I’m stuck in a rat-infested hell hole with my seven kids… but my landlord says I’m LYING
A MUM-of-seven says she is stuck living in a rat-infested hell hole with her kids - but her landlord insists she is LYING.
Furious Fadumo Omar claims her family's food is constantly being eaten by rodents and her children are constantly sick due to the mould covering their home.
The mum has been privately renting the three-bed property in St Werburghs, Bristol, since 2019 with her kids and her mother.
But Fadumo, who works in Sainsbury's, says the place has been plagued by problems since before the brood moved in.
She claims she has been battling with her landlord for years to fix the broken windows, holes in the floor and walls, and to get rid of bricks and rubble in the garden.
Ejaz Ahmed, who owns the house, has carried out some repairs - but Fadumo simply branded them "patch up jobs".
The landlord has insisted his tenant has exaggerated some of the complaints and says he has been unable to get rid of the rats due to the mum's reluctance to put poison down in her home.
The single mum has since joined other frustrated tenants and staged a number of demonstrations outside her landlord's shop.
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Fadumo told Bristol Live: "I work six days a week and I can’t go shopping every day but when I buy food the next morning it has been eaten by the rats.
"My stuff is covered in mould and my children are always getting sick, I have to open all the windows from 8am until 3pm when my children are at school.
"When I don’t open the windows at night, the house smells, you can’t sleep inside the house," she fumed.
She says she lives in constant fear that her children - aged between three and 11 - will injure themselves in the hazardous home.
Fadumo claims she is forced to keep the youngsters downstairs until bedtime due to her safety concerns.
But as she is not homeless, the council does not regard the single mum's request for a new home as a priority.
Despite lodging numerous complaints to her landlord over the last few years, she says the problems still haven't been fixed.
Mr Ahmed said he is actively trying to treat the mould and is working with pest control teams to get rid of the rodents.
My stuff is covered in mould and my children are always getting sick, I have to open all the windows when my children are at school.
Fadumo Omar
But the mum-of-seven claims he initially advised her to open the windows to treat the mould and blamed the rats on neighbours.
The landlord dubbed Fadumo’s allegations of the house already being run down when the family moved in as "b******t".
He said: "The rats were not there before, it’s only when she moved in we got the problem with the rats.
"It’s coming from the neighbours so it’s not just her house, it’s the whole street.
"When you’ve got so many kids in the house and you’ve got food everywhere, what do you think is going to happen?
"I’ve got somebody working on that, I’ve got pest control coming, it’s not so easy to put poison down, she’s got small children so you have to do it discreetly."
Mr Ahmed maintains he is working to fix the windows, but says not all of Fadumo's complaints are entirely sincere.
"I said I was going to put locks on the windows, I was going to fix all of that, but I can’t do the work if she doesn’t let me in.
'TOTAL JOKE'
"There’s nothing wrong with the flooring, why should I fix that?"
But a rep for housing union ACORN said the hole in the floor "could fit a kid's foot through" it, and that Mr Ahmed covering openings in the wall with masking tape was a "total joke".
In regards to the rubble strewn across the family's back garden, the landlord says he has now cleared the mess up.
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Mr Ahmed explained: “When she moved in I gave her a brand new kitchen and bathroom so there was some stuff there and I got rid of it.
"There is nothing wrong with the garden as it is, there is a wall all around the garden, she wants me to put a fence around it, why would I do that when the walls are fine?"
