Family live with sewage spills and maggots in ‘horrific’ temporary housing

When you step inside Fauzia’s house, the smell hits you immediately. It is a combination of raw sewage and insecticide.

“I have to spray this house every morning,” says Fauzia, who has been living here with her family, on a street of terraced houses in west London, for eight months.

She holds a can of insect repellent in one hand as she covers her nose with the other.

“I spray before my kids come downstairs to eat their breakfast. This is how I live.”

The white walls are dotted with black flies – but the biggest problem is a shower room next to the kitchen.

Excrement overflows from the toilet bowl on to the floor and fills the shower cubicle.

If anyone runs the kitchen tap, the sewage bubbles up higher. There are maggots in the kitchen, and mould and damp throughout the house, including the children’s bedrooms. The windows are stuffed with bin bags as they do not close properly.

Enfield Council pays a private landlord £2,543 a month to rent this property to Fauzia’s family, who were evicted when their previous home was put up for sale.

They are one of a record 123,000 households living in temporary accommodation in England, including 160,000 children.

Councils spent £1bn tackling the issue last year, 50% higher than in 2022 as the numbers spiralled.

A key driver of rising homelessness is that for many years, both rental and property prices have been rising faster than wages. At the same time, no-fault evictions – in which a landlord can evict tenants without giving a reason – were re-instated after the coronavirus pandemic.

This government has pledged to finally ban these types of evictions, a move which is expected to become law by summer 2025.

On Wednesday, the government announced how it would allocate the £1bn it earmarked in the Budget to tackle the housing crisis, which it says is “the worst in living memory”.

While almost £200m will be spent tackling rough sleeping and investing in drug and alcohol services for homeless people, the bulk of the money, £633m, will be spent trying to prevent homelessness and paying for temporary accommodation.

The challenge is underlined in Freedom of Information (FOI) data shared exclusively with the BBC from housing charity Shelter, which shows a record one primary school child in every 84 in England will be homeless this Christmas.

That number rises to one in 24 in London – the equivalent to one child in every classroom.

“That’s having an absolutely devastating impact on their health, their mental health and their education,” Mairi MacRae, head of policy at Shelter says.

Demand is so high for temporary housing that councils often have no option but to place families miles away, which has a huge impact on children.

When Fauzia’s family were declared homeless, they were moved up to two hours’ commute from their schools and workplaces in Enfield, north London.

Fauzia’s children, Ismael, nine, and 12-year-old Mateen are frequently late for school.

“I kept hiding the situation until one day the school wrote me a letter saying we needed to pay a £200 [late] fine and I went into reception and cried,” Fauzia says.

Some days she parks near the school and waits in her car for six hours until it is time to pick the children up again.

The distance also creates problems for Fauzia’s husband. Mohammed is a delivery driver for a popular doughnut chain and now gets up at half past midnight to start his shift at 3am.

Fauzia wakes up and starts spraying the house with insecticide at 4:30am. The children then get up around 6am to get ready to leave for school in the dark.

Fauzia is a trained hairdresser, but cannot work because of her mammoth commute.

She is also concerned about the impact on her sons.

“I’m very worried that they are missing out on their childhood.”

Fauzia says she has repeatedly told the council and letting agents about the problems with their temporary accommodation.

Enfield Council said it was made aware of the issues with Fauzia’s house in October and was told by the property agent these had been fixed.

As soon as the BBC became involved, the family were rehoused within 48 hours. They are now living in temporary accommodation in Barking and Dagenham, about 50 minutes’ drive to her children’s school.

The council said it would take formal enforcement action if the letting agents or landlord are found to be at fault.

Enfield Council said it “did not not excuse the poor state of this property” and apologised for the “poor quality of support” Fauzia and her family had received.

A spokesperson for managing agents LTA Direct acknowledged photos of the property sent to them by the BBC were “horrific”.

The agents claim when they inspected the property on 2 December, there were no drainage issues, and that mould and damp treatment was due to take place this week.

But when the BBC first visited Fauzia’s home in Ealing on 28 November, the sewage problem was clear to see.

The agency says the leaking sewage is a structural issue and has told the landlord that a complete refurbishment is needed to make the property habitable again.

The landlord told us he was “completely unaware” the property had got into this state and that management of the property must have been outsourced from the letting agents he employed, as he had never heard of LTA Direct.

Fauzia is keen to move her family back to Enfield and has been bidding for a council property since 2012. While she is relieved to be away from the mould and the flies and the sewage, her problems are not yet over.

“It’s 10,000 times better than the old house,” she says, “but it’s still temporary.”