A heartbroken mum has hit out at the inhumanity of the housing crisis, after she and her partner were evicted while in Bristol Children's Hospital dealing with the loss of their newborn. Rebekah Gidman and her partner were devastated to find out they had been issued a section 21 notice while in hospital, as their daughter Ehvadnai fought for her life - and then another just months after securing a new place to live.
Ms Gidman, from Royal Cornwall Hospital, gave birth to her daughter in September 2021 in an emergency c-section. On her birth, Ehvadnai had a severe tongue-tie, issues with feeding, and steadily developed further complications, reports Cornwall Live.
Ms Gidman, her newborn daughter and her partner were moved from Royal Cornwall Hospital to Derriford when it became clear Ehvadnai needed specialist care. An eight week stay in Plymouth then gave way to a transfer to Bristol Children’s Hospital, as things deteriorated further.
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“She had liver failure and a million other problems,” Ms Gidman told CornwallLive. “Her body was attacking itself, she was having multiple blood transfusions every day, she had a bleed on the brain, a problem with her neck and could only be fed by IV.
“She was taken off a ventilator and she passed away at Bristol after we were transferred. All during this time, we also had to look for a new place to live as our landlord had given us an eviction notice.
“We’d never missed a rent payment, even when we were both up at Bristol taking time off work.”
The couple were issued the eviction, a Section 21 notice which gives two months and requires no justification, shortly before Ehvadnai was born while Ms Gidman herself was at Treliske on oxygen. Ms Gidman then recalled the trauma of looking for a place to live in Cornwall’s volatile rental market while coping with her daughter’s situation.
She said: “We were up in Bristol, couldn't even view places. I must have applied for hundreds, and they were disappearing the day they appeared.
“Even thought my daughter was on life support we were searching for houses. I can't explain what that’s like. We work here in St Austell, our whole life there. We don’t drive so we need to get to work and stay here.”
When, in November, Ehvadnai passed away, Ms Gidman and her partner found themselves grieving the loss of their daughter, organising a funeral- and still trying to find somewhere to live. She said it was an unimaginably hard situation, both emotionally and financially.
“We were saving for a mortgage before all of this,” she said. “Everything went to keep where we were and having the funeral, still desperately trying to find somewhere to live.”
A glimpse of success came when, at the turn of the year, the family - Ms Gidman, her partner and their other children - found a new place in St Austell, albeit an expensive one at £1,000 a month for a three bed flat.
“It wasn’t bad considering,” Ms Gidman said, “Everyone is having to pay out so much money, but it doesn’t matter, we had to pay it we didn’t have another choice.”
As the dust began to settle from the loss of their daughter, Ms Gidman and her partner moved in on February 11, 2022, and began saving up for a mortgage. But, in yet another cruel blow for the family, last Friday (June 10), while she was getting ready for work, Ms Gidman, saw a letter fall through the letterbox. It contained a Section 21 eviction notice, just four months after they moved in.
She said: “We had just started trying to pick up our lives again. They said they’re selling, didn’t say why they’re selling.
“Again, we haven’t missed rent, nothing. We owe nothing to anyone but we have to be out by August.
“Imagine trying to sort a funeral with nothing coming in, finding a place, not getting wages as you’re off work, losing everything you’ve saved, still coming up with a deposit and rent in advance - and then being evicted again. We didn’t even have time to grieve."
Ms Gidman said the future for her family is still uncertain, and that she’s now facing a choice of uprooting her children’s school lives or waiting for the eviction to pass and being put into emergency accommodation.
