Crisis loan

vickyw

Long story short, partner made redundant in October, I'm a student. Entitled to about £9/week JSA and £90/week HB. Our rent is £450 so we don't have enough to cover that, let alone bills, food etc.
Our (private) landlord has been very understanding about the rent and accepted what little we can give him every month (usually £70-£100 less). Unfortunately we are at the stage now where we are £800 in arrears which have built up since Oct and he has said if we don't come up with the money soon we will be evicted. I completely understand his situation he has the mortgage to pay on the flat and why would he waste his time with crap tenants when he could easily have some nice people who pay on time. If we are evicted we will be back living at our parents houses separately, not a good situation!!
My question is this, are we entitled to a crisis loan to pay back all or some of what we owe to save ourselves an eviction?
If anyone has had experience in this field please help!!
(If not, I don't need the criticism.)
Thank you.

karenx

Crisis loans aren't paid for rent.
can your partner not even get a part time job? Mcds? A shop? Supermarket?

Jowo_2

Perhaps you should move back in with your parents until you are stable rather than go through the stress of an eviction process. After all, as long as notice is served correctly, a landlord doesn't usually have to offer a reason why and a judge must award possession of the property back to them.

Why not discuss a mutual surrender with your landlord to release you from the contract if you are within the fixed term or give notice to them if you are a periodic tenancy? Tell the landlord that you wish to set up an agreed epayment plan for the arrears. Ensure it's one that you can stick to and then pay him back while you are at your folks.

What kind of student loans/grants are you claiming and does your college/uni have a hardship fund?

vickyw

That's the kind of thing he's been applying for, anything and everything. He has a phone interview tomorrow so fingers crossed.
I can't think of a bigger crisis than eviction tbh.

vickyw

Jowo wrote: »

Perhaps you should move back in with your parents until you are stable rather than go through the stress of an eviction process. After all, as long as notice is served correctly, a landlord doesn't usually have to offer a reason why and a judge must award possession of the property back to them.

Why not discuss a mutual surrender with your landlord to release you from the contract if you are within the fixed term or give notice to them if you are a periodic tenancy? Tell the landlord that you wish to set up an agreed epayment plan for the arrears. Ensure it's one that you can stick to and then pay him back while you are at your folks.

What kind of student loans/grants are you claiming and does your college/uni have a hardship fund?

Yeah we've discussed that but we're getting married in 4 weeks (on the cheap does not begin to describe it :rotfl:) and that's not how I imagined beginning married life, kipping on my mums couch with my new husband 5 miles away.
I think the next step is contacting uni but I'm quite sure their hardship fund is £200. Not quite enough.

Jowo_2

Congratulations, hope you have nice weather on the day.

Mr_Falling_Star

Forget the Crisis Loan because it isn't going to happen. Better to concentrate on a Budgeting loan, where for all intents and purposes you just apply for a amount of money. The DWP are not really fussed what its for.

You can download a form from the Direct Gov website or get one from your local jobcentre. Just be aware that they are not processed urgently so you are looking at about 10-14 days.

Some councils will give you free housing advice and can intervene if there is a threat of homelessness. Shelter are good as well. Does your college have a welfare service?, if they don't are you a NUS member?

Good luck to your boyfriend with his jobsearch

vickyw

Jowo wrote: »

Congratulations, hope you have nice weather on the day.

Thank you Jowo
Literally wedding excitement is all that's keeping me sane at the moment.

vickyw

Mr_Falling_Star wrote: »

Forget the Crisis Loan because it isn't going to happen. Better to concentrate on a Budgeting loan, where for all intents and purposes you just apply for a amount of money. The DWP are not really fussed what its for.

We tried this one first but you have to be signing on for 26 weeks (I think) and he had a temporary job of about 4 weeks just after Christmas so it's going to be another month or so before we can apply again and by then it might be too late. Thanks for the advice though.

Jowo_2

Mr_Falling_Star wrote: »

Some councils will give you free housing advice and can intervene if there is a threat of homelessness.

But not if they deem the applicant to have made themselves intentionally homeless by not paying rent when the council consider that they could have. But as you've pointed out, the Shelter website has good information and in particular on how a local council will treat a homelessness application (homelessness being defined as no security of tenure past the next 28 days), should your landlord serve notice on you.

Unfortunately, some councils simply bat away a homeless applicant by telling them to ignore the notice served by the landlord and will only intervene when the landlord has then taken them to court to enforce the notice.

richard9991

Mr_Falling_Star wrote: »

Forget the Crisis Loan because it isn't going to happen. Better to concentrate on a Budgeting loan, where for all intents and purposes you just apply for a amount of money. The DWP are not really fussed what its for.

You can download a form from the Direct Gov website or get one from your local jobcentre. Just be aware that they are not processed urgently so you are looking at about 10-14 days.

Some councils will give you free housing advice and can intervene if there is a threat of homelessness. Shelter are good as well. Does your college have a welfare service?, if they don't are you a NUS member?

Good luck to your boyfriend with his jobsearch

Forget any type of loan from dwp the op only get £9 pw jsa they will say that they dont get enough to pay it back.