A family of nine have been forced to stay in a budget Cardiff hotel which they say “stinks of cannabis” and is in a shocking state of repair. The Wright family from Llanishen said they were in disbelief when, after being evicted from their home of nearly seven years in the spring, they ended up in the Holiday Inn at Tongwynlais at the Coryton roundabout.
The hotel is now effectively in the hands of the local authority and is closed to the public, as is the case with hundreds of other budget hotels being used as emergency accommodation to ease the nation's huge housing crisis. More than 50 rooms are full in the hotel, most of which are being lived in by families who have been evicted from privately rented homes by landlords looking to sell up. The families can no longer afford to rent privately and the council doesn't have enough houses to accommodate them properly.
Natasha Wright, who is pregnant with her eighth child, is living there with her husband Greg and their seven children. They were evicted following eight months of uncertainty on March 20. They are sharing four double beds across two rooms at the hotel with two shower rooms. One of their children is currently doing her GCSEs while putting up with living conditions at the hotel which the family describes as “horrendous”.
Cardiff council said the city was facing a "severe" housing shortage with more than 1,600 homeless households living in temporary accommodation in the city, many of them families. It said it was working hard to find more permanent solutions, including modular housing being built at the gasworks in Grangetown.
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“I had a panic attack when I walked in and saw the state of the place,” Natasha told WalesOnline inside a cafe near the hotel she says she feels she won’t be able to leave anytime soon.
“Water is leaking from the ceiling, the shower is falling apart and is leaking everywhere which has caused the floorboards to go through,” Greg explained, showing a photograph of the unsteady bathroom floor. “You can see how if you put your foot down it’d probably go through the floor. Even the toilet seat isn’t on the toilet. We’ve raised all these things and nothing has been done. The air conditioning is also leaking. They’ve said it’s condensation but I’ve worked on them in the past and I know it isn’t. It’s a real problem because you can get legionnaires' disease from that.”
Families at the hotel get a set time to wash their clothes but say the clothes are often being returned smelly, leading to some trying to wash and dry their own clothes in their rooms. Natasha and Greg said they have since been warned over the use of an air dryer in their room to wash laundry.
There are also set times to eat in the communal area at the hotel’s ground floor. The food hall consists of four microwaves where the residents queue with ready meals inside tupperware. Greg said: “As you can imagine, because there’s a cut off time for dinner the area fills up really quickly with people queuing with their tubs. The meals often look like roadkill. The chicken looks like it’s been kicked around the kitchen a few times.”
Natasha said since they arrived at the hotel the stench of cannabis in the corridors hasn’t stopped. “People are smoking cannabis in there and nothing has been done about it,” she said. “Where are the priorities? There’s a big difference between me trying to wash and dry my kids’ clothes and someone bringing drugs onto the premises and smoking.”
Natasha and Greg are in the council’s emergency housing need bracket, but Natasha says she has been told it could be up to two years until they can get a house because of the size of the family. This week it emerged that the number of calls made to Cardiff council’s housing helpline team has increased to its highest level. At the council’s cabinet meeting for housing and communities cabinet member for adult social services, Cllr Norma Mackie, said there were "significant issues with both demand for services and the complexity of need remaining high". Cllr Lynda Thorne added: "The pressure in some areas, such as homelessness as you know, remains unprecedented."
In April a report of written evidence submitted to committee members by homelessness charity The Wallich said there are "significant gaps in service provision" and that "major changes are needed to meet growing demand". The report also stated that there are "significant shortcomings" in the current housing support offer and that they are noticing a significant increase in presentations of people who are in work but facing homelessness.
Before the family’s eviction Greg was working as a team leader for the Co-op but decided he had to leave his job to drive his children to and from schools between the hotel and Llanishen. He said he now has to spend most of his day in the car and working on top of that wouldn’t have been possible. “We were told to move their schools but our eldest is doing her GCSEs and I really didn’t want to do that,” he said. “When we were in Llanishen it was really easy because the schools were on our doorstep. I’ve decided I’ve got no choice but to not work at the moment.”
The couple say they have suffered mentally as a result of being in the hotel. "I didn't suffer from a mental health condition before coming here but I've had to seek help since," Natasha said. "There are supposed to be 24/7 support workers here but they don't seem to have a clue what is going on or how long we're going to be in the hotel for."
Cardiff council's Cabinet Member for Housing and Communities Cllr Lynda Thorne said: “It is no exaggeration to describe the pressures we are facing on homelessness services in the city as severe.
“Until recently, Cardiff has not had to used hotel accommodation, but the homelessness crisis, which shows no signs of abating, has left us with no option.
“There are currently over 1,600 homeless households living in temporary accommodation in the city, far exceeding the amount of the Council’s own temporary accommodation available.
“In Cardiff, we have Council-owned temporary accommodation for 1,474 households, with 503 being specifically for families. Due to the high number of people that we are seeing presenting as homeless, we are currently using an additional 150 units of accommodation in a mixture of settings, including hotels. This additional capacity takes the total amount of accommodation being provided for families to 653 units.
“We understand that hotels do not offer the same facilities as our own temporary accommodation, in particular there are limited opportunities for food preparation. That is why we are working with the hotels to provide at least some meals. Any complaints about the food or the standard of accommodation are taken very seriously and addressed as soon as possible.
“We are working hard to find more permanent housing solutions for all homeless households. To help address pressures quickly, we are delivering an innovative modular housing scheme, consisting of more than 150 new properties, at the Gasworks site in Grangetown over the coming months. This will help to ease the strain on services as we continue to build more good quality, sustainable council homes via our ambitious development programme.
“However, demand for affordable housing in Cardiff remains extremely high. There are more than 8,000 people on the housing waiting list but only 1,600 homes become available to let each year.
“We have a very limited number of larger family homes and unfortunately, even where a household is assessed as requiring a particular property, they still need to wait for a suitable home in an area of their choice to become available, and this can take time.”
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