Amelia Gentleman talks to families still waiting to be rehoused about the impact of the fire and life in cramped hotel rooms

Most nights Ibtisam and her five children go to sleep squeezed into two double beds right next to each other in their small hotel room in central London. She shares one bed with her 12- and 13-year-old daughters; her two younger sons, four and six, share the other, and their 11-year-old brother sleeps on a mattress on the floor.

The family, who lived in a flat at the base of Grenfell Tower, were made homeless by the fire in June and are still in emergency accommodation five months later.



“I don’t want to complain,” Ibtisam keeps repeating, but it is clear that the ongoing dislocation is causing them profound difficulties.

At least 178 children who lost their homes because of the fire are still living in hotels around the capital: 55 lived in the tower itself, while the rest were in flats at the foot of the building, according to Kensington and Chelsea council. The government has a six-week legal limit on the amount of time families with children can be kept in bed and breakfast accommodation, in recognition of the long-term unsuitability of this kind of emergency housing.

In interviews with five families still waiting to be rehoused, all were desperate to move out of their hotels and were frustrated with the slow progress to this end. Most felt that initial sympathy from council officials had run out.

Sajid Javid, the communities and local government secretary, said this week that council staff dealing with traumatised survivors needed to display a “greater degree of humanity” and more “emotional intelligence”, adding: “There can be no doubt that there are families who desperately want a new home but for whom progress has been painfully slow.”



Bringing up five children in a small hotel room presents many practical problems. The older children try to do their homework on their knees on one bed, while the younger ones play and watch television on the other. There is nowhere to wash clothes, so if a school uniform needs cleaning overnight, it has to be washed in the sink and dried with the hotel hairdryer.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ibtisam’s children play and do homework on their two beds. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian

There is nowhere to cook and it is rare for halal food to be served in the restaurant, so they either eat out or bring takeaways back to the room, which they eat sitting on the beds.

“There is no routine anymore,” said Ibtisam, who works as a shop assistant at TK Maxx.



The family have been given another, non-adjoining room but they don’t often sleep there because another adult needs to be in the room to supervise the children and Ibtisam is a single mother.



More serious problems result from living in the unsuitable environment long-term. Five months of eating fast food is making them ill. The older children are not doing as well at school, with Ibtisam receiving calls from teachers with behavour complaints for the first time.

In August the family were moved to a temporary apartment. There were a lot of mice and it was so dirty that Ibtisam had to go to A&E five times with two children suffering severe asthma attacks. When the social worker saw the situation, she sent them back to the hotel.



Ibtisam, like most members of other families interviewed for this article, asked for her full name not to be printed, to avoid alienating housing officers, on whom she feels dependent.



Their flat at the foot of the tower has been cleared for rehabitation, but the family have decided not to go back. Ibtisam’s younger daughter spent much of the night of the fire talking via WhatsApp to a friend in the tower, who later died; she never wants to go back.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Grenfell Tower after the fire. Photograph: Rick Findler/PA

The council agreed to rehouse them, and in September Ibtisam was shown three places run by private landlords, rather than social housing. She was happy to take any of them, but the council could not tell her the price of the rent or the length of the lease and the offers fell through. She believes it was mainly down to chaos in the housing department. “I’ve lost count of how many housing officers I’ve seen.”

Ibtisam and former neighbours who are also still in hotels believe there is a hardening of public attitudes towards those made homeless by Grenfell. “People think we are spoilt, living in hotels, that we are being picky. We’re not; we want to get out and get on with our lives,” she said.

A neighbour, Hannan, said: “In the beginning there was a lot of empathy. Now it feels more like: ‘Take what you are given and shut up.’”

Hannan’s flat at the foot of the tower has been declared uninhabitable. She remains in a hotel with her husband and three children, the youngest of which has had to learn to crawl on the double bed, because there is no room on the floor. “His development has definitely been impaired.”

The most succinct explanation of why long-term hotel living is not appropriate for children comes from nine-year-old Omar (not his real name).



“It’s boring, it’s tiny, there is nothing to do,” he said. “The beds are not comfortable and I don’t really like the food. I don’t have enough space to play and I miss my friends.”

He has devised ingenious ways of playing in the room where two sofa beds take up most of the space. He practises kicking his football into the top shelf of the cupboard, taking turns with his three-year-old brother and seven-year-old sister. They leap from one sofa bed to the other, do handstands in the tight space between them and roll around laughing on the floor.

Their mother Sofia (also not her real name) is worried about the effect that the experiences of the past few months have had on her children. The eight-year-old regularly wets the bed that she shares with her siblings. The children sleep badly and frequently ask what they will do if there is a fire in the hotel.



They all lost friends in the fire. Sofia was on the phone to friends who were begging her for help as the building burned, and is receiving counselling.

“They are not the same children as they were before and that is very hard for me to witness,” Sofia said.

A few weeks ago she was shown a flat which she accepted but there has been a delay because of safety-related works; she has not been given a moving date and is uncertain whether the move will go ahead.

Sofia wonders whether her north African background might have something to do with the slow progress. “People who have better language skills have got better housing,” she said, through a volunteer interpreter from the Grenfell support charity Here is the Translation.

A spokesperson for the council said: “RBKC is working urgently to move all families affected by the Grenfell tragedy into interim or settled accommodation at the earliest opportunity. For each family, we will respect their wishes and give them the time and space to make this transition at their own pace.”