AWAAB ISHAK was two years old when he died of a respiratory condition in December 2020.

He died of acute airway oedema, suffocating to death, because of long-term exposure to mould in the one-bedroom flat he lived in with his parents.

The inquest into his death concluded last week that the cause of his death was “due to environmental mould exposure.” As this paper put it, the coroner’s full verdict is a “damning verdict on British housing conditions.”

There were many contributing factors to Awaab’s avoidable death. As housing law expert Giles Peaker has written the case shows common failings that are “a cause for rage and despair.” 

Mould is usually blamed on the tenants. The mould had been raised with their landlord, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH), more than three years before Awaab’s death — since before he was born.

Awaab’s father first complained about the mould in 2017 and was told to “paint over it.” 

As Peaker comments, he’s only surprised they weren’t also told to “open a window and keep the heating on” — the usual response of landlords.

Another factor, in Peaker’s view, was racism. Awaab’s mother and father, Aisha Amin and Faisal Abdullah, had come to Britain from Sudan.

RBH claimed that “ritual bathing” involving a “bucket” was taking place, although “workers never asked the family about this directly.” 

Peaker writes that this racist allegation is used in “pretty much every complaint of damp” where the tenant is African.

The mould continued to get worse, with nothing done by RBH. RBH had received multiple letters about the situation, including a health visitor’s letter in 2020 urgently raising concerns about Awaab’s safety. 

However, RBH had multiple computer systems and this document was not stored on the main “customer relationship management system” that everyone was supposed to use. In desperation, the parents clicked on a Facebook advert for legal claims and engaged solicitors.

A letter was sent from the solicitor in June 2020 demanding the repairs that were urgently needed.

Perversely, RBH then appealed to its policy not to carry out any remedial works on properties with legal claims until the solicitors had agreed.

Apparently this was for legal reasons, but in Peaker’s view this is terrible legal advice: “legally and objectively, this is a damn stupid policy.” 

When the solicitors dropped the case in September 2020, their firm didn’t tell RBH. So RBH continued to act as if the family had solicitors — which meant doing nothing. Awaab died the month after partial repairs had started.

The difficulty in cases like this is to connect the individual tale to the collective problem. Much of the coverage has focused on the landlord, RBH. In theory, as a charitable mutual housing society RBH it should be working for the benefit of employees and tenants, not profit.

An anonymous employee spoke to Sky News and said that “RBH have been putting profit before people for a long time. They try to cut corners and make them more cash-rich.”

RBH is meant to be owned by its employees and tenants. Few media organisations have investigated its public reports. However, only 38.5 per cent of tenants are members compared with 80 per cent of employees, raising questions about how representative this ownership structure is.

Its most recent annual report is depressing reading. It claims that 99.98 per cent of its homes are compliant with the government’s Decent Homes Standard — a claim that the death of Awaab Ishak suggests is almost certainly false.

The report boasts of “sound operational efficiency” and “significant financial capacity.” (The words “mould” or “damp” do not appear.)

RBH invested £5.8 million during the year to “upgrade” tenants’ homes. But it had a surplus of over £12.5m in both 2020 and 2021.

RBH benchmarked “favourably” with respect to comparable associations in terms of its operating margin — “it is extremely difficult to assess why our peers’ profits are so much lower.” 

The coroner’s inquest should cause a drastic re-evaluation. It is wrong that any social housing association should be making such a surplus while tenants live in dire conditions.

This is Britain today. On the one hand, appalling poverty. On the other, a system of reports, inquiries, investigations, and inquests.

But the emotional satisfaction of a “damning verdict” is never more than a comforting illusion.

The tales of landlords which make us so angry can make it seem like the problems are simple to fix through an individualistic framework: punish the bad actors and “learn lessons.” 

But the deeper political story is that these problems are systemic and worsening — despite inquiries and media coverage, despite angry words from members of Parliament, despite the sacking of RBH’s chief executive. 

Poor housing is endemic in Britain. RBH are not an isolated case. Since Awaab’s death, complaints about damp, mould and leaks have been rising.

As the Observer reported, in the year to April 2022, the housing ombudsman received 3,530 complaints and enquiries compared with 1,993 in the previous year. 

Poor housing is a public health issue: not just damp and mould, but poor insulation, unsafe stairs and overcrowding.

One consultancy has estimated that the cost of poor housing to the NHS alone is £1.4 billion per year. The total societal costs are estimated at £18.6bn. If correct, this would mean that the estimated £9.8bn cost of necessary repairs to bring homes up to a decent standard would pay for itself “within a year.” 

As a society, we could choose to do this en masse. But instead the system is individualist: isolated complaints, lengthy processes, legal wrangling. All these cause delays to correcting situations which are already illegal under existing law.

Engels wrote about housing in The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845).

Writing on the “Great Towns,” he found that “the dwellings of the workers are everywhere badly planned, badly built, and kept in the worst condition, badly ventilated, damp, and unwholesome.”

Landlords were not ashamed to let houses “on the verge of uninhabitableness” to vulnerable tenants. Engels compared the dissolution of society into isolated individuals to the ”world of atoms.” 

For people in terrible housing conditions, “society, composed wholly of atoms, does not trouble itself about them.” He called the preventable deaths due to such conditions “social murder.” 

John McDonnell used the term for the Grenfell Tower disaster. It applies to Awaab Ishak too.

The last in our series of three online discussions on science and society, hosted by the Marx Memorial Library, is this evening at 7pm. We will be discussing “Science as Work.” Sign up here: www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk/event/399.