On paper I had it all: a great job and a flat in a nice part of London. To outsiders things seemed good, but beneath the surface I felt like I was going mad. I tiptoed around, treading on eggshells, but it wasn’t until I dragged myself to a gay housing charity and asked for counselling that I realised I was in an abusive relationship.
“This is domestic abuse and we have to get you out,” I was told after 12 weeks of therapy and after my partner had thrown a knife at me. But I didn’t know where to go. Domestic violence is not really spoken about in the gay community. It doesn’t really fit the advertising.
I moved to London three years ago and moved in with my partner almost immediately. My parents live many miles away. I have one friend but he doesn’t have room to put me up.
I made an appointment to meet my caseworker at Stonewall Housing and we spent the day at a London council housing office. Eventually I was told that I had met the threshold to be placed in safe accommodation while my case was reviewed to see if I was “in priority need”. Relieved, I made my way to a hostel in east London.
No one tells you what to expect when you turn up at a homeless shelter. It was rundown, noisy, scary – more like a prison than a place of safety. Fire alarms blared in the middle of the night and for the first time in years I had to share a toilet with no toilet paper and a grotty shower. The heating was always on and made my room unbearably hot, but opening the frosted glass window let in the whiffs of joints being smoked and the noise of beer bottles clinking from the tiny courtyard below.
I begged for a move and was eventually, begrudgingly, granted it when I realised that my ex knew where I was staying. But the new hostel is no better. It comes complete with bed bugs, curtains that are six inches too short and let in the light at 5am, and a sweaty plastic-coated mattress. Scary people just released of prison roamthe corridors. I don’t feel safe as a gay guy living in this sort of place.
The hostel room costs me more than £200 a week. I don’t qualify for housing benefit so I’m £2,000 in debt. I’ve just sold my car to pay some of the bills. Somebody out there is making a lot of money out of homeless people.
And now I’ve found out that I’ve been refused housing because apparently I’m not considered to be in priority need. I don’t think I can appeal the decision because I can’t afford to stay in the hostel any longer. I feel like my only option is to move back in with my abusive ex-boyfriend until I can save up enough money to run away. I was told it would take 28 days for the council to process my application, but I waited 57 working days just to end up back where I started, just with more debt and anxiety. If I have to put up with domestic violence for another year, so be it.
I was trying to hold down a reasonably professional job but my brain has gone pop. I’m signed off work with stress but my job is probably toast. My doctor has prescribed me antidepressants and I’m waiting to see a psychologist.
I hope this gives a snapshot of a domestic violence victim being “processed”. The flipside of gay life in a mega city in 2015. I understand that there are people more vulnerable than myself, and that there is a desperate housing shortage in London, but the system is brutal and barbaric.
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