2023-08-17 04:36:00
In a colorful way, Sabine and Michael jumped to the ceiling, on May 10, when the postman put the mail in the mailbox. Given the height of the ceiling, they should not jump too high.
The letter came from the housing company Sambr’Habitat. The couple had been waiting for him for weeks.
The couple live in Lobbes. In life, Michael was a welder. They receive us at their home, at the end of rue de la Rancune. Devil, who had the idea to give it this name.
The Grudge? No, it was a deep feeling of injustice that prompted them to contact the editorial staff.
Sabine and Michael show their home. Here, everything is precarious, bordering on unsanitary. We are on vacation, the children are not there. It is necessary to count that in school period, they are three to be added in this living space where each square centimeter is calculated. How do they do it, with three young people aged 17, 16 and 13.
Don’t look for the bedrooms: there are none. The parents sleep in what serves as a living room, on sofa beds.
The adjoining rooms have low ceilings. You have to bend to move from one to the other. Given the lack of space, everything is in boxes ready to move. What they hope and wait for too long.
The family moved here for lack of anything better. When they looked for accommodation, during the Covid, the couple had calculated that they might give 900 euros in rent per month. “We thought we’d find it easy, it’s not nothing, anyway,” sighs Sabine.
They searched for two years, in vain.
The rue de la Rancune imposed itself for lack of anything better. They moved there in 2021. The grandmother might provide shelter for them in the garden. “We said to ourselves that it was still temporary”, squeaks Michael. Already two years…
Dry rot and kerosene heating
How to describe this kind of annex located at the back of the house? Initially, it was used as a tool shed through which you had to go to access the garden and the vegetable patch. The shed was fitted out with makeshift means. We did the best, but the rooms are small, with minimal comfort. The dry rot has settled. In winter, the couple heats with oil. Combustion causes fumes. For the lungs, it’s not the best. Besides that the smell forces you to air continuously, whether it’s freezing cold or not.
All this to say that Sabine and Michael placed their hopes in the Centr’Habitat housing company, which is doing its best but is overwhelmed.
And so on May 10, the postman dropped off the mail that the couple, as you can imagine, hastened to open: a house with three bedrooms, rue Malapatte.
The dream. Except that…
Sambr’Habitat only asked for one last little thing: proof of everyone’s income. With hindsight, Michael believes that we might have asked them earlier, but so be it.
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Cold shower
And there was the cold shower. On examining the income certificates requested, Centr’Habitat discovered that there was a misdeal: the couple declared amounts of 600 euros too high to give them the right to the accommodation envisaged. It’s normal. No criticism to address: housing companies are of course required to allocate housing according to criteria that are the same for everyone. The house in the rue Malapatte passed right under their noses.
Sabine explains that the 600 euros would correspond to what she receives as the head of the household. “By counting the amount, we fit the criteria and the house was for us. They had to back down and it was very hard to digest for us and for the children. We had so much hope”.
As a result, the small family unfortunately “falls back” into the waiting circuit for the allocation of housing corresponding to their income.
In Ixelles, unsanitary accommodation at 950 euros for a two-room apartment
A temporary that lasts
Sabine and Michael shared their disillusionment with those around them. The learner, the CPAS wanted to make a gesture: they offered different accommodation, what they call “transit” accommodation. Exactly, one of them was available.
So, rue de la Rancune, once once more filled with hope, they redid the boxes.
Except that for two days, the accommodation was allocated to another family deemed “in greater urgency” than theirs. New broken promise, new cooled hope.
Sabine was all the more disappointed because, being herself a workwoman at the CPAS, she really liked the transit house she knew for having cleaned it when previous occupants left. In her imagination, she already saw how to arrange everything.
What job at 50?
Michael had a company. He has worked since the age of eighteen. He is now fifty. With the crisis, the company went bankrupt. He is at an age where it becomes difficult to find a job. And without a stable contract, it’s complicated with most owners.
This summer, their vacations have Rue de la Rancune as their only horizon.
But the start of the school year is approaching and with it, hope. The children are going back to school. Sabine and Michael want to believe it. They hope for a solution which, for them, requires decent housing.
Give children a chance. They have the right, it is obvious, to a decent place to live. They have the right to start off on the right foot.
The housing company, which is certainly doing for the best, has been contacted; she did not answer.
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