A TRUSTED PLACE TO FIND A HOME

DEALING WITH DEBT

These days there is a lot of talk about debt, in the uk we now owe more than a trillion pounds. This is an amazing figure but the fact is most of us have debt, some small, some very big.

Debt can include rent arrears, council tax arrears, magistrate court fines, gas, electricity, telephones and water rates. If you have any of these, they must be cleared first.

How you deal with these debts will depend on your financial circumstances and if any legal action has been taken. The golden rules are not to ignore the situation and try to come to some arrangement to pay. Offer an amount you can afford and then make sure that you make regularly payments.

Get help now

Being in debt is stressful and can be frightening but there are lots of organisations out there which can help.

• Citizen advice bureau, visit www.citizenadvice.org.uk
• National debt line on 08088084000 or visit at www.nationaldebtline.co.uk
• Credit action on 0800138111 or visit www.creditaction.org.uk
• Step change debt charity on www.stepchange.org.uk

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DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Domestic violence takes place between people who have, or have had, a relationship. They include husbands and wives, former partners and children. Domestic violence takes many forms, for example:

• Physical violence – hitting, pushing, causing injury or forcing the victim to have sex
• Threatening behaviour
• Swearing and shouting
• Behaviour that humiliates or degrades the victim
• Taking control of money
• Stopping the victim from leaving the home

Domestic violence can begin at any time during a relationship and tends to grow worse with time and become more frequent.

Who experiences domestic violence?

Domestic violence can happen in any kind of relationship – heterosexual, gay, bisexual and transgender.

People suffer domestic violence regardless of their social group, class, age, race, disability, sexuality or lifestyle.

Children are often silent victims. To witness, or be a victim of, domestic violence can seriously affect a child's behaviour, health, performance at school and long term future.

Factors that can trigger violence include:

• Trying to leave a partner
• Feeling alone and socially isolated because someone doesn’t speak english or has a disability that stops them going out or talking to people
• Misuse of drugs and/or alcohol

Can anyone help?

To speak to someone in confidence for support, information or an emergency referral to temporary accommodation, contact the free 24-hour national domestic violence helpline 0808 2000 247 or visit: www.nationaldomesticviolencehelpline.org.uk

Anti-social behaviour

Anti-social behaviour (asb) creates distress or alarm for people who are not from the same household as those causing it. It includes:

• Harassment
• Verbal or physical abuse
• Racial abuse or hate crime
• Criminal damage
• Vandalism
• Noise nuisance
• Graffiti
• Threatening or intimidating behaviour
• Smoking or drinking alcohol under age
• Selling drugs
• Substance misuse
• Litter and rubbish dumping
• Nuisance driving

If you feel you are a victim of asb, contact your housing officer on 0208 740 0220

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HOUSING OPTIONS

Types of tenancy

The property you move into offers you a home as long as you meet your responsibilities as a tenant. When you sign your tenancy agreement you are making a legally binding agreement with us to keep to the terms and accept the responsibilities of the agreement

Ebony housing offers four types of tenancy:

Assured tenancy: this is a periodic tenancy granted to tenants on or after the 15 january 1989. As long as you do not break the terms of the tenancy agreement you may continue to live in the property.

Assured shorthold tenancy: these tenancies have less security of tenure than assured tenancies. We will only issue these in shared housing.

Ending your tenancy: you can end your tenancy with us at any time, you just need to give us at least four weeks written notice. We will then send you a form which you need to complete and return to us to start the moving out process.

Starter tenancies: starter tenancies have a probationary period for one year and during this time you will be an assured short hold tenant. This means that it is easier for us to end your tenancy. Your tenancy will normally change to an assured tenancy after 12 months although we can extend the probationary period if there have been problems with the tenancy.

Mutual exchanges: if you live in self contained housing a mutual exchange lets you exchange your home with another ebony housing tenant, or with a tenant from another housing association or council almost anywhere in the country. To arrange an exchange, contact your council’s housing office or any housing associations with suitable properties in the area you wish to move to.

As long as you do not have rent arrears and your home is suitable for the people you wish to exchange with, we will normally agree to a mutual exchange.

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HOW TO PAY

Paying your rent is your key responsibility as a resident. Regular payment is critical to keeping your tenancy. Your rent is due in advance. If you pay weekly or monthly, then you should pay on monday of the week or month that the rent is due.

It is important that we collect the rent that is due to us. If we do not, we will not be able to provide a service to our tenants. Your tenancy agreement is a legal contract. If you do not keep to it, there are steps we can take to end your tenancy. Getting into rent arrears can be distressing and you can end up losing your home. Don’t let this happen to you.

We offer a number of ways to pay:

Allpay payment card

You can pay your rent at any post office or paypoint outlet using your allpay swipe card.

Just hand your allpay swipe card to the cashier and say how much you want to pay. You can pay by cash, cheque, debit card or postal order. The cashier will swipe the card through an electronic reader and enter the amount. The computer will print a receipt with the date, rent account number, the amount paid and details of the post office or paypoint outlet. There are no bank charges, although some paypoint outlets only accept cash payments.

Standing order

Standing order payments are similar to direct debits, except that we cannot change the amount paid if the rent changes. That is your responsibility, although we can help you with it.

Standing order payments must be made in advance and most banks will allow weekly, fortnightly or monthly payments. As with direct debits, please make sure you have enough money in your account before the payments are due to go out and check your statements to make sure that payments have been made successfully.

To set up a standing order, you need to send a standing order mandate form to your bank with the details of your payment.

Call your housing officer on 020 8 740 0220 for a standing order form.

Online payments

If you would like to pay your rent online, please contact your housing officer for payment details.

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