Kwajo Tweneboa’s piece about how bereaved relatives are immediately evicted from social housing struck home (The secret social housing scandal: when your parent dies – and you are evicted in days, 16 July). When my mother died in 2000, we had a week to clear the flat on the estate she lived on with us for 40 years. Just about time to clear the kitchen and bathroom, and dispose of her clothes. Twenty-two years later, it still hurts. Now, I worry about my sister – her adult daughter lives with her in social housing and she has Crohn’s disease. But her name is not on the flat lease. So when my sister dies, her daughter will suffer the same fate as Tiana in Tweneboa’s article – homeless and disabled. It’s a scandal that needs addressing.
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• My local council does still allow successions of tenancy, but this depends on the type of property. If it is underoccupied at the time of death, or would be if one person were allowed to succeed the tenancy (largely decided by bedroom number), the council will work with the person who could succeed to find them a smaller, more appropriate property so that the larger one can be let to a family.
