One of the harder days for me. Yesterday I managed to get a Council place called Outreach, interested in me. I have been trying to get into a B/B through the HUB a place where homeless people can go and get help. It used to be, a drop in place, when they started. But they were so inundated with homeless people they stopped that malarky. Now you have to get up at the top of the morning and be there around 9 AM to get a place in the queue. Few people like about 5 or 6 gets appoinments, others have to come back another day. I have been there twice last year before I got an appoinment. This time as I am not very well to go there in the morning and spend my already reduced confidence on something which will not work in my favour; I phoned the HUB. And I think the staff there in the HUB is not that bad. So when I phoned them the last week this woman told me to try Outreach. A guy called Dave wanted to help me. So I had the appoinment at 11 AM. Dave was supposed to pick me up at 10.30 and away we go. But he was late and we ended up arranging for 2 PM to be there in the HUB.
Now HUB is a front end of the BCC which has got Government educated, funded and controlled staff. They have been audited by the Home Office for too much spending. They used to house around 80 people in a week in B/Bs, Hostels and church funded various places. But the audits said that is too much and make it 30 in a week. So I can see my chances of getting into a B/B is out. But I went ahead with the idea of Dave, that we have to go through that channel to see, by a smallest chance we get a place. So I got picked up by Dave and we went to the HUB. We had a chat before walked in. He explained all the trouble they go through manning the Outreach. The types of people who come there and about the druggies and alcoholics etc. And I am not any of them. Because the society cares about them more than people like me who are still trying to make something out of our lives with all the handicaps, we have to think about how to sort this out.
I remember back in 1989 I came out of the prison (for possession of controlled drugs) I didn't have a place to go. So I booked into a B/B in Hampton Road in Clifton. The Government paid £ 55 per week to the landlord. We get breakfast in the morning if we turned up before 9 AM. Cruel init. But after a week or so the landlord agreed to keep my breakfast for me on the side. And I can nuke it in the microwave to eat later. Sometimes there use to have as much as 3 days old meals waiting for me. It was a good breakfast. Couple of eggs, bacon slices and sausages, and tomatoes or baked beans with buttered toast. And mind that was prepared for us. Last year when I spent a stint in B/B it was so different. Restrictions galore. It is like a prison without the look of a prison. You have a curfew at 11 PM. No visitors. There is no landlord as such. There is a screw. He or she demands your perfect behaviour. The screw can come into your room any time. Once this guy opened my door without any knocking; and I went ballistic. After a while the screws thawed a bit towards me and I learnt the code for the front door and without trouble I could smoke in the room. And breakfast is not prepared. What you get is tea bags, milk and sugar. Coffee is there but it is the instant type. A crate of eggs and 2 types of cereals. And the BCC pays the company who runs the place £ 48 a day. £ 336 a week. That is 610% increase. And the treatment of the tenants/inmates have got worse. The humanity of the B/B has died, with the New Labour who is supposed to look after people who are vulnerable.
All right think about this. You go to the grocery shop and you ask in English " Could I have 50 gms of Fromage frais please?". And the question is what do French people call it in French language?
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