Sheltered housing and councils

I've been visiting octogenarian relatives, partly because one, my auntie has seen a flat in a really nice set of sheltered housing, and wants to move in. This requires working with the district council that provides the housing. Neither relatives nor I have ever had to do that before, and I can't recommend the experience.

I turned up on Tuesday afternoon at two o'clock for a meeting with:

• the housing officer,
• two octogenarian relatives and
• a helpful friend who's done this before through his work with the St Vincent de Paul society.

The brief a relative had given me was that a bedsit was on offer, aunty had seen and liked it, and the meeting was about finance to decide how relative would pay. The council would tell us how much it would cost and we could work out what to do next.

However the housing officer had a different agenda. Apparently, she'd thought the friend who'd rung up to make the meeting had told her that relative was definitely taking the bedsit and would sign there and then.

We were all affronted because

1. the friend is a friend, so the officer had no authority given to her to assume the decision was made
2. at that stage none of us knew anything about the costs, not even how much the rent was.
   

The officer got louder and more agitated, announcing that it wasn't necessary to sign today, but that she had to go at three o'clock (it was a quarter past two). The meeting didn't get any better as we gradually elicited some information from her, but weren't allowed copies of the tenancy agreement to take away and read.

We all left at three without signing anything. We go back on Thursday.

Friend said he'd never been in such an awful meeting and he had some experience of meetings with the council. Aunty complained about the officer's loud voice. The council seemed to have no understanding of the needs of older people. Aunty can't think quickly enough to absorb the information yet this officer was reading the tenancy agreement very quickly. It seems the council expects aunty to sign on Wednesday and pay rent from next Monday. It's all very quick, and the meeting seemed as if aunty was being bulldozed, bludgeoned and bullied into making a decision and signing up to something without full information.

Fortunately, I'd got permission as soon as I'd arrived to record the meeting, so octogenarians could play it back later and listen to the information, ready for the Thursday meeting. In the meantime, I'll ask the CAB for advice on moving into council properties.