He's been without a bathroom and toilet in his public housing for nearly a month, with little prospect of it being restored by Christmas.

Housing ACT has for three weeks put Mr Vallance up in motels, but he walked out of the last one and returned home at dawn on Tuesday to get access to his own kitchen - even though the bathroom is gutted and useless, just bare concrete and no electricity. By Friday, he still had no bathroom.

The housing complex does have toilets in a communal block by a swimming pool but Mr Vallance is an elderly man living on his own who doesn't want to walk downstairs in the dark to get to the facility. He said he could always use the swimming pool to wash.

Mr Vallance said he has a raft of health problems. "I have been seriously ill due to diabetes, diabetic neuropathy and arthritic rheumatism, all accelerated due to high blood pressure, anxiety and poor diet.

"I have diabetes Type 2, now at the final stages. Loss of balance, deteriorating eyesight, deficient hearing, palpitations, trembling uncontrollable hands.

"This is par for the course with advanced diabetes. Medication no longer works, just a careful high vegetable diet and glucose to arrest low blood sugar complications.

"No teeth left".

He said that these health problems led him to have a row at the last motel he was put up in. The lack of cooking facilities meant his blood sugar level was low and he said he was very confused. "I wasn't the full quid, mate", he said.

All he knows now is that he is back home - but in a house without sanitary facilities.

He's been in the one-bedroom flat in Watson since October 1999, but he said in recent years the plumbing and electricity had not been right. He had complained for five years about it before a decision was made to get it fixed.

The bathroom in Mr Vallance's home was gutted by tradies, who left it little more than a shell with all the fittings removed - and put in his bedroom. Since then, Mr Vallance says he has hardly seen anything of the tradies since, and no repair work has been done.

He isn't confident he stands a chance of having the work done before the start of January.

Bob's a battler. He is threatening legal action, something he's done in the past.

"They need to find me accommodation", Mr Vallance said. "I don't want to find myself another five or six weeks out of my home."

The ACT government said it couldn't comment on individual cases.