Last year I made the mistake of allowing my ex, who is a Ukrainian refugee, move in with me under the Homes for Ukraine scheme.
As you can imagine this is not an ideal living situation. She has been living with me for over a year now, with no clear end in sight. I therefore made the decision to give her the minimum two months notice for ending my sponsorship, and I have informed the council of this.
However she keeps telling me that two months isn't enough, and that I'm ruining her life.
It looks like she won't be happy until I sign an agreement which will allow her to stay longer if the council won't be able to offer her suitable accommodation. The council previously offered her her own flat in central London, but she turned it down on the basis that the tenancy agreement wasn't secure enough for her. This to me seemed like the best offer she was going to get, and I'm not sure what would satisfy her.
She has no job, so she has all the time in the world to berate me into agreeing to her terms. I usually cave in to her demands just so I can get some sleep and get on with my life and my work.
What can I do? I don't want to just throw her out on the street or get the police involved, but I have already given her over a year, and I'm fed up. I want my flat and my life back
Two months is plenty of time to find a place of your own. 3 months would have been generous. Her beration during that time can be mentioned in any followup letters to the council, even the courts if necessary (I presume there're laws around this?).
According to what you've said of her, you're her security in the country while she does .. what, escape the war?
You might ease her fear and reassure your mind if you helped her look for a place. You could offer a £500 paracute on the way out.
Hold off signing the agreement for use later during ultimatum - it's not their weapon, it's yours. If they give you shit, you wont sign it.
This'll be the closure your relationship obviously needs.
>It looks like she won't be happy until
You won't be happy until she's gone. Two months isn't that long, are you sure you can't grin and bear it until then?
>However she keeps telling me that two months isn't enough, and that I'm ruining her life.
I'll echo otherlads that you're under no obligation to keep her around and this isn't psychologically healthy home environment for you. I know you want to be the honest man who is in the right but she's taking the piss and you don't have to justify anything, she seems to feel no pressure to leave and I suspect you're being taken advantage of. If you own the property then I'd be cognisant that you might have to get her evicted which is going to be a long process.
This is one of those times I really want to grab you lads by the shoulders and shout "YOUR FEELINGS MATTER TOO" until our eardrums bleed.
She is taking you for a ride. She has already been offered alternatives. You are willingly sacrificing your mental wellbeing and life, probably because you have been conditioned to think it's "the right thing to do", but you have already done enough.
You have already bent over backwards. Give her the two months and reclaim your life, you absolute lunatic.
Between this, the porn game recommendations, and the unspeakable post on >>/101/36564, I'd say one of you lads needs to ease up and find yourself a nice optionally chubby lass.
Please let us know how you get on with things, OP. I'd like to read a post here in about a week saying, "came to my senses, we've worked something out" and then another in two months saying, "I can't believe I let that drag out for so long, I am now dating other women and freely pissing with the bathroom door open".
Thanks ladm9s. Really appreciate all the replies, will try and respond in turn.
>>33811 The issue is she doesn't have a job, so she will be reliant on whatever the council will be able to find for her, and she's worried she'll end up in a homeless shelter.
I'm also not sure how long I can avoid coming to a new agreement. I've already tried saying I'll think about it, and that it'll depend on her behaviour first, but she thinks I'm just leading her on and I have no intention of actually agreeing to it. Admittedly I'd rather not sign it, I want her gone as soon as possible but I also want the next two months to be as peaceful as possible.
>>33812 I would have happily taken it myself. Her issue is she can't trust the council and thinks they will evict her at any moment and put her in a homeless shelter.
>>33813 Two months will feel like a long time when she will ask me every waking (and non-waking) hour whether I'm still evicting her. I agree I should just grin and bear it, but I'm worried about the impact on my work. I want to avoid escalating things by making any complaints about her as I worry that will only make things worse.
So the alternative is to come to an agreement with her where she can stay until she is able to find somewhere else, as long as she respects my boundaries. This living arrangement isn't good for either of us, so I'd like to think she is motivated to find somewhere else - the issue is I'm not sure she will find somewhere else that will give her the security she wants.
She can apply for housing benefit and find her own private rented accommodation, although obviously that's going to be tricky if she wants to stay in London.
As a host under Homes for Ukraine/Ukraine Permission Extension, you may be entitled to free mediation and legal advice through your local council. The council do have a statutory duty to provide resettlement support, although what's available varies by council. It's also possible for the council to match her to a new host (if they can find one); that new host would be eligible for thank you payments.
>>33819 >Her issue is she can't trust the council and thinks they will evict her at any moment and put her in a homeless shelter.
Now, I'm a doormat and I've never been in any sort of situation like this, so I promise I won't be offended if you tell me to piss off. But if I had someone like this, and I was confident that the council wasn't actually going to evict her, then I would offer a deal where she moves in there, and if she gets evicted, then she can move back in with me.
