I live in a country that has a good economy, prides itself on having a great human rights record, freedom of speech, provides free healthcare and education to those who need it and has values of individual liberty, mutual respect, rule of law, democracy and tolerance of different cultures and religions. Within this country is a town that I live, a relatively large town, but not large enough to be classed as a city. In that town I work, pay my taxes to the government and pay money monthly to the local council in the form of council tax. The town is growing steadily and new business and residential homes are being built all the time. Yet schools are being closed down, hospital's and doctors surgeries are closing and are too busy to see many of the public, the number of people homeless is growing daily. The new residential homes are nearly all for the elderly and retired and not for those who are in the most need of housing.
I know of a young family with children who are about to become homeless, both parents work and they contribute to society, they went to their local council and asked for help, not for a hand out or a free home but for help in securing private accommodation, the response from the council is that because their landlord is claiming they are behind in rent (which they are not) they cannot get help from the council to secure private accommodation and they must wait until bailiffs turn up to remove them from the property, this will cause undue stress for all involved especially their children, it also means that the family could be housed in temporary bed and breakfast accommodation tens or even hundreds of miles away from the town they live and work and that their children go to school in, meaning more stress and the loss of their jobs. This also means that after bailiffs turn up that the landlord can then take them to court to recover the money spent in removing them.
I feel so bad for this family, the parents try so hard to not show their children the stresses this is causing but they are stuck between a rock and a hard place, no family to aid them, no friends in a position to house them or aid them financially and a system that favours the rich and not the needy. Worse still if the council cannot aid them even with temporary housing then social services may be called to take their children away from them. These are good people, they don't drink or smoke, don't touch drug's and follow the laws of the land.
My aim with this particular post is to aid this family in some way, and any money that this post generates will be given to them in the hopes of helping them to get out of this dark situation.