#damp and mould

[tofueatingwokerati]

TRIGGER WARNING ⚠️ sensitive topics covered as well as references to self harm.

I was moved to my present address for my safety after being stalked, harassed and assaulted by a council tenant.

The police did nothing after I reported him beyond a virtual slap on the wrist by a PCSO (and people wonder why women don’t report these crimes) and the council did equally nothing to safeguard me.

It took two years to get me moved and only after I went to the government ombudsman, and revealed to my housing officer I was a rape survivor, was anything finally done.

A council manger, Paul Hadley (since retired I’ve been informed) said to me that it was my fault, that I must have been doing something to encourage him and in front of an antisocial behaviour officer present that the council were “not responsible for their tenants behaviour” and proceeded to deny me any safeguarding.

More complaints and ombudsman interventions would follow. Battle for equality rights never ends if you’re a women and happen to also have disabilities.

In the two years it took to get me moved I’d been in A&E as a suicide risk and was regularly self harming. My disabilities worsened and I ended up needing crutches as the pain intensified. My hips now “pop” regularly and I have permanent back pain after living through that ordeal.

After the ombudsman intervention I was given priority status to move. That came with more hurdles and barriers. Paul Hadley, again said I would get this property over his dead body. Somerset Council were consistently unprofessional, in breach of their duty of care and left me at risk consistently.

The housing officer I’d shared my rape experience with got me this home but they placed their own employment at risk to do it and said she would be paying for it for the rest of her time there. Being close to retirement I don’t think she cared what they thought of her any longer, she was an exceptional exception to an otherwise toxic council mentality towards tenants.

It shouldn’t need an employee to put their job in jeopardy to do what the law already specifies is their duty and role as a public service.

When I viewed my current home it was in awful condition and wasn’t accessible. I asked what work was being done to address this prior to my moving here and was advised nothing beyond pre-scheduled works example updating the boiler (which turned out to be faulty from day one). Beyond a decorating kit which I couldn’t safely use I was told repeatedly I could “always self fund” despite this being a provision under law and they had specific disability grants available for the works I was asking for, they refused me all accessibility and refused me an occupational assessment.

Whilst I was safe from one danger by moving here, the stalker, I was thrown into a new set of dangers to my health and safety.

As a vulnerable disabled person I was subject to bullying and harassment from neighbours very early on as they felt I was too young to be living in a bungalow without ever knowing, or caring about the context of my disabilities and what I was moved from.

One case of neighbour harassment became so extreme it ended in a protection order on their visitor.

The property, as already stated was in a terrible state. I photographed it all and sent it to legal counsel. They advised me not to move in (too late by this point) because it was not fit for human habitation and not up to council relet standards.

It took seven years to get the kitchen accessible and it’s still not 100% with faults from installation causing me undue resistance on my joints and risk of injury. I continue to battle that out with the council. It took going to the ombudsman again and the then CEO of the council to even get the kitchen adjusted under equality law.

The boiler has been faulty from day one. It has always done this thing where the pressure builds up and it eventually “burbs”. It’s so bad it sounds like it’s going to blow the cupboard door off. Eventually it started failing and I repeatedly needed to get out of hours engineers from the council to patch it up.

One year it was failing daily and I kept reporting it. The engineers kept having issue scanning the gas meter to log the call. They had a new system and it was having teething issues. This meant that every engineer would not have record of the previous days call out and openly treated me as a liar. Thankfully I had all the email communication to the gas repairs department and was able to prove this was a persistent problem.

During this time I was loosing mobility and dexterity in my joints, notably my hands and fingers. This meant I couldn’t keep myself safe. I was paying extra home help just to be safe, prep more meals and washing up as I couldn’t do anything myself (the kettle had to be repeatedly boiled as I had no hot water during all this).

I was huddled up in my bedroom trying to keep warm. As has been consistent with this council there was no safeguarding and no assistance. After almost a week of this and getting more & more unwell, I filed a formal complaint. I was given a tiny little heater and eventually compensated for the additional electric I was using as well as hourly cost of extra home help.

Since then it has failed again and again. In fact I dread every winter knowing it is going to fail.

Each and every time my mobility is materially impacted, because it usually fails overnight, meaning it’s had 8 hours for the temperature to plummet then hours more before an engineer can come out to patch it up.

In that time I loose mobility and dexterity. It happened again recently (dropping to 14°C by the time I woke to discover the boiler fault) and despite using electric heaters I simply could not warm up. Electric heaters are no substitute for central heating. It left me unable to make a meal and I was unable to get emergency home help to plug the care gap.

