Desperate mums living in shipping containers have described deplorable living conditions of drugs, violence and sexual harassment, calling it ‘worse than the Congo’.
Meath Court in Hope Gardens consists of multicoloured shipping containers which are stacked like Lego blocks in Acton, west London.
Now the mums living in the accommodation are pleading for action after revealing horrific accounts of what it’s like to live there.
The homes were initially conceived as a stop gap for homeless families searching for more permanent housing – with the aim that people would stay for no longer than six months. But most have been there for more than a year, reports MyLondon.
Mum-of-one Fynlee Connor said: “We have crackheads literally sitting on our stairs injecting themselves in broad daylight.
“My daughter came running out, saw it, came running back in, grabbed me and started pointing.”
She added: “In March I was attacked, literally two more smacks I would have been dead, while my daughter was sleeping inside.”
Fynlee said that someone defecated into her daughter’s clothes in the laundry room and then “scattered them all over the garden”.
Mum-of-three Nathalie Bangama ended up at Meath Court after her house caught fire last year.
She said: “Some days you wake up and go ‘what is this?
“Like seriously what is this place?’ I am from Congo and I say to you I have never seen anything like this in Congo.
“I never lived in a place like this in Congo, not this bad.
“This is not made for human beings.”
Another mum, Mel, has been collecting images and data on Meath Court for months.
Mel, who has lived in the containers for two years, says she’s seen men defecating in the open and strangers having sex in the public bin area.
She said: “This is inhumane, it’s disgusting and the fact that no one cares, it makes you feel like you are nothing.”
Swalhana Islam has an added problem. The mum-of-four’s family is stuffed in a two-bedroom home infested with cockroaches.
She said: “They are everywhere.”
Express.co.uk has approached Ealing Council for comment and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities for comment.
An Ealing Council spokesperson told MyLondon: “We are sorry to hear about residents’ experiences as told to the LDRs and are concerned about the quality of accommodation at Meath Court.
“We are seeking to deliver additional high-quality temporary accommodation solutions as fast as possible, but like most other London boroughs we have a chronic shortage of housing and we are facing a temporary accommodation emergency, with the market for temporary accommodation in London being completely broken.
“The council has also seen an increase in the number of households who are in urgent need of support with their housing, thanks to the cost-of-living crisis.
“In the last year, we have seen an increase of over 50 per cent in the number of households needing emergency BandB accommodation – that’s an additional 100 households.
“While we always seek to support residents in need to the best of our ability, the council is not able to keep up with the demand for emergency accommodation and is now under extreme pressure.
“We strongly urge residents experiencing anti-social behaviour and problems with their homes to contact the council through the hostel officer directly, or by using the ‘report it’ telephone lines or digital forms.
“That means that we can rectify the issue as soon as possible.”
