Dr James Patrick Ferns: ‘Condescending dampness’ - a reply to David Bookbinder

Let’s get right to the point, damp and mould issues are NOT merely the result of residents’ ‘lifestyle choices’.

David Bookbinder’s recent article, ‘Navigating the political correctness around damp and mould’ begins by invoking the horrific death of Awaab Ishak — a child killed by conditions of damp and mould in social housing — only to pivot toward the same victim-blaming rhetoric that allowed such tragedy to occur. 

Awaab’s Law represents a long-overdue acknowledgement that problems of damp and mould are not primarily driven by people’s lifestyles and that legislation is required to compel social landlords to take effective action. ‘Political correctness’ should not be used as a cudgel to justify decades of structural neglect.

No amount of tea-making, laundry, or breathing creates rising damp or penetrating damp. Rising damp is caused by failures in the building’s damp-proof course — a landlord’s or builder’s responsibility. Penetrating damp comes from leaking roofs, cracked render, or defective gutters — again, failures of maintenance, not the ‘lifestyle choices’ of tenants. 

As for condensation-based damp, this does not come from ‘tenant behaviour’ — it comes from low quality housing and the brutal realities of poverty. Families are told to ‘heat their homes and open the windows’ — a cruel joke in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis where heating a single room already devours someone’s wages.

Tenants are told that ‘making soup’ or ‘boiling the kettle’ causes mould — but the reality is that social housing often lacks adequate ventilation, which puts people in a position of choosing whether they want to freeze, or suffer from mould spores. The problem isn’t soup — it’s the decaying housing stock and the poverty wages that make proper heating impossible.

Instead of blaming those already struggling, we should be looking at practical, preventative solutions. That means supporting tenants with the cost of heating their homes, improving access to affordable and efficient appliances like washer-dryers, investing in welfare rights and debt support, and launching an ambitious council house building programme to increase the supply of safe, healthy homes. It also means housing providers working in partnership with advice agencies and community organisations to address the root causes of these problems, not just the symptoms.

Safe and dignified housing is not a culture war issue. The ‘political correctness’ that Mr Bookbinder rails against does not exist. Every attempt to shift focus from rotten walls, leaking roofs, and inadequate heating onto the so-called ‘lifestyle’ of the occupant is a cynical distraction from the real failures in our housing system. It is embracing the politics of ‘condescending’ dampness.

This is something that every tenant who has watched black mould creep up their walls despite years of complaints knows.

In Dalmarnock Village, we’ve seen these issues first-hand. Through the Dalmarnock Village Housing Campaign, (an initiative led by Bridgeton CAB and residents of Dalmarnock Village), we’ve spoken to people who have lived with damp and mould for months — sometimes years — without real progress. We’ve seen walls black with mould, ceilings crumbling, and landlord letters echoing the same tired victim-blaming rhetoric. The campaign builds on what this article argues — that tenants deserve safe and healthy homes, and that excuses are no longer acceptable.

• Dr James Patrick Ferns is the social policy project manager at Glasgow ​Citizens Advice Bureaux. The Dalmarnock Village Housing Campaign is a community-led initiative, organised by Bridgeton CAB, the Glasgow Social Policy Project, and residents of Dalmarnock Village.