It’s 2006 and I am sitting in my school uniform with my cue cards in front of me, running my argument over again and again in my head. I feel nervous but calmly confident. After an unsuccessful attempt the previous year at the District Debate competition I’ve come back older, wiser and with a bit of experience under my belt.
I see my mum sitting and waving enthusiastically in the front row – with the silver trophy I’d dreamed about glittering next to her left shoulder. Private-school boys sit around the table with an air of superiority. I am so proud to be debating within the eyeline of the judge, our local MP.
This time round, when it is my turn to stand up I execute my points perfectly, taking interjections in my stride. At the end of the debate, they announce my partner and me as the winners. My mum jumps up and claps so loudly and so high and so ecstatically. Our MP walks over and says this must be your mum because she’s beaming with pride. I will always remember that day because it was the day my mum told me I could be anything I wanted, even prime minister. I was inspired by the power of politics.
Six years later, having just graduated from university, my mum received a phone call from our landlord to say they were going to sell off our home of 13 years. We were devastated. After my mum fell pregnant with my sister, our little house was our sanctuary. Our rent had remained relatively stable over that time, so when we began to look for other options we found that everything in our area was unaffordable. It seemed unreal to think we had no other option but to declare ourselves homeless to the council.
A few days before graduation, we packed the contents of our house into cardboard boxes and moved into a homeless hostel. The feeling that comes with being told you need to leave your home is so deeply upsetting and terrifying. The freedom to live where you want and make your own decisions for the betterment of your children is suddenly taken away. Our destiny was suddenly in the hands of others.
I would sit in our room with my mum and little sister in one bed and me in the other, thinking about where we could get answers. Who was in charge? Who would listen? Who could make it better? I thought about our MP. Before it happened to us, I didn’t even know that whole families were homeless, or even how they got there in the first place. If only my MP knew too, if only they could understand all of the guilt, anxiety, shame and depression, they’d put it right.
Thoughts ran obsessively through my head. I grabbed my laptop and words ran out of my fingers uncontrollably, with the kind of unwavering belief in the political system that I had learned when I was at school:
“I am writing to you with the hope that you may remember me from the District Debate competition in 2006. I have recently graduated from the University of Manchester with first-class honours. I have not written to gloat in a list of achievements but to put my mother in the limelight as the backbone, role model, strength and motivation behind all that I do. She is a kind, honest and passionate woman who is growing increasingly tired and feeling increasingly disempowered. She has sacrificed, as I am sure many parents have for their children, and despite adversity has always striven to provide what she can for my little sister and me. She puts on a brave face but she has been having acid stomach aches, insomnia and often cries when anybody shows her sympathy because she feels she does not deserve it. She told me she feels like a failure as a mother.”
When I came back to the hostel one day and there was an envelope with dark green writing and cream paper, I felt a new lease of life. I didn’t feel invisible anymore. The response was considerate and inquisitive. Enquiries were going to be made into our case. I felt a little happiness for the first time in a while. Writing had made me feel as though we couldn’t fall through the cracks or be forgotten – now there was a paper trail. Those letters were our ray of hope. I was speaking to a politician who knew who we were. We were here. I wrote back. They responded. I wrote back. Every few weeks, I wrote back. And back. And back.
Then one day when I came home to the familiar dark green text waiting for me, the recognisable signature had changed. Instead, the secretary had signed it. The letter told me the council were looking after our case and there was nothing outside of that system that they could do.
Living in a hostel feels like purgatory and those letters felt like our only glimmer of hope that someone in a higher position could help us. Now we had been dumped.
Being unable to rely on our MP meant we were forced to find our own ways to take some control back over our lives. I began to film our experience because it made me feel active. It took away some of the shame because it meant not hiding our situation or being embarrassed. Having information gave us personal power. We went to the local library and printed details about our rights from Shelter’s website. We visited Citizens Advice. We spoke to our neighbours in the hostel so we didn’t feel alone anymore. At that time, even when we were most scared and exhausted, we felt like we had some control over our destiny. In a situation when it feels like the whole system is against you, that’s empowering.
