at the minute.
Also, my heating has been broken for nearly three weeks now and I’m told every day when I ring One Housing that someone will be in contact. No one has got back to me. It’s disgusting the way I have been treated.
No one has got back to me. It’s disgusting the way I have been treated.
My home is damp and we have puddles of water everywhere. I can’t wash because it’s too cold and can’t do the laundry as there is nowhere to dry it. My daughter is going to school in damp clothes and my son is going to work in damp clothes as well.
The cold’s also wreaking havoc on my body. I have rheumatoid arthritis in both knees, both hips, my neck, my spine and my shoulders and the pain I have in those areas is much worse when I’m not warm. All I want is my heating fixed this cold weather.
And the lung doctor checked me over and said I have an infection at the bottom of my lung. I’ve reported this to One Housing staff on the phone but I still have no heating
One Housing has neglected me and my family and it continues to do so. It’s as if they think we don’t matter.
Disclaimer – the views expressed in this story are those of the story’s author and not of CDA. CDA supports Disabled people to get their voices heard. The name of the reporter has been changed.
