Evicted family struggling with unfit flat

BBC News

05-07-2025

A woman who has been evicted from her home in Ealing where she was living with her disabled daughter and son says she is now struggling in temporary "inaccessible" accommodation.Kinga says the one-bed flat on the first floor of a house in Southall is not wheelchair accessible for her six-year-old daughter, Victoria, who has Phelan McDermid Syndrome which means she has difficulty walking and a developmental delay.It also means they now have a 90 minute journey on two buses to get to Victoria's school.Ealing Council said it was working to find more suitable accommodation but said it was at the "sharpest end of the national housing crisis".
Kinga says her daughter has trouble accessing the bathroom because it is not accessible for her.
'Aren't enough homes'
After they were evicted from the property in Ealing, Kinga said they spent two nights of sleeping on her friend's floor before they were placed in the flat in Southall. Despite this, Kinga says she was told by Ealing Council the family needed to be homeless before they could be re-homed."I think the council as soon as they have an eviction notice, they should start working on it instead of the process being that you need to be homeless before they start on finding somewhere for you," she told BBC London."When I first came here I said it's not suitable for a wheelchair, there are so many stairs, it's so hard."The first night she woke up banging her head on the walls."I'm sleeping in the same room as my 19-year-old son too - we don't have privacy or anything."Ealing Council says it is sorry about the challenges facing this family and that it is looking for an accessible property for them.In a statement, a spokesperson added: "We are at the sharpest end of the national housing crisis, and with almost 7,000 local families on the waiting list for social housing, there simply aren't enough affordable homes in the borough for everyone who needs one."We are working hard to drive down the numbers of people in temporary accommodation and getting families into more suitable accommodation instead."