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Kim Blake with mum Janet outside her Grafton Road flat in Kentish Town |
ARSON HELL OF DISABLED YOUNG MUM
Woman forced from home after terrifying attacks on flat
A DISABLED woman whose flat has been attacked by arsonists six times has pleaded to be rehoused after being forced out of her home.
Kim Blake, 31, who has a four-year-old daughter, has left her home in Kentish Town for a secret location while police investigate the string of letterbox attacks at her Grafton Road flat.
When she returned to the property on Thursday to speak to the New Journal, Ms Blake was forced to alert police again after finding that arsonists had struck for the sixth time since June.
Camden Council have told her that with 16,000 people on its waiting list, the harassment she is experiencing is not enough to entitle her to a new home.
Ms Blake said: “I’m not going to stay there until me or my daughter gets hurt. But it seems as though that would be the only way that housing will deal with this – if someone is actually hurt, or killed. Detectives from Holborn called me and told me that they were taking this investigation very seriously. It doesn’t feel as though the council is.” While Ms Blake’s father Jim stays at the flat in the hope of catching her attacker, the family are trapped in the council’s housing allocation system.
Properties are awarded according to a bidding system, in which applicants are given a set number of points according to their circumstances.
Ms Blake, who uses a mobility scooter and cannot use stairs, has 320 points, including 100 “harassment points” awarded because of the fires.
But a two-bedroom ground-floor flat in Camden typically requires between 400 and 500.
Although the council has offered her temporary accommodation – effectively bed and breakfast – accepting it would mean she would face many years on Camden’s long waiting list.
“When I speak to housing they basically say ‘that’s tough luck’,” Ms Blake said.
The council do not say as much officially but because of the pressure on the system, six arson attacks in three months only reaches the lower threshold of the council’s harassment weighting since rehousing Ms Blake is considered merely desirable, rather than the only option. If the violence was “worse”, she would receive 200 harassment points.
While the council will put her up in temporary housing, her harassment points will lapse after six months, further weakening her bidding power- and she would have to surrender her tenancy.
A Town Hall spokesman said the council’s anti-social behaviour team was looking into the attacks on Ms Blake’s property.
She added: “We have clearly explained to Ms Blake that in order to get a more permanent property with the council she needs to bid through our Choice Based Lettings process. The points that she has been allocated already take into account her harassment issues. It might take Ms Blake longer to find a property as her disability means that she may need a specifically adapted property – and there aren’t as many of those available.
“Ms Blake also wants to find a property in a specific location in Camden to be near her parents – which again restricts the amount of properties she can get through Choice Based Lettings. Ms Blake has our contact details and knows she can always phone us if she needs to talk through her housing options further.” |
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