A problem to do with Government Housing, Mental Health and our System in Australia

It is strange that I hear that governments are giving millions of dollars to Mental Health. Strange because I know that these money does not help people with mental disorders directly at least not as much as it should.

My wife and I have lived in Government Houses for 14 years and during this time I have been both a full time carer for my disabled wife and a volunteer worker for mental health. More specifically I organised fundraisers to help my local Hospital and I try to help some people online with modest advice and support guided by a couple of friends who are psychologists. We have fundraisers every two or three months and we make enough money to help my hospital, the mental health section more specifically.

We lived for 7 years in a very troubled government complex. Both my wife and I suffer with bipolar, I with bipolar II and my wife with severe Bipolar I. But we both cope reasonably well because we are both resilient. Imagine two people like us in the middle of a very troubled complex of houses were people are on drugs like ICE, were people fight almost and there are the ambulance and the police coming at least twice a week? That is how my wife and I lived for 7 years, in fear of our lives. We witnessed domestic violence, mistreatment of children and a lot more.

We were moved to a safer place when we decided to take some troubled neighbours to court, to help ourselves. You can be sure that Housing offered little help, it was mostly my wife and I that, with organisations such as DOCS, were able to clean up that complex. But we have had to be relocated.

We came to live in a nice complex of six houses, where we live now at this minute, and thought that our problems had gone, only to be disappointed. When our neighbour, an older lady, lost her partner to cancer, her brother came over from Queensland to stay with her. We thought it was very strange that a man could jump the Cue and go in front of many single mums waiting for government house and come to live here immediately after selling his house or property. He just came here and lived here without waiting while my wife and I had to wait 12 years to get a government house.

This older man, in his 80s, was not a nice man. He first wanted to be very friendly with us and when we refused, for good reasons, he started to retaliate. You see my wife could not be friendly with anyone after suffering terrible in the previous complex. We had learned that keeping to ourselves was the best strategy. To get too friendly with troubled neighbours can be a terrible move so that we decided to avoid that.

For seven years the neighbour had been doing anything possible to upset us (we have proof of this in the shape of photos and even film taken in desperation as proof) : from obstructing our way out of the garage with his car, to getting deliveries and friends that blocked our way out of the garage. Not only this but he was throwing bear tops and bottles in our lovely front garden. Then he would put a water pump on that is not supposed to be attached to a sprinkler given that it belongs to the rainwater tanks. For two weeks we had a screeching noise. All of this anti social behaviour made my wife very unwell, with her bipolar, and she was often taken to our hospital to recover. At the hospital they kept writing reports about the neighbour and how the neighbour was having an impact on our health.

We tried to get help from Housing but did not get anywhere. In desperation we took housing to the anti discrimination because we felt that they failed to help us for 7 years and this was not a good thing. We applied to the anti discrimination but in the end was told that we could not prove discrimination. This is strange. Failure to help two people with a mental disorder for 7 years is not discrimination?

Housing gave us two contact numbers in case we had further problems with this neighbour. We rang but were not able to get the proper help. The neighbour continued with his anti social behaviour.

Meanwhile my wife's doctor have agreed to speak to housing about this problem that was having an impact on my wife's health. We signed a consent form back in 2014 so that Housing could contact both our doctor and our psychologist. No one ever got in touch with our doctor and psychologist. Housing failed to do anything. When we rang we felt that it was our fault. I cannot explain the number of letters that I wrote, the number of times my wife had to go to the hospital and the number of visits to our doctor and psychologist. THis must have cost a lot of money to the government and it could have been avoided if Housing acted in time and appropriately. But as we have been told while housing can speak to the female neighbour that holds the lease they cannot speak to the offending neighbour that made our life miserable. Why? Mistery!

In the end, because of all of this stress, my wife, who had to take increased medication and lots of pain killers to cope, developed kidney failure. Not yet to the point of needing dialyses but still serious enough to see a specialist regularly. Both the doctor and the specialist believe that the stress of living in Housing contributed to her kidney function deterioration in a very big way, mostly because stress increases blood pressure and high blood pressure is not good for kidney function.

Once my wife found that her kidneys had been affected we decided to go to the Tribunal because housing should be made responsible for their failure to act. We rang the Minister and he helped us a bit. While we are still working on the case, the neighbour had his TV very loud at night, up to 11.30 PM. We had called the police many times but he would not open the door to them.

He continue to play his TV extremely loud with surround system. In all honesty our house was shaking and I mean it really shaking from the noise. I am a musicians and often play rock so I am used to loud music. But this was extremely loud. So loud that a few professional believe that he gave himself a stroke. Yes he had a stroke recently.

Meanwhile we are still waiting for our legal aid officer to help us get to the tribunal but we feel that the government may have got to him so that we have not heard from legal aid yet. We hope that we do.

It is extremely important for us to expose the failures of Housing, not only to prevent this from happening to us again, but also to make them responsible. We have a report from our hospital that basically states that the failure of housing to help us in time and to act to stop the anti social behaviour of the neighbour may be partly the cause for my wife's deteriorating health.

I will let you know how things work out but for now we just want to get to the tribunal and my wife would need the support of an experienced person to go there because she is not well and we do not want her emotions to get in the way. We need a person that can present the case and be able to articulate the problems. We know that the tribunal is part of the government and believe me when I say that the government controls many agencies including legal aid. We would like to be prepared rather than be discredited in a short time. Believe me they are good at discrediting people when it suits them.

I know that the neighbour has stopped causing problem due to his recent stroke, but my wife's health has been affected and it will not return as it was. We want some justice and most important to make housing workers accountable for this injustice. THis could happen to us again and we would not be able to get help if things dont't change.

If anyone knows how to get better help or if there is a mental health social worker that can help us at the tribunal I would appreciate this. We have decided to go to the tribunal. Meanwhile Housing finds all sorts of excuses and they are good at turning things around, especially if the Minister is involved. But the report from the hospital is pretty powerful and it probably has many of them scared in a big way. Moreover we have the full support of our doctor and psychologist who know all the story and have witnessed the terrible inability of housing to help people.