Elizabeth is a veteran after serving in the Women’s Auxiliary Airforce and she lived in a private rented house in Edinburgh for more than 9 years. She really liked the house she was in, but was worried about rent increases and how she would afford this in to the future. Then one day, she was told that her landlord was selling the property and that she would have to move.
Elizabeth contacted the local authority to find out about her options, once they found out that she was a veteran, they told her about an organisation called Housing Options Scotland who might be able to give her advice and support.
Very worried about her situation, Elizabeth contacted the organisation and “spoke to a lovely woman called Moira Bayne, she made me feel very comfortable and hopeful, it was a bit of light at the end of a very dark tunnel…speaking to her took some of the anxiety away, which at the time was quite bad”.
Elizabeth wasn’t looking for anything special, she just wanted a one bedroom property “just something that was adequate and not too expensive”. She was feeling quite desperate, she wasn’t looking for her dream home, just somewhere safe and secure that she could call her own.
“Moira almost straight away found something for me to go and look at…and lovely as it was, it was far too big.” Elizabeth was given lots of other choices and recommendations in the following weeks, of places to think about and go a look at which she said “was very helpful” and “Moira kept in touch to see how I was getting on.”
“Out of the blue, I got a phone call to say that the council had keys to a flat I had bid on, I don’t even remember bidding on it” Elizabeth received the call on a Friday, on the Saturday she had a look around the area which she was happy with and on the Monday, she met the housing officer to get her keys. “I felt like I’d come home”.
Elizabeth had come a long way to reach this point, she reminisced “I envisaged at this point in my life I would be in a different financial situation and thought I’d be in my own privately owned home, so it was all a bit of a shock. However, things are meant to be in my mind and where I am now, I am very content and very happy. I feel very blessed and thankful”.
The biggest obstacle that Elizabeth faced was not knowing what the future would hold, she noted that Housing Options Scotland helped allay her anxieties and gave her confidence. She felt very confused by what she was being told by the housing officers, she didn’t understand everything which she found upsetting, Elizabeth said “Moira gave me hope, I just thought that with her help, something would come about, and I needed to feel that. Although I am a strong person, this situation really knocked me”.