Dear CA Friends,
Knowing what a wide range of knowledge and expertise is around on CA, I would be grateful for any pertinent advice or help that anyone might be able to offer on housing options and allowances please, not for me but for my son. Briefly, the circumstances are that he has returned to our home area of Huntingdon, with him having spent the last 3 years working in Norwich - he's a qualified mechanic and MOT tester, 24 and single. He went to Norwich to be with girl friend, who was studying at Norwich University, and he worked in the Ford and BMW dealerships there and they rented a place together in Norwich; she completed her studies last year and they returned to Huntingdon, although it's an on/off relationship as living together had created numerous hassles for them in a variety of ways. On return, he decided that he had had enough of being a mechanic, and wanted to to do something different, which he has tried but, after a few months working at it now (installing gas fires) it was not steady work, the arrangement hasn't worked out well, and the snag is that he was renting a room that was effectively tied to his work so that has gone too.
Hopefully it won't take him too long to get a job (whether as a mechanic or not, he just wants to get back into work to start earning properly again). For another variety of reasons, I'm away most of the time from the area down here in High Wycombe and there's nowhere else he can live with any mates or family etc left in the Huntingdon area; needless to say, he has no dosh in the bank (he's even sold his car as well as hitting his overdraft limit) so he's currently in a B&B which I'm stumping up for to try and cover the initial period while he is trying to thread the maze of bureaucracy relating to getting jobseekers allowances and housing options (or the lack of them) and while trying to find a job as a mechanic again.
Hence my question for any advice on housing and allowances should anyone out there have better knowledge than I of the subject (which is expanding rapidly as I hit Google...) about any handy tips or useful short-circuits. It's a bit like Catch-22 for him - he doesn't score highly enough (he's single, fit, under 25, and has no kids etc) to warrant anything other than a place in homeless shelter somewhere miles away, doesn't have a job so renting privately is difficult until he does, and any allowances (jobseekers, housing allowance etc) take weeks to kick in, and so the circle goes round and round.
Anyone got any ideas please (or a job available for him in Huntingdon!) as the only viable option I can see so far is to rent somewhere privately on his behalf, which will open up a whole new world of very severe domestic grief and pain (not just financial)...
MG Mark
