As a children’s doctor in the NHS, I see the real-life impact of the UK’s poor quality housing every day. It has become strikingly common to treat babies and children brought in with yet another chest infection, and to hear their parents lament the damp and mould in their homes.
Our housing system is undeniably making millions sick. This is particularly true for renters, 58% of whom in England live with damp, mould or excessive cold. The brutality they experience in their own homes underpins an inconvenient truth in our contemporary social fabric.
These injustices were brought into sharper focus by the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak in Rochdale in 2020, where the coroner’s report explicitly named exposure to mould as a cause of death. Ishak’s is a tragic case, but sadly not an unusual one; children living in damp homes are nearly three times as likely to develop breathing problems.
