My trip to the housing people

What a fun packed time that was. 

Daughter took the day off to go out there and see them as it was quite a hike to get there. Bus and train, and in fact it turned out it was so far away that it went beyond the limits of my weekly ticket area, unbeknown to me. I got there and the turnstiles wouldn't let me through. The train guy there was good though and just let me go through the side bit. Nice of him as apparently you can get fined $200 for fare evasion, but I'm sure I'd gotten off with only a warning if the train cops came along. Needless to say way out of my area. Was so different there.

We found the place fine and went in with the woman who I spoke to on the phone. She seemed enormously confused though about what we wanted and why I'd been sent there instead of to my local Dept of Housing office. They were a private agency and couldn't process an application for the private rental subsidy that I was talking about, and recommended I go to the gov Dept of Housing office near home. OMG, here we go I thought. The bureaucratic bullshit starts to fly....

I said that I didn't know why I was sent here particularly either, it was where I was told to go by ACON. This went on for a while, discussing various options of what to do and all, by this time both my daughter and I are completely confused and I'm pretty much ready to abandon the whole thing as being just too fuckin hard.

She's saying that she used to work for the NSW Dept of Housing until 3 months ago, and thought that it would be highly unlikely I wouldn't qualify for the private rental subsidy. Just what I wanted to hear at that point. Fuck knows why not, I mean I am HIV+ and getting fuck all income presently and having to live off a redundancy payout. She says Housing would want to move us and put us in their housing stock. 

I don't really want to do that. Have been here 5 years, very settled, social support around me, and with my various mental conditions I can't imagine the stress of moving. It would be very bad too if I ended up somewhere socially isolated and surrounded by druggies and crooks who hated gays (let alone HIV+ gays). All I want is a bit of financial support with the rent is all, nothing major. If they can't do that, well they can't help me.

Eventually she decides to ring the bloke at ACON who helped me with the form. The call went on for about 15 minutes as they talked in their own type language to each other about this and that. I sit there looking at this, like fuck, even the people who are doing this have to help each other with it, how the hell can something so somple turn into something so bloody impossible? Looked at my daughter next to me who was just pissed off with it all, and said "Welcome to my world", and "I'm pretty much at the point now of giving up, it's all too hard". She rolls her eyes...

The phone call finally ends, and the discussion has produced a clear way forward. She's accepting the application there as I was sent there because they're better and faster at processing it. The part that involves the private rental subsidy (although she reckons it's pointless) will be sent to Dept of Housing for processing. She will send a letter in due course requesting anything further she may need for the application to go "live" (oh pleease). And we left. I emailed the ACON bloke this morning the PDF of "acknowledgement of receipt" of the application that he wanted.

Well, it's not looking good at all. Most likely I'll go on some list and when my name comes up will be presented with a Housing property for a decision whether I want to move there or not. I can knock that back and get one more go, and that's it. It's not a good option as I know what it's like living in Housing and there's some pretty bad places around. It may be better to simply stay where I am and tough it out until next year when I get the full pension. As long as I can rent the other room I should be OK.