One engineer advised me that as long as they have parts they will patch it up indefinitely until it fails permanently. This is without any risk assessment to someone like myself materially impacted by temperature.

I filed another complaint upon many complaints at this point, with the council and they are refusing me a boiler update.

They’re refusing me a risk assessment and refusing me an occupational assessment whilst being fully informed this is having a detrimental impact on my health and safety.

It got so bad that I started to have intrusive thoughts and ended up on the phone to crisis. After an hour with them they were able to stabilise me. I then sought legal advise and as will come as no surprise was informed yes the council are in breach of equalities law but also they’re discriminating me on disabilities ground by refusing a risk assessment of my needs. The council have openly stated that I am getting “special treatment” any time works are carried out even though it ALWAYS falls under equalities/reasonable adjustments.

I even wrote to Duncan Sharkey, the CEO of Somerset Council. I got a short response from a different department repeating the deadlock to upgrading the boiler, refusing me equal access to refuse & recycling collection (thats a whole other story of discrimination over almost a decade) and telling me to take it up with the ombudsman.

So here we go again, I now need to go back to the ombudsman but this time I am looking at legal options (I even took out extra home insurance knowing this would happen) as well as taking this to the national press is my next step. Enough is enough!

Ultimately this goes beyond a boiler, beyond me as one person. This is about an institutional failing towards disabled people and a toxic mentality of blaming tenants when the council don’t want to spend money to carry out their legal duty. They hide behind policy and procedure to deny you equal access and place wilful barriers to health & safety by denying risk assessments.

I once had a council surveyor blame the damp in my previous home on my cats “heavy breathing”, telling me to get rid of the cats and in his report blamed me for not using the extractor fan. There was no extractor fan. Can you guess, yes the council had refused me an extractor fan in that property, but still the council blame the tenant for their failures. As an aside the damp was so severe along the entire block that the wall was collapsing in one property and they had to be relocated for their safety.

But yeah, blame the tenant, it’s Somerset Councils continued consistency, blame the tenant and discriminate, all to save a few pennies whilst taking rent money from us all.

Rouge landlords are not consigned to the private sector!

#disability #discrimination #ehlers danlos syndrome #hEDS #Somerset council #gender discrimination #equality #equity #health and safety #equality act #mobilty #faulty boiler #damp #mould #rougue landlords #damp and mould #government #ombudsman #legal action #equality act 2010 #Equalities Act 2010 #anti-discrimination law #mental health #uk politics #local government

[trans-cuchulainn]

i have concluded that i do not understand the appeal of white noise because i regularly get overstimulated to the point of breakdown by the sound of a dehumidifier running in my house

#unfortunately if i do not run the dehumidifier i get Damp to the point of Mould #so i guess i'll sit here with earplugs in and suffer #personal

[dracolizardlars]

One of the most specific subreddits I follow is r/BathroomShrooms (about mushrooms growing in people's bathrooms, not about doing magic 'shrooms in bathrooms, surprisingly) and what I enjoy about it is knowing that, however chronically damp and miserably mouldy my house is, at least I don't have full fledged mushrooms growing in it

#draco speaks #like the constant mould in this house sucks (luckily we've never had toxic mould tho) #but at least it's not so damp we have fucking mushrooms sprouting #we had a bunch of slime mould in an old damp cupboard once though that was kind of cool actually #only found it when we tore out that cupboard because we knew it was actively decaying

[derkem]

she is nakey...

#i think this every time i take the strings off a guitar- #this beloved tele of mine had some damp/mould damage to the fretboard so i gave it a more aggressive clean than i have in the past- #but i think remaining marks are just like... from where the mould WAS rather than currently active? i hope- #humidity is a problem here unfortunately even for my baby-

[laalonde]

#AGAIN #girlies... the mould fairies have been whispering in my ears again and they've been saying such horrible things #it's the season where things are damp and mould is flaring up so please check your living spaces i have been made so so sick bc i didn't - #realise i've been sleeping next to a big patch of aspergillus and breathing in all these spores #there's a whole myriad of symptoms you can get but i got hit by the brain fog and lethargy particularly badly

[nuwanders]

.

