• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

I, now, stand up for myself, with housing!

Status
Not open for further replies.

mumstheword

MyPTSD Pro
It's not that I'm not grateful to, no longer be a homeless person, it's just that, since I've lived in Community housing, I've had a lot of sketchy and not-up-to-standard tenancy managers and treatment.

I used to feel very demoralized and frightened, shamed and disempowered when they came at me, with their systemic (their own sketchy org. culture) shitey treatment, but, in the last year, I just had enough and I started standing up for myself, via emails and reminding them of tenancy and organizational policy, that they are in violation of.

And today, I had to do it again, and I'm pleased with myself.

I am no longer afraid. I'm psychologically, intellectually and emotionally equipped to advocate for myself and/or to go out and access advocacy, if I need to, with my housing providers. I did a stack of research, to, really, get my head around policy, and my own rights and their responsibilites and I can call them on it, when I need to now.

All I want, is to be treated like an equal, with the respect afforded to all citizens, but, I think, partly, because of the reputation of my "high crime" town, my own disabilities, that are on show, at times, and the culture within the organization; my housing providers are repeatedly attempting draconian measures, neglecting their own duty of care, in regards to maintenance, and failing to give mandated notice re; turning up and inspections, overstepping with privacy and our rights to "reasonable peace" and failing to afford us tenants the dignity of being treated with equal respect. I do think there are discriminatory factors at play.

Phew, that was a mouthful of a sentence! But, seriously, it does feel good to have conquered this awful-feeling dynamic, that I found incredibly dysregulating for many years. :-) .

I am now kick-arse at the linguistically-savvy emails, that explicitly insist on fair and due process and treatment.
 
Oh mum. We have a real time situation here with someone and it's just been so awful. It's affected me personally on a very base emotional level cuz it's one of my deepest fears. Please be careful, k?
 
I'm psychologically, intellectually and emotionally equipped to advocate for myself and/or to go out and access advocacy, if I need to, with my housing providers.
This is huge. Experientially, I understand this totally. And I wonder if like myself, you have noticed a power shift in your own 'system' since this has happened. Reclaiming power is so huge - especially for such a foundational issue. Well done @mumstheword .
 
Thank you @The Albatross and @shimmerz, for your support and responses.
It is a big, huge, shift. I just got to sick of living in fear and feeling lesser than and like people could just treat me like I wasn't an equal. I feel "God" has my back.

I feel my integrity, somehow, gives me a foundation that's solid, to move from. I may be poor and even have a disability or two, but, that doesn't mean people in positions of systemic power get to (energetically) walk all over me and my family.

With Housing, they have different people every time. It's a shambles. They don't talk to us either.
It seems like they are settling for a job that they don't want or that has no job security, because they never last, even 6 months, so they don't know us.

Our town has a very bad reputation due to its being a famous drug town. Maybe the only one in the world known primarily for having a weed festival. So we get treated like criminals. I don't even smoke weed or take any drugs, even legal ones.

So, I just decided to write them, when they start picking on us, wanting special inspections, just for us, when they haven't repaired things from when we first moved in, in 2014, and inspections are supposed to be about maintenance that they are paid to carry out and organize, for us.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top