We Are Human

In the eyes of many members of the general public we are seen as social housing scum, the undeserving poor, living on state handouts in filth and decay, the source of all crime and disorder. When buying properties in new developments many potential purchasers want to be assured that they won't be living in proximity to the social housing that is a requirement of all new developments. There's no public outcry when social housing tenants are uprooted and "decanted" from the communities in which they were born and grew up in the centres of cities to the outskirts to make way for expensive housing and shopping centres.

It wasn't until I became a social housing tenant myself that I noticed that rural and semi-rural social housing has, in the past, been almost exclusively provided on the margins of towns. I also noticed that it wasn't unusual in this local authority area to find private housing on one side of a road and, on the other side, trees or high hedges hiding a parallel secondary road along which social housing is provided. Hide us from view and you can pretend that we don't exist.

We are not scum, you only have to look at the properties in this area, a typical non-urban social housing estate albeit with many properties now in private ownership but many of those properties still owned by their former tenants and, with very few exceptions, you can see the care and pride that goes into these homes and gardens.

In the cold, hard, uncaring face and demeanour of the Housing Officer yesterday morning, as I tried to explain the feelings and practical implications of the demolition of the garages for their tenants, I found myself saying, "We are human". And when I think of the current state of the garages, broken and now looking as though they fulfil the reason for their demolition, i.e. unsafe, I remember how the tenants kept the area clean and tidy, how one tenant always washed his garage door down when he cleaned his car, how neatly our possessions were stacked on the shelves at the back of our garage, how tenants carried out their own repairs in the face of refusal from the landlord and I remember the last time my husband accompanied me, frail and elderly, to help me remove things from the garage, and said "Shall we clean the floor?".

No, we are not social housing scum, the cause of all social ills, the majority of us are respectable, responsible, honest, decent people who care for and about their environment and we are fully human.