We have been charged for moving stuff off the block that Housing Katherine paid to bring in! Specifically, topsoil. This is another interesting saga in the continuing story of Housing Katherine and their ineptitude or inefficiency or plain 'badness' and wrong-headedness. I asked if I could use the gardening grant for topsoil. I had been asking since we first were in the place for a dressing of topsoil or for a scraping to remove glass shards left from previous tenancies. This is denied now, by Housing, but I can prove it easily enough, we have enough people who are fully aware of it. We were told by one of the men who contract gardening work - grass cutting mainly - for Housing and who came to our place to do some grass cutting of the outside verge in the early days of our tenancy, that the place had been worked over twice before to remove glass. That's how much glass there was. Twice before it had been worked over and yet we were still raking up glass shards. Very disturbing when you've got two little children - a baby and a toddler. So I kept on asking but I started asking for a dressing of topsoil if they wouldn't remove the glass. Got nothing, of course, Got not even a reply. Now they insist there is no record whatever. I've written about this propensity of theirs on another page. So then I got the idea of using the gardening grant - $200 for a family home - for this purpose. So I asked if I could use the grant to purchase topsoil. "No", they said. You can't. That's what I was told. I reported this incidentally during the course of communications I was having with Darwin about Housing Katherine and the grief they were bringing us. Housing Darwin reported back to me that we could indeed use the grant for that purpose. (They also said we could indeed use email, another obstructive lie we'd been told about which I've written elsewhere). So I did. I didn't get much for it the money but I spread it as best I could and just kept a little - about a wheelbarrow full or a tad more maybe - for judicious use around the garden, potting mix for instance, filling holes that suddenly appeared at the white-anted tree. Whatever. And some of it I used for making compost. We'd put the soft vegetable peelings and leavings in that corner in a depth of topsoil and cover with more topsoil and keep it moist and proceed like that. A tiny compost heap - you don't get much vegetable refuse from a small family like ours - mainly comprised of topsoil brought in. This is the stuff Housing has raised charges against us for moving off the block. It and wood chips they made themselves. And whatever else I don't know. Altogether a joke. And an imposition. And a monstrous misuse of funds and misinterpretation of Housing's mandate. |