Carrie-anne has told of her horrendous experience – including seeing drug deals done in hotel lifts and being dumped in manky rooms with bed bugs and mould.
Glasgow mum Carrie-Anne McGill lost her flat last year and had to declare herself homeless.(Image: Sunday Mail)
A mum-of-four from Glasgow has told how her family were shunted between a series of dirty and crime-ridden hotels after she was forced to declare herself and children homeless.
Carrie-anne McGill, who worked in a bar at the time, was left with nowhere to live in September after her landlord decided to sell the flat she rented.
The family were without a permanent home for over seven weeks, with the mum and her children, one as young as seven, put up in several homeless hotels across the west of Scotland while trying to get her kids to school every day.
Now Carrie-anne, who is set to get a new home, has shared her horrendous experience with the Sunday Mail – including seeing drug deals done in hotel lifts and being dumped in manky rooms with bed bugs and mould.
Carrie-anne told the Sunday Mail she was shocked by how homeless families are treated.(Image: )
Carrie-anne, 44, from the east end of Glasgow, said: “I was thrown into hotels with the kids, no help, no guidance.
“I’d never been homeless. I didn’t know what the procedures were and I was left to fend for myself with four children.
“It’s been horrendous. Everything that’s happened, it’s really opened my eyes.
“It’s disgusting how people are treated. I would never have never believed this if it didn’t happen to me, in this day and age.”
It comes amid a housing crisis in Scotland, with more than 9000 people homeless including 3300 kids in Glasgow alone.
Carrie-anne, daughter Brooke, 17, and sons Kai, 18, Mason, eight, and Nathan, seven, were among nearly 100 families in the city stuck in emergency hotels, B&Bs and hostels often flagged as substandard, according to the latest data.
Glasgow faces unprecedented demand for emergency housing (Image: )
She said that while some of the hotels were acceptable, she went to others with drug addicts gathering outside.
At another hotel, she said: “In the elevator going up to the room to look, two men did a drug deal right in front of me. I didn’t feel safe. I complained to security but it was just totally disregarded.
“I went down and handed the keys back, and I said, ‘I’m not bringing my kids here.’ I phoned my case worker and told her what happened and she said, ‘Well, we don’t have any accommodation for you.’ That was the second time I was left with no accommodation at all.
“I had to phone after hours and they put us in a hotel away in Paisley. I didn’t get to that hotel until about 8pm, and then I had to be back out first thing in the morning.
“That hotel was disgusting. The beds were dirty, with marks on the sheets, and the bath was all mouldy.
“My daughter threw her bed sheet back and there was a bed bug in the bed, and she said, I’m not sleeping here. She phoned one of her friends and went to stay with her that night.”
Carrie-anne added: “When you think about homeless people, you think about people out in the streets.
“You don’t think of getting pushed from pillar to post, from hotel to hotel with four kids with you, checking out at 10am without knowing where you’re staying next.
“I was having to take the kids to school to breakfast club, run back, fill my car up with all our belongings in it and on some days not getting accommodation until about 4pm.”
Homeless families with kids are not supposed to be in hotels for any longer than a week with longer periods leading to unsuitable accommodation orders against councils – of which there were more than 3000 in Glasgow last year.
Carrie-anne says the ordeal has broken up her marriage, affected the health and wellbeing of her kids and forced them to give up their beloved four-year-old dog Cooper.
She was also made redundant from her bar job after going on long-term sick during the crisis. Finally, in November, after seven weeks, she was found a temporary flat – but it’s in Castlemilk, miles away from her kids’ schools in Riddrie, with an eye-watering rent of £300 a week which she needs housing benefit to afford.
Carrie-anne added: “They told me I couldn’t work because if I’m working, then I need to pay that £300 a week – and apparently that’s quite cheap for furnished accommodation.
“For the same reason my 18-year-old Kai, who recently started work, had to move in with his gran.”
Last week, after the Sunday Mail’s intervention in Carrie-anne’s case, she received a one-time offer for a permanent flat in the east end which she is set to take – four months from the start of her ordeal.
She said: “I’m delighted but it should never have taken this long. The system is broken. The impact on my kids has not been good. My wee boy got alopecia with the stress.
“Their family has fallen apart. They’ve been dragged out of the only house they’ve ever known.”
Mark Griffin MSP(Image: )
Scottish Labour housing spokesman Mark Griffin said: “No one should ever have to go through such an experience but it is happening so often under the SNP.
“John Swinney should be ashamed of the SNP’s record on housing and the damage it is doing.”
Tory housing spokesperson Meghan Gallacher said: “Carrie-anne’s appalling story illustrates the human cost of the years of SNP failure to provide anything like the new housing required and the devastating effect of the rent controls they introduced.”
We told last month of the homelessness emergency gripping Scotland with more than 50,000 affected, including 10,000 children.
Glasgow has the highest rate overall with 223 of 10,000 households homeless compared with a national average of 133.
A council spokeswoman said: “The increase in the need for homelessness services has been well documented and why we declared a housing emergency in the city two years ago. Demand for social housing remains high and we are not able to move people on as quickly as we would like.”
Housing Secretary Màiri McAllan said: “We expect councils to fulfil their duties to provide safe, suitable temporary accommodation.
“The legal duty for preventing and responding to homelessness sits with local authorities, including the commissioning of temporary accommodation.
“We are providing Glasgow City Council with £127million this year through our Affordable Housing Supply Programme, which includes £24million from our acquisitions fund to help address acute pressures in temporary and permanent accommodation.
“We have specifically asked Glasgow City Council to use this additional £24million to act now and buy family sized social homes – the likes of which Carrie-anne and her family need.
“We recognise the significant pressures on homelessness services and are taking decisive action through our Housing Emergency Action Plan, which commits up to £4.9billion over four years to deliver around 36,000 affordable homes.”