“The anxiety was something I’d never experienced before. It made being a mum a million times harder. I was stressed out, jobless and homeless. You’re going to people you think will help you but they don’t.”

Kellie sought advice from organisations like Shelter. She needed a “local connection” to an area to get social housing. She went to Southwark council as she’d spent most of her life there and that’s where her family lived. They refused because she’d been living outside the borough, in the neighbouring Lewisham, for more than six months. Lewisham denied her because she hadn’t lived in that borough for more than 24 months. She learned this is called “gatekeeping” and is commonly used by local authorities to shift financial responsibility for people.

Still on her search for a private landlord, Kellie even subscribed to specialist websites who for £10 a month promise to find landlords that accept benefits claimants. But the response was overwhelmingly negative. “It’s about money for them, you are overlooked as a human being.”

At one point, she was so frustrated she staged a solo protest outside the Houses of Parliament.

Kellie was unable to secure even one viewing. “I’d write to people and say I’m planning on fulltime childminding and coming off housing benefit but they’d tell me the property was gone.” She also found that where landlords were willing to take people on housing benefit, the rent was much higher. She felt the discrimination belonged in a different era. “There was one note that said ‘No animals, no children, no DSS’. Kellie was baffled by the reluctance of landlords to let to a qualified childminder with references and a guarantor.

Kellie and her daughter lived in boxes for six months under the threat of eviction, while the new owner of the house decided what to do. Eventually they moved again, into a friend’s house. He later became her partner. But when he lost his job earlier this year, he also lost the house it was tied to.

When I caught up with Kellie some weeks after the demo, they had moved in with his parents. She was sharing a bed with her daughter, while he slept on the office floor.

The psychological cost that her daughter might incur weighs heavily on Kellie’s mind. “I worry what the long-term impact will be on her.”

“When we moved the first time her mood changed. There were tantrums. The next time, she would wake up several times a night.” Kellie said that during this most recent move, her daughter would get cross when she was packing and say ‘I like it here’ and ‘I don’t want to move.’ But Kellie had also found the move traumatic. “When we were packing up to come here, I was crying all the time, because I didn’t know what was happening next.”

“It would be ok, if it was just me. But I don’t want my daughter to feel that insecurity. I want her to feel that she is where she belongs.”

Desperate not to upset her daughter’s routine any more, Kellie and her partner face a long commute each morning to take her to school in her old area, which doesn’t always work with their own work schedules. They’re saving for a deposit so that they can rent without government assistance. Realistically, that could take at least six months.

For women in situations like Kellie, the forthcoming Housing and Planning Act is going to make things worse, as it forces local authorities to sell off “high value” social housing and scraps the obligation to build some homes for social rent in every new development. The Act was introduced by a Conservative government that insists the bill will “free up” empty homes and land for house building, but remains hugely controversial. It only narrowly passed into law this summer after an extraordinary 150 days ping ponging between the House of Lords and House of Commons as agreement was sought. Even many Conservative MPs were against the bill, knowing it would upend many of their constituents’ lives.