My experience as a person with Autism, moving to a social housing area.

I am a 35 year old lady with a diagnosis of high functioning Autism. This used to be known as Asperger's Syndrome back in the day.

In January of this year, I left my little one bedroom flat in another town, and moved back to the city I was born in. The city of Derby in the UK. Derby is also home to the Rams football team, who my late dad avidly supported before his passing from terminal cancer in 1991, when I was just five years old. Also the painter Joseph Wright also originated from Derby, to name just two things the city is famous for.

I was desperate to get out of my previous rental flat due to problems relating to the ownership, and other irritating problems with the property, such as faulty boilers and a mouse invasion!.

In November of 2020, I applied, rather haphazardly however, for a housing association 'direct let'. These types of let is when the housing association advertises one of their vacant properties via regular rental channels, such as online adverts etc. I was called, out of the blue, by this housing association A couple of weeks after asking about it on the online advertisement.

This flat was in an area I was not too sure about, but being as I had not lived in Derby for 14 years, I had been in a failed marriage before I moved into the flat I was living in prior to this move. I did not know much about the Derby area at this point, I just wanted to move to be closer to my family, specially my 73 year old mum, who has been my main source of support all of my life. This has been in the absence of me being able to receive any support from statutory or social services. I am simply deemed to be 'too bright' to 'qualify' for this kind of support. This means I have been left trying to manage all of my life's complexities on my own.

Not long after I moved into this flat, in this area, I started to notice the area wasn't very nice. There was a lot of rubbish being dumped, and dog poo left on communal grass areas. I am a dog owner myself, and I do not believe in leaving dog mess for a child to stand in, no thanks!.

I moved here from a largely anonymous, mixed residential area, in a town called Sutton In Ashfield, where I moved to after my marriage ended in 2018.

As a person with Autism, I see and feel things maybe you might not, or maybe there are things you would pay more attention to than I would?. For example when I see a drug user laying prostrate on the grass outside my window in the morning (something which is very common on this housing estate!), I am not shocked by this, I just see a sad tale of human decay.

I had issues with noise from my neighbour too. We had to complain to the housing association about him. This made the first few months here even harder for me, as on many occasions, I was being disturbed during the night. I already have difficulty getting to sleep, and staying asleep, so if I am woken up like that, it often means I am up all night after that.

It all added to the stress of being thrust into a totally alien environment. A fish out of water would have felt much more at home than I did here when I first arrived.

Living here hasn't got any easier for me. A few days ago a single bed and mattress were set alight not far from my flat, and windows were broken on another property in a petty friends dispute only a couple of nights after the bed fire incident.

I felt like an alien who had crash landed on a foreign world when I arrived here on this estate, surrounded by unfamiliar sounds, unfamiliar people, and seemingly hundreds of social problems I am not able to fix myself. I was thrust into this environment almost overnight, I had no time to adjust to this way of living at all.

I am hoping that as time progresses, time is able to solve some of my problems. My mum sometimes says that time is a great fixer, and if it is allowed to run it's course, as frustrating as waiting can sometimes be, and as hard as it can be to see this when you are in the moment, as the old adage says, time really does heal.

I am trying to let the relevant agencies know about my Autism, so hopefully, one day, I can be rehoused in a more suitable area. Ideally for me this would be somewhere like one of those over 55s retirement bungalows lol, or a flat in a more settled area, perhaps one patrolled by a warden service?. It seems I will have to fight a very narrow minded system if I want any hope of getting my needs recognised.

Getting statutory services to recognise my Autism has been an uphill battle most of my life. People with high functioning Autism often fall through the net, our needs are missed because we present as so able. This has happened to me all of my life.

One of my biggest struggles is anxiety. Anxiety has been a constant companion of mine all my life, I have never been a moment without it.

Hopefully one day I will find someone, or something, who gets it. I have come close recently, maybe one day this dream, along with my dream of achieving some form of paid employment as well. That is something I haven't been able to achieve so far, but the future is an unwritten book isn't it, what is happening today, won't be happening tomorrow.

Let's hope a more secure future awaits me.