Krystyna Deuss arrived in the UK at the age of four in 1947 as a refugee from Poland. When she saw headlines about Afghans being airlifted to safety last summer, she wanted to help.
Now a Londoner, she had fled with her family during postwar communist rule in the country of her birth. Like many of the Afghans airlifted to safety, her family had had to go into hiding before they fled. Her father was a judge and she said members of the “intelligentsia” such as him were at risk.
As her father had been a judge, she was particularly keen to support somebody in the same profession. As such, she offered a flat in central London to a female Afghan judge and her family.
Fawzia and her family were being accommodated in a hotel close to the flat by the Home Office, with her four children being given school places in the area. It seemed like an ideal solution – a place to live at a housing benefit rate in the neighbourhood where the children were already settled into school.
However, due to the lack of a mechanism for those who have found their own place to live, the family remains stuck in the hotel.
Officials from the local council, Hammersmith and Fulham, have inspected the flat Deuss offered. Although she has made some improvements to the property, which was previously on the open market, such as installing a new boiler, they say further work is required and Home Office funds that could be used to make the changes have not been made available.
Deuss, 78, said she was “thoroughly fed up” with the whole saga and would now seek private renters.
“I’ve been trying to offer my spacious flat, which is in the perfect location, since September,” she said. “I’ve spent a lot of money on improvements to the flat. I’m now going to give up and rent it on the open market again. I just wanted to help an Afghan refugee family but it doesn’t seem possible.”
Fawzia said she and her family would like to move into the flat offered by Deuss, but unless the bureaucratic roadblocks can be shifted, they must remain for an indefinite period in the hotel nearby.
“We want to work with the Home Office and the council to try to sort this out,” she said.
Stephen Cowan, the leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council, said: “It is shameful that despite the government’s commitment last year to work ‘at speed’ the Home Office has failed to develop an effective resettlement programme for Afghan refugees.
“Priti Patel must intervene now to ensure they no longer languish in temporary accommodation and are rehoused to suitable homes as soon as possible. We will continue to play a full part in this.”
