A mum-of-three who spent decades working for the NHS is braced for homelessness after she was served with an eviction notice during the pandemic.
Former senior midwife Kat is facing statuary homeless and moving her three kids into a bedsit when she is evicted this summer.
The 48-year-old was served with a Section 21 no fault eviction in the midst of the pandemic after calling the council round to check on some mould.
When the authorities told her private landlord the house had multiple environmental health issues, he decided to force her to leave for good rather than fix the problem.
Now single mum Kat, who worked for the NHS for 20 years before quitting to care for a family member, is facing moving her kids into emergency accommodation because she can't afford the private sector.
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Her family are just four of the 11.8 million people in the UK with mould issues and she is part of the 65 per cent of single mothers without a safe or secure home, according to damning new research from Shelter.
"My children are of an age - 15, 12 and 8 - when I can't hide from them that we're going to be homeless," Kat told The Mirror.
"It's just awful. I feel so sorry for them. It is extremely stressful for them.
"My son is not happy about other people knowing. He is really embarrassed. He doesn't want people to know we have problems.
"I just feel like I bore people. You don't want to keep going on, you don't want people to think you're whinging about things."
Although Kat's current home is far from perfect, with a kitchen that's legally too small and unsafe glass, the family has made do since moving in three years ago.
They use the dining room as a third bedroom and spend hours fighting back the mould that creeps up their walls with tough, asthma aggravating spray.
"When you're in need of housing you take anything you can get," Kat admits of the home the council helped her move into after she left her job.
When the landlord was told he had to fix some of the property's problems, he issued an eviction notice that would have seen the family out at the start of this year were it not for some missing paperwork.
Kat has spent months looking for a new place to live for when the new court date comes around next month, but "there is nothing", she says.
"The government hasn't gone back and accurately assessed how much properties cost," Kat said.
"I am entitled to £976 in housing benefit. Properties that are remotely appropriate for me and three boys cost £1,200.
"Even as a higher grade midwife I was earning just over £2,000 a month. That would take well over my wages as a single mother."
With her dad in sheltered accommodation, Kat has no family and friends that can take her and the kids, meaning the council will have to put her up in emergency accommodation.
This will likely be a bedsit or budget hotel room.
Kat continued: "People have these certain ideas about people on housing benefits, that they are anti-social, they won't pay their rent.
"People like myself who has worked since 17, worked for the NHS, you feel like a second class citizen.
"We have to move, but I have received discrimination from letting agents saying if you're receiving housing benefit we need a guarantor we need a family member who earns £46,000 a year."
Kat loves where she lives and is desperate to have a sense of permeance, for her and her kids.
Like millions of other single parents the cost of buying a house in a market that shot up 7.1 per cent in a year of pandemic is simply too much.
"I will never be able to afford to buy anywhere and I will rent until I die," Kat said.
"I don't want to rely on the government but there has to be some fairness the other side.
"We have to come to terms with the idea that renting is a way of life. You either own your own home or your rent, and there is such a disparity between respect for home owners and renters.
"I fought going on the housing register for a long time, and I would hate to take social housing from refugees or people with disabilities, situations where people won't change, where as they hopefully will for me.
"I just hope something happens so I'm not in a bedsit with my kids."
Shelter's report, released today after the charity spoke with 13,000 people, found that unaffordability and insecurity are two big issues for people.
Four million people report regularly cutting back on essential items, like food and heating, to pay their housing costs.
Another four million people say they are worried about losing or being asked to leave their current home.
This is largely driven by private renters who live in the least secure housing.
Shelter’s report concludes Britain’s housing system is unaffordable, unfit, unstable and discriminatory – a situation made even worse by the pandemic.
To end the escalating housing emergency, it wants the government to build at least 90,000 good-quality social homes a year.
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Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter, said: “Decades of neglect have left Britain’s housing system on its knees.
"A safe home is everything, yet millions don’t have one. Lives are being ruined by benefit cuts, blatant discrimination and the total failure to build social homes.
“Shelter believes a safe home is a human right, but the pain and desperation our frontline staff see every day shows this is still a long way off.
"That’s why we are fighting for the single mum who has to put her child to bed in a room covered in mould, and the disabled man living on the twelfth floor with a broken lift.
"We are fighting for everyone impacted by the housing emergency - and as we emerge from the pandemic, we want the public and politicians to do the same.”
Shelter is calling on people to fight to reform the private rental sector.
Click here to find out more.
