Top of List, Now Last – Woman Faces Four More Years Wait for House

September 1956

South Yorkshire Times September 29, 1956

Top of List, Now Last
Woman Faces Four More Years Wait for House

Mrs Iris Fitzgerald, a 34-year-old housewife, of 15 Montague Avenue, Conisbrough, Conisbrough has been waiting for a new Council house for nearly 4 years, and was looking forward to a move to a more modern house. But she is now at the bottom of the housing with over 400 prospective tenants in front of her – and she is still in her old home.

Mrs Fitzgerald was recently offered a new home on the Windmill Council house estate, but she did not want to live in the Windmill area and told the Urban Council so.

And at their meeting on Wednesday the council decided that she be placed at the bottom of the housing list.

But Mrs Fitzgerald, who lives with her husband and father, is not annoyed by the Council decision because she does not intend moving to the Windmill district. “I shall never go there at any price,” she told a “South Yorkshire Times” reporter this week and the cost of a refusal will probably be another four years to wait on the housing list, and then she may not be get a house in the area she desires. Mrs Fitzgerald said that she was prepared to live in a new house anywhere in the district except the Windmill Estate.

And what is her objection to the Estate? – She told us that the estate was too far out of Conisbrough (it is almost on the Urban boundary), and the walk up to the house would be too much for her elderly father, Mr Percy Wall who is 64 and suffers from arthritis in the legs. “And I don’t want to live so far out of town, it’s like a desert right out there” she said.

Mr and Mrs Fitzgerald have lived at Montague Avenue for 14 years – all their married life – and they were looking forward to a new home when they reach the top of the housing list, but they are both prepared to wait another four years rather than move the Windmill estate.

“It will be another long wait, but it will be better than living out in the wilderness” Mrs Fitzgerald said

Mr RF Edwardson, Clerk of Conisbrough Urban Council explained to the “Times” that there was no normal procedure in such a case as this as it was the first time of its kind in the Urban area.

The House Letting Committee considered the case and gave the family a second chance to take the house after their first refusal with a warning that they would be off to be placed at the bottom of the housing list if they again refused.

The Fitzgerald’s were however firm in their decision.