Sadie: So we’re here today and we’re going to have a discussion about how we feel about a recent case which sort of highlights a massive issue in housing with disrepair and mould, of a young baby, a young toddler called Awaab Ishak, who sadly and tragically passed away due to the effects of mould in his housing association accommodation. And that’s recently been confirmed by a coroner that that’s the reason for his death. So, speaking about this, has anyone got any feelings or thoughts that come up thinking about a case like this? And also what it says about the wider housing emergency?
Pottsy: Shouldn’t have happened should it really, in this day and age. Housing association or private landlord. When you tell these people to get repairs done, and you’re putting the complaint in, it’s taking months and months and months before you get an answer. It’s taking years before the actual repairs are done. By that time, it’s too late. Which is ridiculous, and very tragic, and should never have happened anyway, anywhere really, in modern society.
Debbie: I think the most surprising thing for me was the fact that it was a housing association. You expect something like that from a private landlord, but for a housing association that’s supposed to be a bit more caring, and a bit less money-orientated, to let a property get into that situation is just disgusting really. But hopefully now – it’s tragic and horrible that this poor kid has died – but hopefully now it will give them the kick up the backside that is needed so it doesn’t happen to anyone else.
Catherine: I think the thing that I found really upsetting was because they said that one of the reasons they didn’t do anything – the housing association – was because they didn’t know there was a child in the house because they didn’t have translators and the mother didn’t speak full English. So they didn’t have translators so they didn’t realise, and there’s some errors in their systems, but I was like, just the fact that someone’s died because of that – but not just that – the fact that you’d allow other people to live in that property that you would say was unfit for habitation for a young child – it should be unfit for habitation to everyone.
Pottsy: Within the same space, a number of complaints have been put in, not just by this person who’s tragically lost a child, a number of complaints have been put in over the years and still nothing has happened. Private landlords are just the same – I had a private tenancy and I complained to my landlord about the mould, and all he’d do is say well there’s your section 21 and then they’ll get the next client in. It’s not going to get sorted. Like I said before, one of my friends has moved into the temporary accommodation that I was in – the landlord never did anything when I was asking about the mould, now she’s moved in, she’s heavily pregnant, she’s due to be having the baby soon. All they do is send out some cowboy round to wipe the wall’s down with bleach, paint it up again and a couple of weeks later there’s mould all over the place, the carpet’s wet through.
She’s ill with it. Not just the fact that she’s ill with the breathing, she’s getting stressed out, she’s worried about what child services are going to say about her house, about the condition she’s in. She’s worried about the wellbeing of her child when the child is born. So that can’t be doing any good on her, on her mental health, on her physical health, being worried all the time. Through something the landlord should be fixing. So all this playing on her mind is no good on the child inside her, and her physical self.
Catherine: She should be being able to relax and avoid stress and things during that time.
Sadie: Yeah it’s such an important time when you’re getting to those final stages of pregnancy. You need to not be having any additional stresses.
Pottsy: Well that’s what they say. You can’t relax can you, if you’ve got all that going on around you. I remember there was a leak in there a bit back, and I had to go fix it, she was nearly in tears. She was in tears. She was at breaking point with it all. The landlord took ages to come out, patched it over with plaster basically. They’re just hopeless some of these people. And a housing association, like you just said a moment ago, how have they got away with that? It’s ridiculous. They’ve got the money for doing it haven’t they. They get an allowance to fix these properties every year, so why’s it not being done? Where’s the money going?
Debbie: Your home is supposed to be your castle. Your safe place. Not something that’s going to kill you.
Sadie. There seems to be a lot of impacts on physical health. But also mental health as well, when there are those issues that time and time again a landlord isn’t addressing, and they’re just getting worse, or coming along like you say and doing quick fixes of bodge jobs.
Pottsy: That’s going to get anybody stressed out isn’t it, you know what I mean. It’s like talking to a Brick wall sometimes isn’t it. You say get it done please, get it done. Then you’re worried you’re giving them too much either, you’re thinking – will they kick me out? Will I be homeless next? At least I’ve got a roof over my head, so you don’t want to say anything to them then. SO you just sit there in the squalor that you’re in. You shouldn’t have to sit in the squalor that you’re in, you should be able to tell your landlord, ‘look, this is your job, get it sorted’. But these landlords are sometimes letting the properties out knowing it’s like that and leaving it like that.
I remember when I moved out of that property that this young girl’s in now. They’d come in, wiped all the walls down, painted it, made it look all nice. So it looked nice on the outside. But a couple months after she was living there, it was back to square one. It was cesspit, water everywhere. It was no good.
Sadie: Yeah, they haven’t addressed the root problem, they’ve just done a quick job.
Pottsy: If they actually fixed the problem they’d spend less time, effort and money than doing all these small fix-it-for-now jobs. If they fixed it properly they wouldn’t have to keep getting Bob the cowboy out, do you know what I mean?
Catherine: I remember living in a house and the bills were included in your rent, but the landlord used to lock the boiler cupboard, so you couldn’t put the heating on and it was on like a timer. And so when it was winter it would be absolutely freezing cold, and when we first went into Covid and I was working from home, and it was absolutely freezing because there was no heating on. And I got like a flu, not Covid, and I just couldn’t get better because it was so, so cold. And it was like, even though it’s a bit different to damp and disrepair, it was something that the landlord did that I think took me a really long time to get better, because the landlord locked the boiler in the cupboard. But I had no guarantor, so I was like I can’t find anywhere else to live, and this guy will just take you without a guarantor, so.
Sadie: That’s still a hazard though ‘cause on the health risk assessment where they do the health assessments, extreme heat or extreme cold is a category one hazard. So if they’re not giving you the ability to be able to warm the house then that is still a disrepair issue because they’re not giving you that ability.
Pottsy: It’s not the ability to warm the house now, it’s affording it now isn’t it.
Sadie; I guess if the bills were included that’s why they didn’t want you to put it on.
Pottsy: It’s a very sorry state of affairs when they say don’t turn your heating on, wrap up in ten blankets in your own house. What next?
Debbie: They used to tell us that in the seventies.
Pottsy: Sleeping bag and a tent in your own house? How far do you have to go?
Debbie: We used to have to do that in the seventies when there was no such thing as central heating. I remember going to bed a s kid in three layers of clothing, not just your pyjamas, your dressing gown on top of that as well.
Sadie: I remember my grandparents saying they filled glass bottles with hot water and put them in socks and put them in bed.
