‘My flat has been flooded with sewage for a year – the stench is so bad I feel it in my brain’

A mum-of-two says she’s been living in a mice-infested north London home flooded with sewage for an entire year.

After nearly two years bouncing between hotels, Candice, 33, was so desperate for a home she begged Haringey Council to move her in before renovation works were complete.

But she claims the state is so bad that their dog died after swallowing flooded water, her daughter has been bullied, and family wishes they were back in hotels, even with their total lack of privacy.

‘We’re living in s***’, Candice told Metro.co.uk, ‘quite literally we’re living in s***.’

Candice, who lives with her son, 15, and daughter, 14, claims the council has not responded to her calls and emails requesting help for a year.

Haringey Council said it has sent workers to address a roof leak and a plumbing issue in January and May this year, which Candice confirmed.

But when Metro.co.uk visited the house, it appeared these problems were still not fixed.

The stench greets you as you step through the front door next to a broken pane of glass covered with a wooden board.

There’s a such a steady drip of water from the kitchen ceiling, Candice uses an umbrella when she enters (Picture: Metro.co.uk)

‘Contaminated’ water leaks from the bathroom down to the kitchen, where Candice has surrendered pots and pans in the sink and a pizza in the oven.

She unsheathes an umbrella on the rare occasion she goes inside the flooded room.

‘We don’t come in here anymore’, Candice said. ‘We don’t use it. We don’t cook in here, nothing. I order food – breakfast, lunch dinner. We don’t eat in here.

‘I don’t know what the connection is between all of it, but the water is in some way contaminated.

‘Even when I wash the stuff, the stench is there.’

The oven, kitchenware and sink are out-of-bounds in the flooded kitchen (Picture: Metro.co.uk)

Candice added: ‘When it first started, we used to clean it constantly. The amount of cleaning products, then my sister sent her cleaner to help it.

‘I gave up on it. What’s the point? We were doing this for months.’

The smell is at its worst in the conservatory, sealed behind closed doors with cardboard and a mattress propped against it in a desperate bid to banish the odour.

‘I can feel it in my brain sometimes, the stench of it’, Candice said. ‘I cannot breathe.’

Despite the heaters not working, the room feels swampy – warm and humid like they’re on full blast.

The brown water pooled on the floor smells like it’s fresh from a sewer.

Washing machines sit in a pool of brown sludge in the conservatory (Picture: Metro.co.uk)

‘Shower, flush the toilet, anything to do with water, we’re getting it down here’, Candice said.

‘I’m literally in and out [of the shower]’, she added, ‘we’ve never had a bath here, ever.’

They can’t use the washing machine either because it’s banished to that back room.

Instead they fork out for a laundrette, another cost on top of the ready made meals.

Of the downstairs rooms, only the living room is free from flooding. But even there Candice is ‘suffering’.

She sleeps on the sofa so her two kids have rooms of their own. But she moved it three times in a week because mice are chewing away inside.

The bathroom floods and water leaks into the rooms below every time the taps are run or toilet is flushed, Candice said (Picture: Metro.co.uk)

‘When I’m sitting there, I can see the mice running underneath me’, Candice said. ‘If I didn’t have to sleep on that, it would be outside.’

She showed Metro.co.uk a video in which you can hear a mouse ‘singing’ as ‘loud as day’.

‘I heard that all night. I don’t know what’s happened to it now, but I’ve put some extra mousetraps down.’

At night they hear the rodents ‘scratching’ inside a hole in the daughter’s bedroom wall. ‘They move so fast’, Candice said.

Next door in her son’s room, the ceiling leaks when it rains, dripping on the 15-year-old while he sleeps or studies for his GCSEs.

‘We’ve moved my bed to the side, we moved everything’, the teen said. ‘But that gets wet, my PS5 got wet. Everything just gets wet.’

‘I can’t live like this anymore’, Candice told Metro.co.uk (Picture: Metro.co.uk)

The family is at breaking point.

Candice’s daughter has been bullied at school since she brought friends over to the house. Her son won’t invite any over because he’s embarrassed.

Their three-year-old dog died after swallowing some of the water flooding the house, Candice believes.

‘I’m very angry’, Candice said. ‘but I’m more angry at the fact that it’s made my relationship with my children a distant one.

‘We’re not as close as we were before. Everyone is unhappy.’

She said: ‘I can’t live like this anymore. Mentally and physically I can’t do this. I’m losing it. I’m actually losing it.’

They have nowhere else to live, and despite numerous attempts to contact Haringey Council and arrange repairs, Candice said she hasn’t had a reply since last year.

Candice has scattered powder and rat traps around the house to keep away mice and ants (Picture: Metro.co.uk)

She said: ‘It’s basically been going on since we moved in.

‘There have been odd little things here and there, but because they haven’t rectified anything, it’s just gotten worse every time it keeps happening.

‘They’ve come out a few times, but now there’s nothing. They don’t respond. They don’t come out.’

Candice added: ‘It’s not one person I’m contacting. It’s the CEO, the chief executive, my housing manager, someone else in their team.

‘No one is responding. I’ve CC’d everybody in under one email – not one of you can respond? They still haven’t responded to my solicitor.’

Candice has been visited by a repair worker this week since Metro.co.uk raised her concerns.

A spokesperson for Haringey Council said: ‘We fully understand and appreciate the concern this is causing Candice and are working hard to resolve the issues.

‘This is a Private Sector Lease agreement where the council and homeowner will be required to undertake repairs.

‘We have undertaken several repairs which included attending the property in May 2024 to fix a leak in the bathroom.

‘We also attended on a few occasions to solve drainage issues with the last known repair carried out in January 2024.

‘We have not had any new reported incidents since, but we will do a further comprehensive assessment of the drainage systems and investigate the leak to see if any further remedial works are required.

‘Some of the repairs such as to windows and doors are the responsibility of the property owner and we will chase that up with them. Now that we are aware of the problem with mice infestation, we will immediately investigate.

‘We are also aware of the issues with the roof, but we were not granted access when we visited the property and have now agreed to do a drone survey.’

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