A YOUNG mother is making a desperate appeal for help after constant harassment problems have made her life a misery.
The woman, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, has claimed that the housing association from whom she rents her property is doing nothing to help her despite the fact that in the past it has been other tenants who are the harassing her.
Her story comes only a week after The Herald reported that Drum was putting together an anti-social behaviour strategy to tackle problems affecting and caused by tenants.
But the housing association has told The Herald that the woman has never supplied any evidence to back up her claims meaning it is unable to act.
It was then that a family, said to be causing problems to a number of households on the estate, began harassing her because of problems associated with her previous partner which occurred before they were together.
Constant harassment and abuse became too much and she asked her landlord Drum Housing Association to intervene, but she claims that the association did little to help.
Eventually, in January last year, she voluntarily swapped homes with another tenant and gave up her two-bedroomed house for a two-bedroom flat on the Manor Estate in Alton to escape the problems.
"The housing association refused to help me because they said that I was adequately housed," she said.
"In the end I exchanged my two bedroomed house with a garden for a grotty little dump in Alton which I had to decorate.
"I really didn't want to move as far away as Alton but I felt I had no choice."
The woman, 26, thought that she could start her life again but she then suffered new harassment problems.
This time it was with a group of women who she became friendly with but later decided to end the friendship when she discovered that they took drugs and drank alcohol during the day.
"I had decided to keep myself to myself but I became friends with these people before finding out what they were like," she told The Herald.
When the friendships ended it was then that the woman claimed she was harassed with late-night phone calls and verbal abuse.
She said: "They would harass me in the street and ring me up and abuse me."
The problems led to the police being involved and they gave the culprit a warning, the woman said.
However by then she was unable to cope with the problems and earlier this year decided to stay with her parents while trying to again move to a new home in Bordon
But she told The Herald that Drum has refused to help her because the police do not believe that she is in any danger.
"They have not be very helpful at all," she alleges.
On top of this she says that she can't find anyone to voluntary swap with her because her flat in Alton is so bad.
And in March she was told by Drum she must go back to the flat in Alton which she has rented. She has reluctantly done this although she takes her four-year-old daughter to a Bordon school in the morning and then stays in the town at her parents' home throughout the day, returning to Alton only at night.
The woman said that all of her problems stem from the original harassment she faced in Bordon and is pleading with Drum to help her.
"I cannot live my life in fear like this," she said.
"The people who were harassing me are still living in the same place while I have lost everything – it was not even my fault in the first place.
"I had a nice home which I didn't want to give up but I had to and now I can't move out of my flat because no-one else wants to live there.
"I should not have had to move away from Bordon in the first place and I feel that Drum owes me something.
"Drum say that it is not their responsibility but surely they cannot allow one of their tenants to harass another tenant.
"If it is not their responsibility then whose is it?"
A spokeswoman from Drum told The Herald that it needs proof of problems before it can intervene.
"On each occasion in Bordon and Alton no evidence has ever been supplied to us or the police," she said.
She said that Drum could only act in cases were evidence of problems has been supplied or it is powerless to act.
The spokeswoman added that the housing association was pleased with its proposed anti-social behaviour strategy and hoped that it would be an effective tool in the future to deal with tenants' problems.