Katie (not her real name) put out a desperate plea on her community Facebook page, the battle cry of a mother at the end of her tether. A tenant of one of the region’s largest housing associations, she was living on the ground floor of a newly built block of flats in the ward I had represented for just a few weeks.

It was 2017 and Katie had lived for 3 years in the two-bedroom ground floor flat with her partner and their two tiny children, one 3 years old and the other a fragile 3 month old newborn who’d been born prematurely. The baby had had multiple trips to hospital with bronchitis in his very short life, and multiple courses of antibiotics.

Katie was convinced that the source of her baby’s health issues was the mould and damp in their flat. Shoes and toys left overnight on the floor went mouldy. The soft furnishings had had to be replaced twice in three years because they were rotting into the damp carpet. Katie spent every day cleaning, bleaching, and washing, and overnight the mould would return to anything left on the ground. Walking across the carpet in socks led to wet socks.

Katie’s mental health was suffering badly. She was cleaning all day, wiping down surfaces obsessively, but still failing to keep her children safe and healthy. She could get nobody who ought to have cared to take any interest. She felt judged at every turn. She feared being kicked out by the housing association for complaining too much. She felt as though she had no rights.

For three years, Katie had tried and exhausted every available channel to get someone take interest. She’d been visited at home by representatives from the housing association and the builders of the block of flats. Every single time, the two huge organisations had sent only men to deal with her, at home alone with her tiny children in the daytime. Sometimes up to four men crowded into the flat at once, seemingly sent to downplay the problems.

Each time, they had asked about “lifestyle” issues. Were the family opening the windows? Were they drying washing indoors? Were they turning off the extractor fans in the kitchen and bathroom? Were they boiling a lot of things? Finally they regretfully informed her that the source of the flat’s problems was in fact the family’s budgie throwing water out of his bowl, and they left the family to its damp fate.

The day Katie decided to put up her distress balloon on Facebook, her baby had yet again been bluelighted into hospital with breathing difficulties. Katie had been anxious about losing their tenancy if she made a fuss, as there were thousands of people on the social housing waiting list in our area, but now she felt as though she had no choice but to go public.

By the time I visited, after seeing her plea on social media, the walls had clear evidence of rising damp in the new plasterboard, which was bubbling from the skirting board and two feet up the wall, and the family were living almost entirely in one bedroom, having effectively surrendered the rest of the flat to the mould that grew on every surface. Katie kept a face mask and rubber gloves near the closed door of the living room so she could go in for her daily cleaning session.

I made some enquiries, and talked to my council about the problems with this flat. Other councillors were sympathetic but there seemed to be few avenues open for redress. I insisted on the flat being visited by a buildings expert. When this visit finally took place some weeks later, by a buildings surveyor armed with the correct equipment, the verdict was very final: underneath the block was a burst water mains, which was constantly seeping upwards and into the slab on which the block was built, being soaked up by the plasterboard and floor coverings. The mains may have been broken by a digger during building works above it. For three years, Katie had been fobbed off and effectively told she was responsible, that “tenant activity” that was the cause of the damp.

You might think that the family would have been moved immediately from these surroundings. Not so. With so many people on the housing waiting list, the housing association judged that it could not move Katie and her family out of the flat.

A few weeks later the baby was sick again. This time the hospital was saying it would not release the baby back to the care of his parents, and that he would have to go into care if the family’s living conditions remained unchanged. Katie and her husband decided to move straight back in with her parents- the only way they could guarantee not losing their baby to the care system.

Eventually the family was offered a different house in a different village, just in time for her older child to start school. Katie had by then begun legal action against both the housing association and the developer of the flat for putting her through the trauma of the previous few years. I was happy to put my name down as a witness to what I had seen. Eventually both the housing association and the developers backed down, but they certainly did not make it easy for a young mum of two pre-schoolers to take action, and only grudgingly admitted liability after Katie put expensive independently-commissioned reports before them, and environmental health services were involved.

Katie’s children are now 5 and 8, and both have long term lung problems. The younger one has asthma and is on constant treatment. For them, their early childhood is casting a long shadow. And this is the reality of most children growing up in unfit housing. They are more often sick, leading to more absence from school and poorer long-term health.

We should be viewing this as a national scandal, not demonising young and vulnerable people living in terrible housing stock. Katie says now “I had no other option by that time and as a mother you protect your children and fight the earth to make sure they are safe”. Katie now wants to stand for us for district council and to be an advocate for standards in social housing.

At the time though she took an immensely brave step into the dark, not knowing what would happen, but absolutely knowing that she had no choice. In the wake of the death of little Awaab, we need to remember that some people do not have the capacity for this level of risk, because they have no family around them, maybe do not speak English well, or are more fearful than Katie was by the time she spoke up. It is vitally important that these powerful organisations stop judging people who almost by definition are more vulnerable, and questions need to be asked about why intimidation is seen as an acceptable way to treat tenants.

Epilogue: it is worth noting that the housing association in question immediately placed another family in the flat Katie had vacated to avoid losing her child into care. They also have had chronic damp problems because every bit of ground under the block of flats was saturated.

* Eleanor Rylance is a human, parent, translator, East Devon District councillor, PPC for East Devon and terrible parkrunner