A struggling couple fear their four children could be taken off them after they were made homeless over a £2,000 rent "mix-up".
Rebecca and Lee Steeley, along with their teen daughter and three sons, were evicted from their flat and told to leave the council temporary accommodation - leaving the family sofa surfing.
They are now living in fear that without a proper home, their youngsters could be rehomed without them, Hull Live reports.
The couple were sent a section 21 eviction notice in November 2021 from their landlaord, stating that they had amassed £2,200 in rent arrears over the past two-and-a-half years.
The couple claim they have always made their weekly payments of £58, with the rest topped up by housing benefit.
Rebecca and Lee say in the two-and-a-half year period they were building up the arrears, they were not aware of the escalating debt . This couple's former landlord claims letters and phone calls had been made to the couple to try and resolve the situation.
The couple say they moved out of the property in February after 14 years, as a result of the "mix-up".
Since leaving the property, Hull City Council have given the Steeley family a temporary home in the Park Hotel and Apartments.
But on June 7, the couple say they were told to leave the hotel as a decision had been made on their case stating they had "made themselves homeless".
Rebecca said: "We couldn't believe the amount that we apparently owed. As far as we knew, we were paying what we had always paid and the council were topping up the rest.
"My husband has always worked and I've been a stay at home mum, so we couldn't afford to pay off the £2200 that had built up for such a long time."
Lee said: "If we were told immediately, and it was a couple of hundred pounds, it wouldn't have been a problem, but it gave us no choice but to move out.
"The council offered to pay what was owed but we would have to sign another 12-month contract and we knew something like this would happen again. We'd already had some issues with the house and the landlord and couldn't take the risk."
Rebecca has now got herself a job as a cleaner, while chef Lee started working full-time. The couple say they now cannot privately rent somewhere because no landlords will accept them without a good reference.
Rebecca said: "We pleaded with our landlord to give us a reference so that we could rent elsewhere but he told us he couldn't help us.
"We would honestly take a house anywhere in Hull, we could make anything our own at this point. Our only option now is to stay with family but eight people in a two-bedroom house isn't a long-term plan and the council have told us that we are not a priority."
The couple claim the worst thing to come from all of this is the possibility of being separated from their four young children: Lilly, 13, Oscar, 9, Dexter, 5 and Vinny, 3. Rebecca said: "Since being at the hotel, it's been awful to see the effect it's had on them.
"They've had to leave their friends, we have to catch two buses to get to their primary school and they keep putting their shoes on and standing by the door saying they want to go home. Worse than that, I've been assigned a social worker for the first time ever being a mum.
"They tell me that if I'm not able to find a home, they would take the kids and rehome them. I would die if that happened, it would absolutely kill me.
"I'm an honest person, I'm a good person. We may not be great at understanding all the legal letters but it seems like nobody wants to help us - they even kept getting my children's names wrong, like they don't care because they have their beds to go to at night."
Hull Live approached Mr and Mrs Steeley's former landlord who confirmed the couple owed £2,200 rent in arrears saying "many letters and phone calls over this period were made" in an effort to resolve the situation.
In a statement, the landlords said: "We always work with tenants to agree an affordable repayment plan in these circumstances, but in this situation the tenants would not correspond with us so we were unable to reach any agreement with them.
"Regarding the reference, we always provide these but have to tell the truth, so I believe its the fact the rent arrears were causing them the problem of finding another property, which would have been on any reference that was asked for."
Hull City Council also confirmed the family's situation in a statement, reading: "Hull City Council is determined to do everything we can to help this family. No one wants to see anyone without a place to live.
"We have been trying to help Mr and Mrs Steeley since November 2021. We offered advice and assistance to prevent them from losing their previous home, but sadly this was refused.
"They were then found temporary accommodation but from the beginning we have stressed that this was only temporary, and this has now come to an end.
"We want this family to be able to move to a permanent, stable home and our Housing and Children’s Services teams are working together to find a way to do just that. We need them to now accept the offer of support that we have made to them."
The family-of-six are now seeking a landlord to accept them as tenants. They have put out a plea to ask anyone with a property to have sympathy for their situation, as a family with two working parents and four young children, and allow them to move in.
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