Cancer mum feels rejected by landlords
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
A MOTHER-of-three who is fighting for her life is now also battling for accommodation saying she feels shut out of the private rental market because she is on housing benefit.
Lucy Wilson, who is suffering from cancer, desperately wants to find a house suitable for her and her daughters and to move out of temporary accommodation.
But the 38-year-old Evanton hairdresser suspects private landlords are refusing to consider her for a property when she reveals she is currently too ill to work and she claims benefits.
Speaking from hospital this week, where she was being treated for an infection and a visible blood clot on her thigh, she said it was becoming "pretty obvious" professional working families were a lot more attractive to private landlords.
"I viewed a lovely two-bedroom house on a country estate and it was perfect, but I never got offered it," she said.
"I was gutted. I honestly think the landlord said no when they read about my circumstances, because I had to put it all in the application.
"I just wish they could have a heart and give me a chance. I know they must be concerned about payment but I have the deposit all ready and I can move in right now."
The situation is echoed in a new report by the Shelter homeless charity which found as many as two-thirds of private landlords are unwilling to house those in receipt of housing benefit.
Miss Wilson added: "I just hope something else will come along. A house of my own will give me a great new focus and make me happy. It would be some good news for a change."
She added: "When I split up with the girls’ dad I moved in with my mother but I thought it would only be temporary. I then got ill and had to wind down my mobile hairdressing business, so getting another place was put on hold.
"But things have been hard lately because there are too many adults under one roof. It’s a lot of stress and added tension and I’ve become quite reclusive and just stay in my own room. I’m limited in what I can do now even when I do go out because my leg has been so sore. I’m just lying on my bed a lot."
Miss Wilson is on a free pioneering drugs trial at the world-leading Royal Marsden Hospital in London and has raised £20,000 in a fundraising campaign for immunotherapy treatment at a private clinic in Germany.
It is helping to pay for her accommodation in London where she is a outpatient several days a month.
