No furniture, no food, no money

seven-day-weekend

I am about to start doing some voluntary work with CAP. I know this charity is non-judgemental on the causes of debt (quite rightly), and helps anyone regardless.

I feel it will help me in the work I will be doing (mainly providing information about State benefits to the Debt Counsellor) if I could fit in a small way into the shoes of people in abject poverty, and understand their situation more.

Can anybody explain to me various circumstances where people are so poor that they have no furniture, no food, no money, and what might have got them into this dreadful state of affairs?

Ons scenario I can imagine is if that someone has bought a load of furniture from somewhere like Brighthouse and then had it repossessed because they can't keep the repayments up.

I've got an imagination failure on this one, and would just like to have some insight into the deprivation that some people live in.

Thanks in advance for the advice.

CookieCrisp

They could had felt so alone and unable to ask for help with regards to their debts that they ended up selling everything they could just to get by, now everythings gone and theres nothing left to sell to get by nor to repay debts, bailiffs are knocking at the door, letters coming through the letterbox and still no where to turn?

Umm Yea! Im pretty poop at this lol
GL
x

ceh209

Poor upbringing, left school early with no qualifications, didn't know what benefits they could claim, can't get a job, can't cook so waste money on ready meals/takeaways.

Too ashamed to ask for help so eventually leads to CookieCrisp's suggestion...

Caroline_a

Relationship split, moved out of family home, unable to sell as children under 18 (equity tied up), lost job, downward spiral... combined with some of the above suggestions.

JulieGeorgiana

If you have enough debts your FULL outgoings could be spent JUST on debt repayments. You would for a while just keep putting your living expenses on any available credit... but eventually you max out and you can't get anymore credit. You then either have items on credit repossed for not paying your debts, and you sell everything you can for food. Eventually your whole income is going on debts (but your still short) you have no credit for essentials... Leaving you no money for food.

I like what Caroline says... those are the kind of things which cause people to go into debt... for me it was a baby... cost of living went up, wages went down... credit bridged the gap until the repayments were all our income! Circumstances are normally the main catalyst.

merlot123

Hi SDW.

I will tell you the details of a neighbour who lost everything a few years ago, and I'm not sure where or what happened to them since:(

They owned a mortgaged house, two young teenage children, the husband had his own business (a plumber), she worked part time around the children for a local retailer.

Times were getting harder for DH at work, it was drying up, due to having a huge amount of plumbers in the area, and living in a semi rural place (not a great need for so many plumbers). They started to use credit cards to get by and then they got loans to support his business. Fast forward a couple of years, they couldn't afford to repay the creditors, and they were sinking fast. She was diagnosed with breast cancer and was undergoing chemo etc, he had to take more and more time off to take her to the hospital (as we live in a semi rural place is one hour away). The outgoings were huge compared to the incomings.

To cut a very long story short, They had to go bankrupt as they had no available credit left to them and had left it too late to seek help from the CAB/debt charity as in terms of repayment plan etc (head in the sand, like a number of people who are in debt). I often saw the wife in Tesco with a calculator trying to get the essentials she needed on little money,they hadn't paid the mortgage for a few months (couldn't afford it) and the lender took them to court to seek possession, which was granted (even though she had cancer! and couldn't work due to the side effects of the treatment).

I can still remember looking out of my window one morning and a bailiff turned up across the road, I heard the wife shouting and was obviously upset, I saw the bailiff carrying a sofa (I didn't know they could take that, but they did!). A few days later a huge van turned up and the couple moved everything into a large van as they had to be out by the Friday morning. The wife told me the council had told her they couldn't help them as they had made themselves intentionally homeless (I'm not sure what that really means, but that's what they told her!).

When they moved out, they had no where to go, the DH was going to drive the van to her mothers house (a couple of hundred miles away) and park on the drive for a few days hoping someone somewhere would help. I have not seen nor heard about them since.

I knew the couple reasonably well, and this was a few years ago and I wasn't a member of MSE, if I had have been I would have pointed them in the direction of here.


This was a couple who were reaonably well off, not living on benefits, but due to lack of work for the DH and illness, they lost everything.

It can happen to anyone, it made me think twice about putting stuff onto credit cards, who knows when lack of work or illness may strike?

merlot123

BlushingRose

merlot123 wrote: »

The wife told me the council had told her they couldn't help them as they had made themselves intentionally homeless (I'm not sure what that really means, but that's what they told her!).

I believe it means ;doing something that makes you homeless'. I was evicted, years ago, but a private landlord. Not because I wasn't paying rent, but because it was paid irregularly due to the fact that I have a part time job and it meant my housing benefit went up and down so he never knew what he was getting from where. Anyway, I had to go through several interviews with the council while they decided whether I;d made myself 'intentionally homeless' due to not paying rent properly (their words).
Luckily for me, they decided it wasn't my fault and homed me. My life could have turned out very different if they'd decided the other day.

eyeopener2

I think it would be worth your while to accompany the counsellor on some home visits.

BlushingRose

eyeopener2 wrote: »

I think it would be worth your while to accompany the counsellor on some home visits.

Oh, good idea :T

dfitps

Someone in an abusive relationship often has no choice but to leave with little more than the clothes they stand up in. They may be safer outside the relationship (especially if there are children involved) but leaving can essentially mean making themselves destitute for a while.

RAS

If you go over to the benefits forum, you will find families who have nothing coming in because the only person employed has just lost their job when the company went bust. Takes 6 weeks to get the statutory redundancy payments through and they may well be just before a pay day.

JSA and HB/LHA can take 6 weeks to pay out. Their WTC/CTC is frozen whilst those are sorted out.

So they have no money coming in for 6 weeks. It is official policy now to refer people in those situations to food banks; Trussel Trust etc.

Younger people may find themselves out of lodgings, in unfurnished accomodation or unable to afford to move what furniture they have after a relationship breakdown.

Several posters have ex-partners who are legally entitled to return to the house, and can and do strip it either to furnish their new home or in one case to fund a drug addiction. It did not matter that she had bought it, he was allowed to enter the house and to take any assets of the marriage. Users will also steal any wages or benefit money coming in even if the kids go hungry.

It might pay to read any case studies you can from the Kid's Company; children whose mothers bring home fellow users who may well try to obtain sexual favours from the children of the house whilst mum is out for the count do not get breakfast (or any meal at all often); the boy who eventually accepted a massage almost as a dare and weeks later took off his shirt for the first time to reveal a mass of wheals all over his back from serious beatings over the years.