How I kept two families out of temporary accommodation …

I saved 2 tenancies in the last 2 weeks. Both were families so thats 9 people aged between 3 and 40 who won’t be turning up on the council doorstep seeking temporary accommodation. Both the cases went to court. I helped them apply for the suspension of the possession order and stay of eviction respectively. I helped them gather their evidence. I was even in the courtroom with one of them.

Another client asked me this week where I had trained.

Heres the thing; I’m not legally trained.

I run on coffee, perseverance, Google, the training booklets I’ve gathered over the years, and guesswork. Occasionally when the feeling is right optimism is added to my tool kit. I have pieced everything I know about housing law and court procedures from websites and Shelter’s online resources and training programmes. Which really says a lot about the quality of their training.

Having been to court a few times for this sort of thing, one of the few things I can say with certainty is that it is terrifying. Allow me to explain.

Firstly there are forms, all the forms, a reassuring amount of white paper neatly stacked on shelves. There is clearly process here, this is a land of evidenced assertions, of official requests, a place where documentation rules. There is a reassuring sense that someone knows what is happening; when and where and why. The place is neat, and the walls are white, save for one or two feature walls splashed with bold colour. This is the exact sort of creativity that says “You are different… just like everybody else...” And in many ways that phrase pervades the whole outfit. Individuality and complex personal circumstances are filtered through deep layers of paperwork, the gritty complexities and grey tones of a person’s journey are removed until the black and white bedrock of evidence is reached. What you did. What you did not do. At best a brief outline of why.

It is this narrative, the thinnest expression of who you are and how you came to be here which is offered up to The People In Charge for them to decide the fate of your family. All at once the clean processes, numbered forms, and evidence seem to turn their back on you, casting a beady eye of judgement at the outsider over their shoulder. What can be harnessed to fight for you can also turn its back on you with a simple switch in perspective.

And at the centre of this all is the home you raised your kids in, where the youngest took his first steps, where the older two used to ride their bikes.

In the court it stops being your home.

It is a house to be repossessed.

This is how court feels to the uninitiated.