Melanie Town and her husband endured a challenging four-year period in their home in Leeds due to persistent damp issues caused by a leak underneath their council-owned property. This meant that the couple was stuck living upstairs as their entire home and livelihood slowly rotted away downstairs. This advance condition took a significant toll on their daily lives.
Prior to arrival, Mr. Town experienced an eight-year-old bleed on the brain and came in for a carotid endarterectomy. This quickly became untenable and necessitated frequent hospital visits to Sheffield. The humidity that made a house feel like a home ruined their appliances and damaged their furniture. The couple resorted to using a laundrette for their clothes and relied heavily on takeaways and air fryer meals, even spending Christmas dinner in their bedroom.
Melanie Town delivered her displeasure over the council’s failure to respond appropriately. She stated, “The council was sending plasterer after plasterer to rip off the walls and re-do them, without getting to the root cause of the damp and the mould.” Despite ongoing repairs, such as replastering their living room five times, the problem persisted, prompting her to declare, “It destroys you, knowing the council knew the condition we were living in and that we lost everything downstairs, and did nothing to address it.”
Over time, their living situation proved increasingly untenable. AUTHOR MELANIÉ TOWN WAS shocked to find that she and her family had no option but to move out of their beloved decade-long home Thorpe on the Hill, Leeds. The transition to Hornsea in East Yorkshire, while clearly needed, has been difficult. Melanie described the transition as “not ideal” and an “upheaval.” In short, Mr. Town is now severely burdened by higher travel costs each time he visits the hospital.
That’s not how they’d live, and so why did they want me living like that. Melanie spoke, expressing her outrage at the way the council had treated their case. The young couple are now first on the city council housing priority list. Despite bidding every week for a new property, they have yet to be offered a more appropriate space nearer to their families and friends in Leeds.
Through it all, Melanie described the emotional impact of having to exist like this in her late forties and fifties. “The mental health impact from doing that in your late 40s and 50s – it’s no good at all,” she remarked. She stressed that the move has separated them from their family and network of friends. This division has only compounded the stress on their life circumstances. You are essentially marooned without a car here. Plus, both our families are in Leeds, and all my friends were there,” she added.
In response, a spokesperson for Leeds City Council admitted their failure, but continued to argue that the property had been suitable to inhabit during the tenancy. They stated, “Unfortunately, the root cause was not addressed, and the issue returned when there was heavy rainfall.” They backtracked again, acknowledging that they couldn’t really fix the issue at all but continuing to insist that the property was still safe to live on.