Is there anything in particular that is preventing her from getting a job?
>>33819 >The issue is she doesn't have a job, so she will be reliant on whatever the council will be able to find for her, and she's worried she'll end up in a homeless shelter.
My mother has been through a homeless shelter. While the service was abused by tramp&camp types, the staff were keen to help anybodybody who was in genuine need. It was their pleasure to move somebody who 'clearly shouldn't be there' through the system as quickly and favorably as possible. Local might differ, but homeless shelteres are regulated.
>Admittedly I'd rather not sign it, I want her gone as soon as possible but I also want the next two months to be as peaceful as possible.
>I'm also not sure how long I can avoid coming to a new agreement.
Give yourself and her a week of consideration. Don't even hint that you'll agree to sign. it's your house and your friend has overstayed their welcome.
"We'll talk about it at the end of the week. In the mean time, I will help you find a range of rental properties to consider". Find 3, at least 1 with genuine effort, then leave any printouts, links or letting agents business cards on the kitchen table. Probably avoid flooding her inbox as a phone in their face is too immediate and shocking.
To address some of the comments about her using me, and to try make my lunacy comprehensible, it's probably worth me giving some context.
She is severely depressed, has crippling social anxiety and is probably autistic.
I could and should have treated her better when we were together. As much as I waited for it to happen, I never really felt the same way as she felt about me, and I suppose it's a fair accusation that I led her on and wasted her time. I was also an edgelord who made jokes about Ukraine to my friends, which she found out about.
So my fateful decision to let her stay with me was basically an attempt to atone for being a dick, and I've treated the resulting misery as karmic justice.
Yeah housing benefit wouldn't be able to cover her renting somewhere not shared with strangers, which is important to her given her vulnerability. She's resistant to moving outside of London, but presumably another council won't have a duty to house her if she's not living there anyway?
The council has already in the past (before she was living with me) refused to help her find a new host, so I don't think they will help her with a rematch now (especially as there are probably much fewer potential sponsors).
I offered her this, as I don't think it's in the council's interest to evict her. But she doesn't believe that I will allow her back once I've managed to get rid of her.
>Is there anything in particular that is preventing her from getting a job?
She's been declared unfit for work in light of the conditions I mentioned above. She ultimately wants to work, but it is also difficult for her because she hasn't worked since 2022, and that is a big gap for her to try to explain to a prospective employer.
Thanks everyone for all the advice. I will see if I can get a week of breathing space from her, and also find out what the council can do to help her. I can try and find her some potential places to rent, but tbh I doubt I'd have better luck than the council finding places she'll want to move to that would be covered by housing benefit.
>She's resistant to moving outside of London, but presumably another council won't have a duty to house her if she's not living there anyway?
Only a council where you have a local connection has a duty to you under the Homelessness Act, but most London councils are very eager to re-house homeless people outside of the capital. They'd much rather jump through some hoops to find someone a decent tenancy at an affordable rent than pay thousands per month to provide emergency accommodation. Equally, there are plenty of housing associations outside of London with vacant housing that they're keen to fill.
Your ex can make a homeless application with the council without you kicking her out first. Anyone in priority need who could be homeless within the next 8 weeks is entitled to support; she becomes entitled to emergency accommodation if she becomes homeless, but they have a statutory duty to prevent homelessness. Her various mental health issues and the fact that she's a Ukrainian refugee means that she's likely to be assessed as in priority need without too many quibbles.
OP here. She keeps pressuring me to email the council to withdraw the 1 October deadline. How can I convince her that the council don't have an interest in giving her a place and then evicting her after 2 months, so that she accepts their offer?
She refuses to trust them unless they give her a secure contract, which they're not going to do
I'm not sure what they've offered her, but on an Assured Shorthold Tenancy they can't evict her without cause under for the duration of the tenancy agreement. That'll be a minimum of six months, but most Housing Association tenancies run for two years. It's likely that the Renters Reform Bill will pass into legislation during that time, which will outlaw Section 21 evictions completely, meaning they can only evict her if she breaches her tenancy agreement.
In any case, the minimum notice period for a Section 8 eviction is two months, so the only way she could be evicted after two months is if they literally served her with an eviction notice on the day she moved in.
The obvious point is that if they evicted her, then they'd have a statutory duty to rehouse her - it'd be completely self-defeating. They'd have to be completely mad to evict her, then spend a fortune on putting her up in emergency accommodation while they find her another tenancy.
Thank you. I think it's a 'non-secure tenancy' they've offered her and she's been trying to get a AST but they've refused.
She seems to be convinced that they are trying to use the council flat to coax her to move out from mine, and they'll then put her in a homeless shelter when they need to house someone higher priority, e.g a mother with kids.
