I’ve seen people living with mice,
cockroaches.
They've had issues with cockroaches for around ten years.
Damp, mold.
The mold and damp hasn’t been treated, unfortunately.
Broken asbestos,
infestations of spiders.
They’re coming out. They’re coming out.
I’ve seen people with sewage running down their walls.
I’ve seen tenants with sewage flooding their homes.
Cockroaches... were burrowed in the wall,
eating their way or chewing their way into the property.
I couldn’t believe it. I’d never seen anything like that.
Landlords need to get their shit together.
They just don’t care.
I remember thinking,
“If that’s the game they want to play, then so be it.”
They have complained about it,
but this was the result after I went and visited.
People are dying in their homes,
living in poor disrepair.
Nothing gets worse than that.
[SUPER_USERS]
[FIGHTING THE UK’S WORST LANDLORDS]
My name is Kwajo Tweneboa, and I’m a social housing campaigner.
I help individuals living in poor housing
and try and give them a voice
in order to get change for their situations.
I'm going to be traveling the country,
speaking to tenants like the tenants I’ve seen in the past
that are currently suffering with disrepair issues
or housing issues
or being ignored by their social housing provider
and need help.
I’ve been in social housing.
The flat that I was living in with my sisters and my dad
was essentially falling to bits—
mold, mice, asbestos,
a bathroom which couldn’t be used,
our back doors were broken,
there were security risks to the property,
you name it.
It was a living hell.
Then my dad fell ill with stage 1 esophageal cancer.
In and amongst that disrepair,
that then progressed to stage 4 over the space of a year.
Whilst still complaining,
he was receiving medical treatments completely bedbound in that property
for the best part of six months to a year.
Then he passed away,
and things just went from bad to worse.
But still we were ignored
until I took the decision that
enough was enough and I had to disgrace them.
And I noticed it wasn't just me.
My neighbors, the whole estate
were living in the same sort of condition.
I went around every single house in my estate.
I think that’s 500 and something homes.
I was receiving messages. I was receiving pictures, complaints,
and I went and took it to social media.
I was picked up by national press, who came down for two weeks,
worked with me to film on my estate.
Until you come down and you meet the residents
and you see the conditions that they’re living in
that you get the true picture.
Social media has very much carried this campaign.
Each time I shared a story,
it was being shared thousands of times,
and that's when I knew that things would begin to grow.
Some of the worst housing I’ve been in
has been under local authority.
Not just in London but across the UK.
This is the living room.
This is where mum, her partner,
and youngest baby of three months sleep.
Again, all four corners covered in black mold.
And they've been complaining for years but ignored.
And just when I think things can’t get worse
or I can’t see anything worse,
I go to another house, and...
I’m ashamed to say that I’ve seen it all.
Because there was a central heating pipe that exploded,
meaning boiling hot water completely flooded the house,
and mum was burnt as a result of trying to escape the property.
Both feet were burnt, and she had to go to hospital.
February of this year, and it was an L&Q property in Lewisham,
and I mean, it was one of the worst that I’d been in,
to say the least.
I mean, even trying to get into it, it was a challenge.
The door was so badly swollen because of a leak.
Even me throwing my full body weight into it,
it was a struggle opening it.
I went in there, and the leak was still actively going.
It was coming from the boiler.
I was at the boiler when I first saw a cockroach.
Here you can see a cockroach alive in the water.
We saw the damp and mold behind the boiler.
You can see just how bad it is.
Then we went into the kids’ bedroom.
I peeled back the mattress,
and there were just hundreds of cockroaches.
Hundreds of cockroaches.
It’s just completely out of order.
And I remember mum, she told me that
she had even found one a few days before in her ear.
I spoke to her afterwards, and she was just so upset.
My mental health is completely damaged.
This is...
I don’t even want to say anything
because I don’t want anybody to come and take my kids away from me.
I don’t sleep. I can’t do anything.
I’m, like... I’m suicidal. I’m at that point that...
I went and shared that on social media.
It was seen by over a million people within 24 hours.
24 hours later, they were moved out.
It really shouldn’t have taken
the housing provider to be shamed into doing that
when clearly it was possible for them to do it.
It’s wrong, and know that no one should be
living in these sorts of situations.
So it would be to absolutely everyone is speak up, put your foot down,
and don’t take no for an answer
because in a lot of cases, no is the wrong answer.
And just because it comes from an organization
doesn’t mean it’s always right.
A deadly fire in a London apartment building
has killed six people
and sent dozens more to the hospital overnight.
Witnesses say they saw people dangling from the windows,
and families were trying to escape.
I remember watching
the exact moment the Grenfell Tower popped up on the news screen.
There were people actually in the building.
And I remember the feeling straight afterwards
and thinking, “They really don’t care.”
They really, really don't care about people like me,
about social housing tenants.
And I thought things would change after that.
But four years on, me starting this work,
I realize that’s not the case.
They say lessons have been learned since Grenfell.
Very good at that.
But from what I've seen, absolutely not.
Within about three hours,
there was nothing left of that building, nothing at all.
What I’ve seen
and the reason thousands of people have reached out to me
is for the one reason:
that Grenfell happened
and that Grenfell survivors had complained about it.
And that’s because tenants are ignored
and continue to be ignored.
Residents who survived
said they warned the building’s manager
about fire hazards for years.
The residents had long complained to the council
about the likelihood of a catastrophic fire.
People have asked me in the past,
do I think Grenfell can happen again
or something on the scale of Grenfell.
And I want to say no,
but ultimately I cannot lie
because from what I’ve seen in poor regulation
and the neglect of tenants and disrepair,
it could easily happen again.
It really, really could.