Housing crisis: Mum left on new home waiting list for two years

Katie and her family are one of more than 80,000 households in the East Midlands waiting for a new home

A mum-of-two has said her life has been made a misery for more than two years by water leaking into her flat.

Katie Hood said she has been forced to sleep on the floor of the one-bedroom home she shares with her children in the east of Leicester.

She also claims her bathroom leaks when it rains, which made the ceiling fall in while her children were in the bath.

Leicester City Council, which declared a housing crisis last year, said there was a long waiting list for homes.

According to the government's latest data on council housing, there were 5,149 households on the waiting list for a council house in Leicester in 2021/22, with a further 80,075 households stuck on waiting lists across the East Midlands.

But there were only 3,301 council homes across the region standing vacant, which amounts to around 4 percent of the total housing needed.

Debris from the ceiling has been falling into Katie's bath

Ms Hood, who moved into her flat in March 2021, said: "We are all in the same room. And obviously I've got no room to put my bed in there, because the kids will have nowhere to play. So we've literally just had to put the kids' beds in there, leaving me to suffer sleeping on the floor."

And the recurring problem with leaks in her bathroom has caused Katie particular difficulties.

"The leak started above the light switch, every time it rained," she said. "It would continually come from my actual light socket, and the light itself - which caused so many problems because we had electricity outages and it just became horrendous."

'Mummy, the walls are crying'

Her bathroom ceiling then caved in during thunderstorms earlier this month, while her children, aged two and four years old, were in the bath.

Ms Hood said: "My oldest said 'Mummy, the walls are crying', so I went in and the whole of my walls across the bathroom had completely started pouring with water."

She added anti-social behaviour has also been a regular problem in her neighbourhood, which has left them feeling unsafe in their own home.

"It's just getting to the point where the kids don't even want to go out," she said. "They can't even be in the street without getting things said to them or getting things hurled at them, it's just not fair.

"It's dragging them down, it's dragging me down. It's just becoming so depressing."

The ceiling of Katie's bathroom has been boarded up after it caved in

Her situation led social services, her health visitor and even her daughter's school to write to the city council urging for the family to be moved as soon as possible.

Leicester City Council confirmed it had found a new two-bedroom flat for Ms Hood and her family a few days after the local authority was contacted for comment by the BBC.

She is set to view the property in the coming days.

But there are thousands more families who are still waiting for a new home.

Leicester City Council declared a housing crisis in the city in November 2022, calling for urgent action from central government to ease pressure on housing stocks.

In a statement, Leicester's deputy city mayor for housing Elly Cutkelvin said: "Like all other cities we have a desperate shortage of two-bedroom properties, and as soon as one becomes available we have hundreds of families bidding for them."