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.

And 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.”

He 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.”

After 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.

“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.”