Father of boy killed by mould in flat urges tenants with similar issue to ‘get out’

The father of Awaab Ishak, the two-year-old who died due to mold in a social housing flat, has urged tenants not to “waste time” complaining and to simply “go away” when faced with similar problems. .

Faisal Abdullah, 31, in his first national newspaper interview since Awaab died aged two in December 2020 due to untreated mold in their one-bedroom social housing flat in Rochdale, called on the Government to introduce strict deadlines for landlords. to tackle mold in the private rental sector and in social housing – an extension of the so-called Awaab law, which will soon come into force for social housing.

“I cannot emphasize enough that tenants who find themselves in similar situations should not waste time,” he said through a translator. “Please, please, please… make sure you knock on the right door,” he said in an interview in Manchester.

“Even if this means leaving the accommodation, please do so, because if you have children and it takes longer to find a solution, it will be to the detriment of the health of the children or of you as an adult .”

When asked if he wished his family had escaped, he replied: “Absolutely.” Growing up in Sudan’s arid Darfur region, he was unfamiliar with mold and damp, he said. When Awaab got sick, he wasn’t sure if it was the mold.

Awaab would have turned five next month but died after living his entire life alongside extensive black mold in the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom of the family’s poorly ventilated home on the Freehold estate run by Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH) , a landlord of social housing.

His death sparked national outrage after it emerged his father had first complained about the mold in 2017 and health experts warned the landlord of the risk to Awaab. RBH has done nothing to resolve the problem. He died at Royal Oldham Hospital on December 21, 2020, from “a serious respiratory condition resulting from prolonged exposure to mold in his home”, the coroner ruled. The pathologist had found fungus in his blood and lungs.

It subsequently emerged that other houses on the estate were in an even worse condition and that RBH staff believed that mold was “acceptable” and that “most of the residents were refugees and that they were lucky to have a roof over them.” had their heads”.

The landlord routinely treated tenants in “dismissive, inappropriate or unsympathetic ways”, and Awaab’s family, who came to Britain from Sudan in 2016, were subject to “lazy assumptions”, an investigator said. research by the Housing Ombudsman. RBH staff put the jig down the family’s “lifestyle choices,” including “cooking food in pans on the stove” and “bucket baths.”

Following the coroner’s ruling in November 2022, Awaab’s parents told RBH in a statement: “Stop discriminating. Stop being racist. Stop unfairly treating people from abroad who are refugees or asylum seekers.”

“As a family we encountered many problems as Rochdale Boroughwide Housing tried to find a solution to the ongoing problem,” Faisal said on Thursday. “We didn’t get that. We were desperate for a solution, but we couldn’t. It was a very bad feeling to be in that situation. They were very passive. They were actually not serious about finding a solution to the problem.”

He said he was “confident there was some racism” in the way the landlord responded, but was “very careful” about what he said because he was “at their mercy”.

“I knew I couldn’t accuse them of discrimination because these were the people who could help me,” he said. “If I became aggressive and accused them of discrimination and racism, I was afraid that they would not act to find a solution to my problem.”

The coroner said the death of the “attractive, lively, endearing” boy should be “a defining moment” for England’s social housing sector, which rents homes to 4 million households. Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Levelling, Housing and Communities, agreed to introduce Awaab Bill as part of the post-Grenfell changes to social housing. Time limits will be set for social landlords to tackle the decline, but a consultation on the details is yet to take place.

Faisal wants to expand this to private rental homes, where damp and mold are an even bigger problem.

“I am grateful for the response from all these people and also from Michael Gove,” he said. “There is the law of Awaab in Britain. It may not protect me now, but more importantly, it would protect others in a similar situation. In that respect, we are quite happy and satisfied with people’s reactions.”

He urged landlords to “pay close attention to properties affected by mold and condensation, not just for adults… but especially for children.”

“Landlords need to be serious about inspecting the property and very serious and quick about resolving the issues, rather than allowing this to fester and allow things to happen like what happened to my son,” he said.

He said he now lives in an “incomparably” better home with his wife, Aisha Amin, also from Sudan, and two young children.

His decision to speak out came amid a rising number of complaints about damp and mold in social housing across England on Thursday. The housing ombudsman dealt with more than 5,000 complaints in the period 2022-2023, with landlords often blaming residents’ lifestyles.

After initially staying on, RBH CEO Gareth Swarbrick was fired and its chairman, Alison Tumilty, resigned a month later. Gove began publicly ‘shaming’ failing social landlords for ‘making people suffer in disgraceful conditions while refusing to listen to complaints’. He also began blocking funding from housing providers that breached consumer standards, including RBH.

Abdullah had already reported mold in the family’s home in 2017, filed several complaints with the landlord and requested rehousing. He was advised to ‘paint over it’, which he tried to do repeatedly. In December 2018, after Amin joined him from Sudan, Awaab was born in a moldy house. He often visited the doctor with a runny nose, coughing and respiratory infection.

In June 2020, the family instructed a lawyer to file a dilapidation claim over the mold, and the following month they filed another complaint with RBH. A health visitor warned the landlord of the risk to Awaab’s health. But RBH’s policy at the time was not to proceed with the repairs without the consent of the lawyers involved in the claim.

The coroner said the house was “not equipped for normal activities of daily living”.