#i am FUMING with my roommate #she discovered a box of clothes rhat had been put away damp back when #we discovered the bed bugs (like literally last october) #she panic washed all her shit and wasn't thinking when she put some of them away #didn't touch the box again until a few days ago and discovered that the clothes had become HORRIFICALLY moldy #bagged em up to throw em out but didnt actually do so until the next day??? #so now the whole house stinkssss of mould and has done for like three days now idk why its still lingering so bad #im meant to be going on a date tonight and was gonna invite him here since we went to his last time but the house just smells #too fucking grim #what kind of idiot discovers mouldy clothes and just leaves them in their room for a day because they cant be arsed to bin em straight awqy #the smell is SO STRONG and she was just sleeping with that a few feet away from her ??? #💀💀💀

[gayspock]

myparents said they're thinking of leaving the house to me if they do manage to buy a new place to live instead of selling it which. is insane bc in many ways its like. i know thats such a privilege and i didnt ever think that theyd ever be able to do sth like that. but also oh god. pleasedont give this place to me. oh god...

#Egg.txt #its so mouldy its falling apart theyve ruined this place over YEARS and years of shitty diy...... #im not even kidding. it would take years and years ... its fucking FILTHY. so much black mould... #shithole thats falling apart #my dad ripped my bedroom door off when he was mad at me years ago and htye just sort of #glued it back on and painted over it until it was thick enough to stay #the same door wouldnt shut right so he hacked off the corner with a saw and theres this big gaping hole there #theres . bugs. everywhere....... #damp everywhere... #popcorn ceilings in every room covered in mould WHY IS THERE MOULD EVERYWHERE MAN... #PLEASE... #THEY PAINT OVER EVERYTHING YKNOW THE LANDLORD JOKEWHERE THEY JUST REPAINT EVERYTHING #YEAH MY PARENTS TOO #LIKE THEY JUST PAINT OVER LIGHT SOCKETS AND OUTLETS AND THEY NEVER BOTHER TO PREP WALLS #THEY JUST PAINT OVER . HAIR. AND BUGS. EUGH #ITS LIKE I DONT WANT TO BE SPOILT. I KNOW IHSOULD FUCKING UST BE LIKE. SURE #BC HOLY SHIT BUT ALSO #BRO I AM NOT SPENDING MY ADULT LIFE TRYING TO GET THIS SHIT IN ORDER... #NOT TO MENTION I KNOW THEYRE GOING TO LEAVE ALL THEIR SHIT WITH ME #IN THE SAME WAY THEY USED TO USE MY BEDROOM TO HOARD CRAP THEYRE JUST GONNA #LEAVE ME WITH ALL THEIR GARBAGE COME ON...

[sydsrichie]

btw if you’re worried about mould in your house but obvs can’t open the windows bc it’s too cold and heating is too expensive, you can get disposable dehumidifiers that will soak up the moisture in the air for cheap or if you can afford to invest £50 or so, a plug in one that you can empty and reuse

#£50 is a hell of a lot of money rn I know so don’t worry the disposable ones do the same job!! #I bought a plug in one last year and it’s a life saver for drying clothes #britpol #uk politics #it won’t do shit for that musty old air smell but it should stop mould from growing bc mould needs damp x #also wipe condensation off your windows!! get rid of that water whilst it’s water and not steam

[betweentheheavesofstorm]

thought it was going to be an eating slices of ripe peach summer morning and instead it was a finding mould on my laundry summer morning

#i didn't realise some of the clothes were damp #and obvs damp + dark + warm = perfect 4 mould #had to chuck 1 thing away and everything else is in the washing machine #ughhhh

[eaglesnick]

101 Things You Should Know About The UK Tory Government

Thing 93

The Treasury, under the leadership of the softly spoken, Jeremy butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth Hunt has forbidden Michael Gove to spend any extra money on so-called levelling up plans.

 It is claimed that :

“…Gove's pledge …to provide £30m to fund improvements to substandard housing, after a two-year-old boy in Rochdale died after being exposed to mould in his family’s flat, had prompted fury among Treasury officials.”  (Guardian: 08/02/2023)

Surely nothing can be more important than having the protection and safety of a decent roof over your head. The UN has stated that “housing is a right not a commodity” and as such must be fit for purpose.

“Housing is not adequate if it does not guarantee physical safety or provide adequate space, as well as protection against the cold, damp, heat, rain, wind, other threats to health….”  (United Nations Human Rights.)

Perhaps someone should explain this to multi-millionaire Hunt:

 “Hunt has a pad in Pimlico and a bolt-hole in Surrey, as well as a small collection of buy-to-let flats in Southampton” (Evening Standard: 19/10/22)

So while some families are forced to live in substandard housing, where children’s health is at risk 24 hours a day, landlord Hunt refuses to release the extra funding proposed by Michael Gove to help rectify this scandal.

