When her alarm went off each morning at 7am, 32-year-old Elizabeth woke to a familiar nightmare. Her black cat Katie lay beside her sneezing. Condensation enveloped her bedroom . The temperature was 12 degrees because she kept the windows open for ventilation. “It was like being in a tent, not a bedroom”, she says.

Her lungs felt like she’d smoked 30 cigarettes the night before, but Elizabeth doesn’t smoke. Plucking up the courage to get out of bed and face the day, Elizabeth would think of her past homes in sunny California and Valencia and wonder why she moved to London in the first place. She felt powerless to change anything. This is the reality of renting a house plagued with mould in the UK.

Originally from Santa Barbara, California, Elizabeth moved to London after being acce

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