A HOMELESS disabled mother is calling for help in providing stability for her family.
Sarah Reyniers, 36, was given three weeks notice by her landlord to move out of a housing association property in Lancaster Road, Northolt, and has now turned to Ealing Council’s housing office.
The mother of three who suffers from Multilevel disc degeneration, which causes changes in the individual discs of her spine, left her home on Thursday last week after four years.
Since then she has moved from one place to another and is currently sleeping on her mother’s sofa in Northolt while her daughters are staying at their other nan’s.
With less than a week until the new school term begins, the family want somewhere to settle long term.
The 36-year-old, who has lived in Northolt her whole life, said: “My kids are emotionally distressed; they are in a mess. They might have to change schools and one of them is mid-GCSEs.
“I’m just a number to the council. They are not doing anything. I feel like I’m banging my head against the wall and I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Miss Reyniers, who was working at Iceland before going on sick leave in 2009, said she went to the housing office in Perceval House on Thursday last week and was sent to a bed and breakfast in Southall.
She said the hygiene there was disgusting, there was no lighting or rail for her to hold onto in the bathroom and her daughters felt unsafe.
Instead they paid to sleep in a Travellodge for a night before being placed in a Wembley property by the housing office.
Miss Reyniers, who has a stick and sometimes uses a wheelchair, said: “It was a garage converted into a room. There was one double bed for me and my partner, two single mattresses for my eldest girls and a basket for babies. So there was nowhere for my 11-year-old to sleep.
“They knew how many children I had.”
Miss Reyniers sent her girls, aged 15 and 18, to stay with their nan, while she stayed in Wembley with her partner for two nights before her bed broke and she left last Sunday.
An Ealing Council spokesperson said: “We responded immediately to find temporary accommodation for the family, and are continuing to do everything we can to accommodate them while we assess their longer term housing needs.
“Our housing officers are still in contact with Ms Reyniers but like other London councils, we are facing pressure to house a growing number of homeless families as rents rise, benefits are cut and the amount of social housing available cannot meet demand.
“Regrettably, this can mean placing households outside of the borough due to the shortage of accommodation available in Ealing.”
