FINISHING cooking dinner for her four children, Charmaine Alanah, 36, starts plating up the food like any other mum. But unlike millions of other families, Charmaine and her kids are not seated around a table or even enjoying dinner on their laps in front of the TV. Charmaine doesn't have a front room, a dining area or even a kitchen bench and stools.
Instead, she and her four children are forced to eat their meals sitting on their beds knocking knees cramped together in the sweltering heat. This isn't happening in an underdeveloped country, it's happening in London and it’s forcing this single mum to breaking point. “I’ve been forced to live in a tiny bedsit with my four children for two years,” Charmaine tells Fabulous in this exclusive interview.
Read More on Council Houses “It was meant to be temporary council accommodation. It’s hell on earth. “My three daughters, son and I share two rooms.
The kitchen is in the hallway. The roof slopes so you can’t stand up straight. “I can’t believe in 2024 a family of five is forced to live like caged animals.
” Single mum Charmaine lives in the second-floor flat in Hayes, with her disabled son, 18 and daughters 17, nine and four moved out of their borough by the Ealing Council Most read in Fabulous But it wasn’t always this way. In 2022 Charmaine, a trained beautician, was living in a three-bedroom terraced house in inner West London with a garden and a large front room, paying £1,922 a month rent to a private.