Its been a while since I last blogged on here. I can't believe its been a busy year of 2017 for us with moving and everything. After our first 6 months and realizing things were getting awkward with red tape and nobody was helping us out with benefits. I think they thought we were looking for the benefits only, not realizing that I am Irish descent and also we are married so that must had taken into account. We went to 3 solicitors to help us. The last one suggested us to move over the border of Northern Ireland as there was less red tape. So we did and started looking for apartments over the border.
July 10th we found a place in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal which is about 30 minute drive away from Derry. We started struggling with moneywise because we had been paying for everything, leaving us with barely any money left. We have a kind friend, Mark, from London, who gave us a gift of 200 Euros in total (100 Euros for each transaction) through paypal. We hadn't met him and such a very kind man to do this for us.
We started getting things slowly and gradually like getting our PPS (like our Social Security number from the US), Craig got his immigration card that would help him stay, he also got his passport stamped so he could stay until August 2018 then we have to return to the Garda station to get him booked in for another year. Two more years and he will be here legally as a resident with me. We also gotten our prescription and medical card for copays. We also gotten our names down for a Council house (so we could have our own place) so we don't have to live in private housing. Sadly it will take about 2 years waiting list.
First 5 months and we had to get out of the apartment due to Craig's mobility issues since the apartment had stairs and the toilet was on the top floor. Not very good apartment for someone like him who has mobility issues. So in order for the people to get us started on the waiting list, we had to find a place that is ground level and we would stay there for the 2 years until our names comes up for Council House.
The management company that we were renting from found us a ground level apartment so we moved into there Dec 8th, the day of Craig's birthday which was just up the street from us on the mountain top.
We are now waiting for HAP, which are the people who are going to help us with our housing benefit so we would have a reduce rent to pay rather than the full amount, and because we broken our lease and complained there were issues with the other apartment, the management had to get us a better apartment. So he used the money which was our deposit from the last apartment for our first month rent here in the new apartment. We still have to find a way for the deposit for the new apartment. He said it was okay to pay installments but the with housing benefit they could take care of the deposit. Just have to wait for the letter through HAP.
So that's the update that we have been going through at the moment. We are enjoying the new apartment. Much bigger place too. More space.
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