Poverty, poor housing and racism contributed to the death of Awaab Ishak

No matter which measures you use, the wealth of the United Kingdom places it among the richest nations in the world. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) London, the South East and the South West of England have the highest median household wealth, and also saw the largest growth between April 2014 to March 2016 and April 2016 to March 2018. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) also places the UK in the top five or six richest countries. It is, therefore, a tremendous paradox, that with so much wealth within the country, a two-year-old Black boy should die because of poor housing and mould in twenty-first-century Britain. What is worse, the situation for this family was neither rare nor unique. According to a report by the charity organisation, Shelter (October 2020), 11 per cent of homeless people applying for help are Black even though Black people make up three per cent of households in England. In addition, they claim Black people are disproportionately affected by homelessness with about one in 23 Black households becoming homeless or threatened with homelessness, versus one in 83 households from all other ethnicities combined. In addition, the Covid-19 Pandemic has exacerbated this inequality.

As a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic, it was recently reported in the Guardian newspaper (1 July 2020) that nearly half of Black African Caribbean households were in poverty, compared with just under one in five White families. This seems to suggest that poverty, poor housing and the issue of race or ethnicity, played crucial roles in the way this particular case of death as a result of poor housing and mould, was handled.

What sparked this incident was a report, a few weeks ago, that Awaab Ishak had tragically passed away shortly after his second birthday in December 2020. The youngster had been living in a one-bedroom housing association apartment in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, that was found to be filled with mould. His parents, Faisal Abdullah and Aisha Aminin, both from Sudan, had previously complained to the Rochdale Borough-wide Housing (RBH) but no action was ever taken. In fact, after reporting the serious level of mould in the apartment, Abdullah was told to paint over it, which he did several times. A coroner later ruled that Awaab had “died as a result of a severe respiratory condition caused by prolonged exposure to mould in his home environment”. A report by the Guardian newspaper (November 2022) quoted from a statement by lawyers for Awaab’s parents which accused the social housing provider, RBH, of doing nothing over a number of years to treat the mould problem that killed their son. “We cannot tell you how many health professionals we have cried in front of and Rochdale borough housing staff”. Importantly, they also stated they were treated this way specifically because they were Black and not from the UK. Their ethnicity was the difference.

While the Guardian newspaper (15 November 2022) claims that about 450,000 homes in England have problems with condensation and mould, and the verdict triggered calls from paediatric doctors for better reporting of air quality problems in homes, the issue of mistreating residents in poor housing, many of whom are Black, was not emphasised in the official reports into this incident. It was left to the parents and other community groups to highlight the extent to which social housing negatively impacts not only the poor, but specifically many Black people are who among the poorest in the country. The parents of Awaab were forced to make the case that this would not have happened if they were British. They argued that race was a factor behind the way they were treated by the landlords. As many households turn down their heating and keep windows closed in their attempts to keep warm and cut energy bills, it has been suggested that many poor people could experience damp and mould conditions in their homes. Consequently, vulnerable people with health conditions could be adversely affected by mould. Because so many of these poor people are Black, one can only hope there will not be more cases of death from mould in houses. Above all, Awaab’s death, illustrates how poverty, poor housing and race or ethnicity are negatively inter-related in this tragic incident in British society.

Tony Talburt is a Senior Lecturer at Birmingham City University, UK.