A family-of-four are suffering at home as they face an ongoing battle with Sutton Council – who they say has dismissed their urgent need for better housing.
The four members of the Muthalifu family live in a two-bedroom flat in Carshalton – and say they have no privacy, live out of boxes, and it is straining pre-existing mental health issues.
In the second bedroom there is a bed and no additional furniture – and in 2016, the room was declared as being too small to be classified as a bedroom by Encompass, the company that manages Sutton Council’s housing register.
However, Encompass later reportedly retracted this, claiming it was an error and that officers “wrongly advised” the family.
Kelly Marie Muthalifu, 36, and husband Namees Kan, 46, have been living in the ground floor property in Acre Lane for 11 years with daughter Samayyah, 11, and son Amnar, eight.
Sutton Council says that the family has been “correctly assessed in accordance with the Council’s allocation policy to reflect the family's need for an additional bedroom.”
Sutton Council offered the family the home with Encompass in May 2011 after they had to leave their old flat due to mould issues.
The couple accepted it thinking it was a temporary solution as they were desperate and feared becoming homeless with a young baby daughter.
The pair say they were managing fine until their son was born, when they then began struggling for space.
They reapplied for larger housing in 2014 but Sutton Council says that “demand for social housing in the borough far outweighs the available supply.”
Kelly told Your Local Guardian: “We didn’t realise that by going with this landlord we were actually going to be taken off the social housing list, we thought we would still be on it.
“The second bedroom is very small and is more of a communal space that leads to the back garden.
“We have the boiler cupboard in there and you can’t place the bed in any way because it blocks the doorway.
“There is no room to walk around.”
In 2014, the couple decided to make the living room a bedspace and gave up the one decent-sized room for the children to sleep in.
They moved back into the smaller room in 2017.
The family were placed into band C in November 2017, which lowered their priority for larger accommodation.
However, they now believe that they need adequate space and privacy as their kids grow up and become teenagers.
Kelly said: “Even the bigger bedroom is not right for two children.
“We can’t fit two wardrobes in there, we just have one and two single beds in there.
“They are already arguing, and we are almost getting nude in front of each other because there isn’t the bedroom space to get changed.
“The kids can’t even shut their door.”
Namees added: “My daughter is wanting to sit down and study, but her brother is coming and bothering her, and if I ask him not to he says ‘it is my bedroom too’ so it is really difficult.
“How do you make it fair between your two children?
“She is a girl of a growing age and starts high school in September, she needs that privacy.”
A spokesperson for Sutton Council says it is aware of Mr and Mrs Muthalifu’s current living situation and the challenges they have faced with their accommodation.
They added that the Council does its “utmost to ensure its residents feel supported” and said if there is a change in their circumstances a reassessment can be undertaken to help their case.
Kelly says that the size and quality of the house has also been severely affecting her mental health.
She has been on medication for bipolar disorder since January 2017 after she was sectioned and was treated in a mental health ward for a month.
Kelly was too unwell to work after this and her husband decided to take time out of his job to look after the children who were two and five-years-old at the time.
Namees, who works as a private hire driver, said: “It was a hard time we were going through.
“I had to take seven months off work to look after the kids, so we had to live off our savings and borrow of friends.
“Clinicians visited here and said Kelly needed to be moved somewhere better because this place wasn’t helping here.
“Encompass put this to their medical officer but they said that it was not affecting her at all and would not provide any extra priority.
“How can Encompass say that by just sitting there in their office?
“Having Kelly’s mental illness completely ignored is frustrating.
“I’m trying to help her, but this house doesn’t help her.”
Kelly has complained about Sutton Council’s response to their concerns and has now taken the complaint to stage two.
The Council has since offered them properties in the private sector but this would mean that they would be taken off the social housing list.
Namees Kan added: “It feels like they are kind of twisting it to make it seem like we are not in demand at all.
“We are now eligible for a three-bedroom home, and we basically live in a one-bedroom
“They gave us a private rental the first time around and we have suffered here for 11 years, we don’t know what another private will be like.
“If we had just applied, I could understand the situation as some people wait a long time for housing but have spent 11 years here, we are now the people that have been waiting such a long time.”
A spokesperson from Sutton Council said: “We are aware of Mr and Mrs Muthalifu’s current living situation and the challenges they have faced with their accommodation.
“We are working very closely with Encompass, who manage the Council’s housing register, to monitor the situation and support the family.
“Mr and Mrs Muthalifu's application to the housing register has been correctly assessed in accordance with the council’s allocation policy to reflect the family's need for an additional bedroom.
“Their priority for rehousing is classified as being in Band C for a 3-bedroom property.
“Unfortunately, demand for social housing in the borough far outweighs the available supply.
“We have offered support to help Mr and Mrs Muthalifu find their own alternative private sector accommodation aligned with their financial means and we continue to assist the family in their current property.
“The council does its utmost to ensure its residents feel supported by us, and if there is a change in their circumstances a reassessment can be undertaken to help their case.”
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