Local authorities in Britain’s second largest city of Birmingham have forced a homeless couple to live in a house where mushrooms have started to grow and molds rot everything as a result of excessive damp and filth.
The Sun newspaper said in report on Monday that Mark Kent and Mary Whitmore, a couple both 20, had been living for three years in a property in Kings Norton, Birmingham, which is covered in blotchy black mold stains and filled with a musty stench of fungus.
The report said tiles in the shower of the damp-ridden abode were shockingly covered with mushrooms. It said the couple could not even do a full food shopping because everything they brought to the house could be destroyed by molds within 48 hours.
It said the couple, who call the home a “nightmare”, were suffering from various diseases as a result of the unhealthy living condition.
The Sun also published images of the house on its website, asking whether it was “Britain’s worst council house.”
There have been other reports showing that councils and local authorities in Britain force homeless people, especially those who had escaped violence and poverty at home, into houses with poor living conditions.
Britain’s number of homeless people has increased over the past years, mainly as a result of government austerity measures. The government denies the cuts to social care budgets have had any role to play although it admits that authorities are lagging behind in their plans to eradicate homelessness in Britain in the next 10 years.
Official estimates suggest that more than a fifth of Britain’s population, or about 14 million people, live under the poverty line. The country is Europe’s second biggest economy in terms of creating wealth.