A DAD is forced to sleep in the back of his car while his wife only has months to live but the council won’t provide the family with a house.
Mohammed Ali, 32, is forced to kip in the back of his Toyota Yaris while his wife Sumayah Zaman, 26, and their one-year-old son stay with her mum, who also has serious health issues herself.
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Teacher Sumayah has terminal brain cancer and may only live for a few months more.
The family has spent a year waiting for a home from Birmingham City Council but nothing has come up.
Mohammed, who works for a cleaning company, hopes they can live as a family under one roof while his wife is still alive.
He told the Birmingham Mail: “My wife has terminal cancer. At first the council wouldn’t accept us on the housing register even with her condition. They said we didn’t meet the criteria.
“We then went to our MP and she got us put into Band A. But since then the council doesn’t reply to us. It doesn’t help us.
Sumayah is due to go back to hospital soon for surgery and Mohammed says the doctors have told him she doesn’t have long to live.
Mohammed added: “I sleep in my car sometimes. I just want us to be a family even for a short amount of time.”
He said that his wife sometimes stays with her mum but she has stage four bowel cancer and so can’t help them as much as she’d like to.
Mohammed said: “I have been in care and now work as an area manager. My wife was a teacher.
“We’ve made a go of our lives – it’s not as if we’ve been on benefits. It’s just an unfortunate situation we find ourselves in now.”
He said that he was trying to hold on to his full-time job as well as look after his wife and son and having to attend hospital appointments three or four times a week.
Mohammed had been living with his parents and planned to save up to buy a house.
However due to personal reasons and his wife’s terminal condition their situation was turned on its head.
He claimed he was either unable to get through to the council or received no response when making inquiries on its housing search.
They have also contacted their MP Jess Phillips for assistance.
She helped them get onto Band A of the ladder – for those people with an extremely urgent need to move – but the local authority has yet to find them a place to live.
Birmingham City Council currently has 20,700 households on its housing register with varying degrees of urgency waiting for accommodation.
Mrs Phillips, the Labour MP for Yardley said: “The lack of social housing is a nationwide problem and I am supporting a number of constituents who are struggling to find stable accommodation.
“This family are in a dire situation and I have been working with Birmingham City Council in the hope they will be able to move somewhere suitable and permanent as soon as is possible.”
A Birmingham City Council spokesman told the news outlet: “We are very sorry to hear about the housing challenges faced by this household.
“Unfortunately, they are not alone, due to the ongoing national housing crisis, demand for accommodation in the city has never been higher.
“There are currently over 22,000 households on the housing register in Birmingham – of which nearly 7,000 are band A. There are around 7,000 families seeking a two-bedroom home.
“The shortage of accommodation is severely restricting the options we can offer to people in need, and we know many people across the city are in difficult situations like this family.
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“Mr Ali has been accepted into Band A and an officer has recently reviewed their case to note the mobility issues they are both experiencing.”
The Sun Online has also contacted the council for comment.
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