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Damp, drops of water and dodgy electrics: that’s home for Zemam Abreha |
Damp bedroom ‘endangers girl’s life’, GP warns
We can’t live like this, says tenant of flat where ‘water pours over electrics’
EVERY two seconds a drop of water falls from the swollen ceiling into a large glass bowl. The walls shine with moisture and curtains, though changed regularly, are mouldy.
At night, the damp is visible only by candlelight because the electrics are so full of water they have been condemned.
This is the Camden Town council flat bedroom of a nine-year-old girl. Her doctor says it is “endangering her life”. A surveyor has called it “unfit for human habitation”.
It has been like this for nearly four years according to her mother, Zemam Abreha, who says she has been forced to go to court because Camden Council refuses to
acknowledge there is a problem.
“My daughter cannot live like this, and I cannot live like this,” she said on Tuesday at the flat on the St Pancras Way estate. “This is my life and my children’s life. In November we had no light at all for a month.”
The main fusebox and electricity meter are in a hall cupboard in which every shelf is coated with water. When it rains the water runs through the heart of the flat’s electrics, Ms Abreha says. Last November, the flat fused with a bang. The solution offered by council repair teams was to remove light fittings in three rooms, leaving them permanently in the dark.
“Water and electricity are not a good mixture. If there is some sort of accident, who will take responsibility?” asked Ms Abreha.
The health of her three children is her greatest concern. A letter from Dr Justine Reid, locum GP at Camden Road surgery, describes the asthma and eczema of Ms Abreha’s nine-year-old daughter in stark terms: “Both of these conditions are chronic diseases and are made significantly worse by poor housing conditions. They are made worse by damp and cold conditions... It is clear the current living conditions supplied by her housing authority are severely inadequate and endangering not just her physical health but her life.”
A survey in November, by chartered surveyor Ivan Coffey, concluded that the child’s room was “unfit for human habitation” – and that the rest of the flat should not be lived in while the electrics were running with water.
Of the council’s 24,000 homes, more than half fail to meet the government’s Decent Homes standard – minimum requirements that make a home warm, weatherproof and reasonably modern.
Although the council publishes a running timetable of estates that are due to be refurbished to Decent Homes standards, St Pancras Way estate does not have a completion date.
A council spokeswoman said: “This is an existing legal case where a claim for disrepair has been alleged and it would not be appropriate to comment on specific details at this stage. We can confirm that we are aware of water penetration having affected two small internal areas of the property and we are working to resolve this.
“We are carrying out remedial repairs, including redecoration of those areas affected, and we are working on dealing with the cause of the water penetration.” |
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