My heart sank as I went into the wardrobe.
A big week of work lay ahead. The Labour Party Conference had come to Liverpool and I was covering it for the ECHO, starting on Sunday, October 8. My suit was hanging up in the living room, I'd picked a tie and ironed a shirt. It all seemed set.
Disaster arrived, however, when I picked a pair of shoes out of the bottom of the wardrobe. The black leather shoes had gained some more colour - they now had a lot of blue and green accents thanks to a covering of mould. That wasn’t ideal preparation for the important week ahead.
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That said, I knew the flat had a problem with mould. Most rental places tend to - and this building was old - making that prospect even more likely.
The problem had worsened in my short time at the flat, with mould starting on the walls and then moving to my possessions, but this was the final straw. I was only a couple of months into a six month lease but it was time to bail out.
I found myself in a situation where I would be having to deep clean my smart shoes before a week of work. I wasn’t putting up with that.
At this point, I'll take you back to the start of this process. I'd been looking for a one-bed Liverpool flat for a while - that search had been pretty fruitless, with prices often beyond what I was willing to pay.
By July I had a breakthrough and found a ground-floor flat on Alexandra Drive, between Princes Park and Lark Lane. I'd always liked the idea of living in the old houses near Sefton and Princes Parks, so this flat ticked that box. At £695 a month, it felt a bit pricey. I guess that's the ever-increasing price you have to pay to rent these days.
The unfurnished flat - beyond a slightly bizarre feature wall of a forest-themed wallpaper (more on that later) - felt good. It was a decent space in a great location, so I took the plunge and signed the six month tenancy agreement.
I moved in on August 14. The first problem was found as soon as I arrived - the gas had been disconnected. There was no hot water and no way to use the oven - not an ideal start.
A contractor came out to fix it that day and it felt good to go. I kitted the flat out with furniture of my own and it felt like things were looking up.
The furnishing came together - other than the double bed - which didn't arrive until the end of September, after a number of failed delivery attempts - leaving me to sleep on the mattress on the floor for more than a month. That saga is a different story in itself.
Also on day one, I found that the shower didn’t work. Water dribbled out of the shower head at a velocity close to zero, making it impossible to wash. A working shower is quite a fundamental part of a house, you might think. This didn’t have one.
It is too much to expect that issues such as these would be corrected between tenancies so that you could move into a working home? Clearly it is.
A replacement shower head was provided by August 22. In the meantime, I made use of the office shower to get by. With a shower in place, I felt like the false starts were out of the way. The flat was properly up and running - if we ignore the lack of bed for now.
That wasn't quite the case. In a cruel irony, the new shower head was so powerful that it revealed there was a leak in the bath and shower unit. Water would stream across the bathroom floor while you were washing. I asked the letting agent for this to be fixed and was put in touch with a contractor, but nothing ever got done.
I could live with the leak - it wasn’t the end of the world. I got on with life in the flat - until it all took a turn for the worse. On September 11, less than a month after moving in, I noticed that a considerable level of mould had developed on the forest feature wall, giving it a very unwelcome furry quality. On my bookcase, paperback books had begun to curl up - it was clear the flat had a problem with damp.
I let the agent know, suggested that dehumidifiers could lessen the problem and asked if the landlord could provide them. I also asked for the issue of damp to be dealt with in a more long-term manner.
None of this happened. I emailed the agent again on September 19, outlining the issue with mould growing on the walls. That email was not replied to.
Fortunately, I went on holiday to Portugal shortly after, allowing me to forget the flat and its many troubles. There was no mould in the AirBnb in Lisbon, thank God.
Reality hit back hard when I returned to the flat on October 3. I found even more mould had grown on that feature wall - and it was developing on other walls across the flat. The rather off-putting wallpaper was clearly just covering the wall that was in the worst state.
To make matters worse, the mould had spread to my clothes. A pair of jeans that I left in the flat while I was away were now covered in it. I began to think that the flat wasn’t fit to live in.
However, the bed had finally arrived, so that was something. But finding the aforementioned shoes which had turned green was the final straw. It confirmed that the flat simply wasn’t fit for human habitation. My clothes were getting wrecked, I didn’t want to think what breathing in that air was doing to me.
I was kept busy at work that week with the Labour conference. But, I then found that jackets hanging up in the hallway now had a coating of mould. So did all the trainers that were at the bottom of the wardrobe, so did some of my furniture. It was a joke.
Frankly, I was furious. I was parting with close to £700 a month for a flat which was ruining my possessions. I couldn’t even have a shower without flooding the bathroom. It was all just a bit bleak.
After that busy working week, I emailed the letting agent to ask for the lease to be cancelled. I had paid rent up to mid-November and had no intention to stay beyond that date.
I couldn’t keep living there. I outlined all the issues with the flat in an email, the lack of reply when I raised those issues, and how the flat just was not fit to be let out by a landlord.
Faced with the suggestion that I would stop paying rent, the landlord wanted some time to think about his finances. Naturally. He also offered some suggestions.
It was too late, the mould problem was too far gone. I wouldn’t stay there. By that point, a holdall of mine was covered in mould - as was a lunchbox I kept in the kitchen cupboards.
After a fair bit of negotiation, we came to an agreement. My tenancy would end prematurely on November 13 and I would get my deposit back. The letting agents apologised for the entire situation, which was good of them.
But everyone lost in this situation here.
I had to move out of a property just months after I arrived. It felt that no sooner had I unpacked my boxes and built my furniture that they were going back into a removal van. In fact, I think I’d actually slept on the bed I bought for the flat less than five times.
The landlord lost out on three months of rent because he had let out a flat that wasn't fit to live in.
By writing this, I’m not looking for sympathy. It was a tiring and infuriating situation, but I was able to move back in at home after this debacle - I had a safety net and was able to cut my losses. Some people don't have this option. I just think this story goes to show that the rental market is in dire straits, with tenants seen as little more than sources of money. We see so much of that working at the ECHO.
The number of stories we hear about renting nightmares suggests that so many landlords seem to be happy to rent out properties that have fallen far below a good enough standard. This week, I heard from David Rushworth, who claimed he fell through stairs which crumpled beneath him in his rental home in Toxteth.
Wednesday’s ECHO front page carried the story of students living at The Exchange on Hotham Street, who had no water or electricity after an outage. The students alleged that this came after months of issues with the flats, with tenants previously complaining of leaks, cracked ceilings and no hot water.
Last week, Stephen Melia told us that his rented Anfield home has been plagued with mould and damp since June 2023. He said this forced him out of the property.
Last year, Liverpool Riverside MP Kim Johnson said that mould-ridden housing is a "major public health issue" in the city. I think she’s right - people cannot afford to put up with this any longer.
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