Chance meeting leads to a new Gainsborough home for homeless family
Tammie Morton, aged 38, her 35-year-old partner Nathaniel Parker and their three children became homeless after their rented home in Peterborough was sold.
Left relying on local councils for help they spent more than a year in and out of hotels in places such as Milton Keynes, Scunthorpe and Gainsborough.
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Hide AdAnd Nathaniel said living out of hotels meant he could not hold down a job as they kept having to move.
But, after a chance encounter with a Gainsborough resident in Scunthorpe, the family are now settling into their new home on Stanley Street.
Nathaniel said: “The kids are loving having a place to sleep. It is a fresh start for us, I can get a job now.
“We are so grateful for the home – I’m glad someone didn’t want to see us on the street.
“We are now just waiting to hear back from schools.”
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Hide AdHe also said the family are excited to be spending this Christmas in their home after spending last Christmas in a hotel.
The family met Kirsty Watson, 38, whose husband Dean, 39, has his own business DND Recruitment which maintains and finds tenants for properties in Gainsborough.
Dean said: “They were shipped from pillar to post – I think a lack of affordable homes seems to be an issue.
“I told them there might be a house in Gainsborough belonging to one of my clients.”
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Hide AdAfter finding out the family would be sent to a Retford hotel and were sat waiting in the rain in the car park at Gainsborough’s Marshall’s Yard shopping complex, a landlord decided to let them move in without a bond.
Yvette Vincent, of Farnnborough, Hampshire, owns the Stanley Street house in Gainsborough where the family now live.
She said: “It looked like they would be sleeping on the streets. They were then told a taxi would pick them up and take them to Retford for the night, but they would have to return to Gainsborough the next day themselves.
“Luckily I had a property that was empty, I said they could stay there as I didn’t want to see them on the streets, especially with a four-year-old.
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Hide Ad“The council have agreed to pay the bond and rent so they now have a permanent roof over their heads.
“They are happily rehomed due to a chance meeting, goodness knows what would have happened otherwise.”