Evicted grandmother now sleeping rough in park

When Heidi Dodson discovered she was going to be evicted, she reached out to her local council of Thurrock in Essex for help. But it rejected her application for priority housing and said she would cope if she ended up on the streets. Two weeks after being evicted, Heidi is homeless and sleeping in a park. Every evening Heidi Dodson reads her grandchildren a bedtime story and wishes them good night.

Then she quietly packs a rucksack with a torch, biscuits and some toilet roll, and makes a flask of tea, before making her way to a local park to spend the night. “You think about what you had - the safety of your own home, key, roof over your head,” Heidi says. “It’s these things that are going through your mind when you are out in the cold and sleeping on a park bench.” The 57-year-old former shop assistant was recently served a section 21 “no-fault” eviction after seven years living in a private rented property she had secured through the council.

Heidi was turned down for priority housing by the local housing department and told that even if she had to “sleep rough occasionally or in the longer term", she would not be more vulnerable than anyone else in the same situation. The council has since apologised for the wording of the letter and says it is supporting her to find a suitable home. After the bailiffs arrived at her rental flat, Heidi presented herself as homeless at the council’s offices. She says she was sent away with a list of private landlords, none of whom would accept a tenant on housing benefit.

She ended up at her daughter’s, but the two-bedroom flat is already overcrowded with two adults and two children, plus Heidi’s adult son who was made homeless alongside her. With the mother-daughter relationship strained through lack of space, Heidi decided it was better to remove herself from the situation, even though her daughter urged her not to sleep outdoors. At the park overnight, Heidi sits on a park bench resting her head on her hand, holding tightly on to her rucksack under a zipped-up coat and wearing two pairs of leggings.She typically gets about three hours of fitful sleep in this position before having to walk around to keep warm. 

The physical impact on her has been swift. Exhaustion has set in, and her hair has started falling out from stress. "My hips and knees are killing me from the cold,” Heidi says. “I’m not young any more.” Personal safety is a constant worry. When men proposition her or people throw insults, Heidi pretends she is waiting for a friend to finish their night shift, even staging fake phone calls from them.“People shout at me, ‘Are you touting for business? How much do you charge?’," she says.Heidi has turned down an offer of a tent and a sleeping bag from a local outreach charity, because she fears these would make her more of a target.