Mum fears losing her six kids as she's placed in homes with 'rats and sewage'
A mum from South London fears she might lose her kids after being placed in homes by the local council infested with "rats" and plagued by "leaking sewage". Kathleen Chambers, a 38-year-old mother of six, claims she has been waiting for over a year for Bromley Council to offer her a suitable property.
Kathleen said that the council accepted her application for emergency accommodation in October 2022. She and her five children stayed with family and friends while she was pregnant until she was offered a property in Wolverhampton that December.
She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS): "There was no furniture. There was all of the last tenant's rubbish everywhere. All their clothes were in the house. It was absolutely filthy. There was a skip's worth of rubbish in the back garden and the front garden. I had a housing officer come down and confirm that it was never ready for someone to move into like they stated."
She said it took weeks for the rubbish to be cleared from the property, during which time the bannister in the staircase fell off the wall while she was using it. Kathleen went into hospital in February this year to be treated for liver failure and the birth of her premature son.
Kathleen claimed she has been waiting over a year to be offered a property by Bromley Council (Facundo Arrizabalaga/MyLondon)She said: "No one from housing let the letting agents know that I was in hospital. They say they didn't, it's a bit of a dispute. They emptied my property, everything I own. They took everything out the house. They said that nobody let them know I was in hospital and they thought I'd abandoned the property."
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The mum said the items taken away included a brand new cot for her baby and her late parents' clothing, reports MyLondon. She said she then stayed in an Airbnb and hostels with her kids from March until the council placed her in a property in Catford, which she claimed had a rodent infestation coming from a hole in her child's wardrobe.
She said: "Within a few days of staying there, my daughter came running down the stairs. She nearly fell and twisted her ankle, screaming there was a rat in her bedroom. Absolutely massive... In the walls in the nighttime you could hear the scratching, like they were really trying to get out."
Ms Chambers claimed the landlord of the property ignored complaints from her and Bromley Council, and that she wasn't able to put her newborn baby on the floor to play due to the rodents. She said she had to employ a solicitor to resolve the issue, while other problems such as no hot water and leaking sewage also affected the property.
She said: "About three days out of when I was there, we had hot water. That was it. We were there about nine weeks." She added: "In the bathroom downstairs, there were these little horrible sewage flies, and all you could smell was sewage. It was horrible, no matter how much bleach I would put in there. It was leaking somewhere there."
Ms Chambers said she and her kids were moved out of the Catford property in September and offered a new space in Newham. The mum claimed she still has not received working keys to the home despite the locks being changed several times. The inside was also extremely dirty and the previous tenant's cat was left in the garden, she added.
She said: "This place was absolutely filthy and disgusting. It was not just a little bit of dirt, it's been in there for a very long time. The baby got flea bites all over him because they left a mattress in there that obviously the cat must have slept on. It had faeces and urine stains on the mattress, and you could see these black things hopping."
The mum said she had arranged for her kids to be away with family and friends for four weeks while the property was initially made suitable. She said that the council has now warned her to move into the property within two weeks or the authority will remove its duty to house her. She claimed she was told this despite the council receiving a letter from social services last week to say the Newham property is unsuitable, and that Ms Chambers will have her kids taken away if she tries to move into it with them.
She expressed her disappointment, saying: "I actually feel let down really badly because my kids don't trust any professionals now. How am I going to get my kids back into school? They have witnessed so much. We haven't sat at a table and had a meal together in over a year. People take things like that for granted."
A spokesperson from Bromley Council told the LDRS: "While the council is limited in what it can comment on due to ongoing legal discussions in this case, we are committed to securing suitable accommodation for the residents who need it, including in this case."
* An AI tool was used to add an extra layer to the editing process for this story. You can report any errors to [email protected]
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