#uk politics #michael gove #jeremy hunt #tory indifference #housing #damp #death #mould #child death #health

[virtual-hug]

for all nearly 24 years of my life ive been sleeping under some serious black mould on my ceiling, and now tiktok keeps showing me videos of how it can fuck you up both mentally and physically....... yo⁉️

#what if i dont actually have fibromyalgia...... and its just Mould Disease.... #omg it makes sense why i dont get headaches at night when am Elsewhere #av tried getting rid of it but it just comes back coz my gaff is like 200 years old and Damp

[aefensteorrra]

Not a single day goes by where I take living in a mould-free environment for granted. I’ve been back at my mum’s for a few days and I know it’s what’s made me ill because these are just symptoms I had chronically on and off for years whilst living here

#I wanna go into town today but I feel so grim #but I *know* that going out and getting away from the mould is the answer #this house is just so damp. everything in it is damp #just cold and damp and mouldy:( my mum deserves better

[mrsmarymorstan]

My Dad really expecting me to consider "being in a social area" as a priority? As if I am actually capable of leaving the house as is?

I'll take bungalow within short walk of train station over second floor flat in middle of town ANY day.

#I showed him a potential property and he was all #noooo #You can do better than this!!!! #you'd be so LONELY! #It's probably a CONVERSION! #Look at street view everywhere else is garages! #You can do SO MUCH BETTER!!! #and then he tried to prove it and failed miserably #I mean the fact that the property doesn't have pictures of the bathroom makes me think it doesn't have a walk in Shower #or a very nice shower at all #but you know #if it meets all my demands and doesn't have damp or mould.... #worth calling the estate agent at least #morstan meta #morstan attempts to move out

[jessiesjaded]

I need the rain to just calm down for a month or two,,,,

#there is mould everywhere #on my bookcase #on my bedside #on my curtains #on my blinds on the wall on my pillow 😭 #everythings just damp and smells weird #could this factor in to me feelin sick.... maybe i mean it keeps comin back so fast #i clean with vinegar and stuff but its just so much rain. we were in a drought for like 20 years and now it wont stop rainin and it #hard to clean things like the curtains every other week #especially by myself even getting them down is dodgy as 😩 #gonna have to go to the bed shop and buy a new pillow tho 🤔 #oh well woe is me etc etc #im sleepy

[indizombie]

Over 20 million children in this group of countries have elevated levels of lead in their blood. Lead is one of the most dangerous environmental toxic substances. Finland, Iceland and Norway rank in the top third for providing a healthy environment for their children yet rank in the bottom third for the world at large, with high rates of emissions, e-waste and consumption. In Iceland, Latvia, Portugal and the United Kingdom 1 in 5 children is exposed to damp and mould at home; while in Cyprus, Hungary and Turkey more than 1 in 4 children is exposed. Many children are breathing toxic air both outside and inside their homes. Mexico has among the highest number of years of healthy life lost due to air pollution at 3.7 years per thousand children, while Finland and Japan have the lowest at 0.2 years. In Belgium, Czech Republic, Israel, the Netherlands, Poland and Switzerland more than 1 in 12 children are exposed to high pesticide pollution. Pesticide pollution has been linked with cancer, including childhood leukaemia and can harm children’s nervous, cardiovascular, digestive, reproductive, endocrine, blood and immune systems.

‘Over-consumption in the world’s richest countries is destroying children’s environments globally, new report says’, UNICEF

#UNICEF #OECD #EU #lead level in blood #Finland #Iceland #Norway #healthy environment for children #emissions #e-waste #consumption #Latvia #Portugal #United Kingdom #exposure to damp and mould at home #Turkey #Cyprus #Hungary #breathing toxic air #Mexico #years of healthy life lost due to air pollution #Japan #Belgium #Czech Republic #Israel #Netherlands #Poland #Switzerland #exposure to high pesticide pollution #Pesticide pollution

[adventures-in-asexuality]

dreamed last night that I was starting an undergraduate degree at oxbridge and couldn't even remember what course I was taking - eventually I found out I was studying biology and did have a moment wondering 'wait, wouldn't I have needed a biology A-level? I only have physics and maths...' - but that was of no concern whatsoever to me; the major conflicts of my dream were a) the maze of corridors and cubbyholes that pervade my dreamed locations weren't always wheelchair accessible and b) I kept meeting people who knew me from high school and I couldn't figure out how to tell them I'd changed my name without outing myself as trans.

#the urge to leave and start afresh has been high recently #some of it for valid reasons - i may end up moving house (damp! mould!) - and some just stress response #but doing a second undergrad degree at oxbridge? absolutely NOT