Dear Housing Ass.

Dear Housing Association,

Thank you for your email today to remind me that I am a couple of weeks behind in my rent. This is due to a cut in my benefits which will hopefully be resolved soon, once I have convinced the DWP that moving house does not equate to spontaneous recovery.

I am so pleased you have finally figured out how to email me. I was beginning to wonder if your offices possessed any computers at all, given the number of times I've emailed you over the past three months and received no reply.

There was that one where I asked you to help me find out where my electricity meter is located, which you never responded to. This resulted in me running up a huge electricity bill which was unnecessary and which I cannot prove isn't mine, so am liable to pay it. Still, I'm sure your computers were down that day.

There was that other email I sent where I asked you to fix my toilet, which I'd been flushing with a bucket since I moved in. I sent you a few reminders about this, but your IT team must have been on annual leave, because you never replied. In fact it took 3 months and a flood of raw sewage from a neighbouring flat before you finally decided to accept there was a problem. This however took a panicked phone call from me to your out of hours team at 3am one Sunday morning, a phone call which distressed me so much I later cut myself to deal with it. Of course you only did half the job and the toilet is still not properly fixed, but let's not be picky, eh?

Then there was the time I asked you to fix my kitchen and lounge lights, which finally got done last week. That only took three months too, so I suppose that's consistent at least. I'm thinking on this occasion there must have been problems with all your communication systems because I remember my support worker phoning you and you promising to text me regarding this particular repair, which you never did. I just got a lot of phone calls from you instead, which I wasn't able to answer (see previous paragraph for what might happen if I had answered the phone, I'm sure you'll agree I'm justified in trying to protect myself from unnecessary injuries). Maybe it was a trainee on reception that day who thought promising to text was the same as actually doing it. What an unfortunate coincidence, to have your communication systems down on the same day you're training new staff, I do empathise and fully understand there might be teething problems.

There was of course the email sent to you by my friend acting as my advocate, asking was there any support you could offer me such as a vulnerable tenant worker, given that I was having trouble accessing repairs and other things to do with my tenancy. You see before I moved in I was offered this, but declined as I didn't see a need for it. It was only when I actually moved in that I realised just how much support I would need in simply existing as a tenant of your unhelpful and un-shit-giving association and how much help even the most organised confident person would need in maintaining their tenancy with you. So my friend emailed you requesting this support, so that hopefully it wouldn't get to the point that there was raw sewage pouring into my flat at 3am on a Sunday morning, but maybe that email didn't arrive too. Perhaps I gave her the wrong address to send it to, or perhaps she made a mistake when typing it in. How unfortunate.

Anyway, I'm very pleased that I will no longer experience any problems like the above, as you have very clearly found my email address and finally understood that this is a good way to contact me. Your computers seem to be functioning well, your staff appear to be trained to at least a basic level and you have a working email address. How fortunate for you that this all got resolved just when you needed to remind me that I'm a little bit behind with my rent. I could point out the fact that if you'd only got your arses in gear 3 months ago and emailed me from the start, that all the above expense and stress and panic and worry and everything else could have been avoided. But that would probably be dwelling on the negative past, and no-one likes to do that. So instead I'll just look forward to a long and happy future with you as my landlord, safe in the knowledge that from now on all my repairs will be done on time and I will never again have to clean my neighbours' shit from my bathroom walls.

Sincerely,

Ms A. Quant.