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East London Councils Find Method to Make Homelessness More Miserable!
Written by Jon   

Choice Based Lettings shows you what you would have won.

Havering Council - one of the furthest Left of the London Boroughs on the map - yet one of the furthest to the right on the Political Spectrum has had a brainwave.

In order to make homeless people - and those with other urgent housing needs feel like they have a choice in their dealings with local council housing bureaucracy - the council decided to  outsource it's power to make decisions on who benefits from very limited council housing stock to The East London Lettings Council.

Also participating in the scheme are Hackney, Waltham Forest, Redbridge and Newham Councils.

The illusion of choice has obviously been a more important priority to these councils then putting the money and maladministration to better use  in...God Forbid - building some new council houses.

The whole idea of the website - which you can visit at http://www.ellecchoicelettings.org.uk is to computerise and automate the weekly decisions on which two to three lucky people will get an 'offer' on a council property they bidded on through the site.

What this results in is simple: 99% more misery around the community that has to use this most indefensible, weekly 'prick-teasing service'. As you check what's available you're alowed to choose two properties. But you won't get a look in. The best you can hope for is a pop-up button telling you how very close you are - week after week, for months and years...

If you don't participate in the weekly misery that is http://www.ellcchoicehomes.org.uk you will notice yourself promptly thrown off the local Housing register - a dark dripping underground secret archive of Despair. Your name no longer in the misery files, you best put down 75% of your weekly benefits to sleep on some Eastern European friends floor - if you can find the room of course.

Oh shut up and get a job they protest. Wonderful, I just need at least £750 saved, a weekly £270 take home pay and a couple of months of good bank statements. Then, if I'm lucky - I can rent some dogshit smeared studio in some ghetto for £180 a week.  

There is no denying...when it comes to the cost of living in London - even to the furthest reaches of the M25 - nothing is cheap, everything is bad value - and if the grabbing bankers left hand dont get you the right one will.

The good news? You want the good news? Ok, well - fundamentally, with the intercedence of God himself I may be offered a council place - I mean my brother in law managed to get a two bedroom for himself and his gay lover by pretending to need access to my deceased sister's kids. Maybe I should follow his example and heartily impregnate the nearest willing sperm receptacle I can find, and then absoutely ignore my welfare state progeny -  then there may certainly be hope.

So they say that  we're a first world nation here in Britain, but if the only options for moving out of the misery of homelessness is sheer luck, corporate
munificence, or staggered levels of government assistance depending on your propensity to breed horrible children that scream in public all the time... then what's the difference between Zimbabwe and East London? The rich get richer and the poor get children...and I'm kind of starting to see why! One system is honest - the vile brutal Dictatorship of Mugabe let's you know where you stand. Here in Britain however, the feudalistic elective dictatorship wants you to stop bitching and smile, because - shit - you got a choice!

Ten Things Really Quite Wrong with the "Illusion of Choice": EllcChoiceHomes.org.uk

1. It takes half and hour out of people's working week. Time that could be better spent learning, earning or eating biscuits. We know our time isn't valuable to you Mr Havering Council - but do you have to be so blatent about it?

2. It makes homeless people spend money they shouldn't texting to bid, going in a cybercafe to bid, or phoning an 0845 number to bid. Bro - do ya got 40p for the phone please?

3. It trys to waste more of the user's time by encouraging them to search inside very small areas. To the un-web savvy, the site can take up to an hour to be sure that you've got your bids as low as possible in the queue, or it can take 10-20 minutes if you know what your'e doing. {Check this handy guide I made to the site - link}

4. It's supposed to be neutral by Law as to the age of the user. However it actively discriminates against people under 40 years of age. The ethics of this may be questionable, the hypocrisy isn't - don't say you're against agism, and then discriminate regardless.

5. It lets you know in graphic detail how homes are given to those apparently rated as either of less or similar need then the user, for less time, without anymore explanation then: "this depends on your need for a garden". Anyone who is fussing about a garden should be kicked off the system entirely - do you want four walls or not?

6. It let's the local government invade your privacy just a little bit more then a right thinking person should be comfortable with.

7. It has cost a small forest of trees, and contributes heavily to global warming in relation to it's social usefulness. Considering the entire site, and illusion of choice is an utter waste of time.  

8. It has 19skilled employees who could be doing much more then sitting on arse explaining why the site isn't very usable.

9. It cost £5,500,000 to set up. Bargain.

10. It makes me waste time writing about something I could administer better on my own - with a team of crack smoking monkies.

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