Disabled people homeless in unsuitable accommodation for years without hope

A new report from the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee shines a light on the dire state of housing for people with disabilities in England, and sets out a list of recommendations for the government to begin to rectify the situation. However a few days after its release, Rishi Sunak called a surprise election, starting a period of purdah during which the government is unable to comment. As we are heading for a general election with little focus on housing, the messages from this report risk going unnoticed.

The report, which is based on replies from over 1000 people, gives evidence of people who have been housebound for years, and shows that waiting lists for accessible social housing can be decades long. It also shows that far too often, specific needs are not considered because disabled people are treated as a homogenous group.

Compounding the problem, in addition to a lack of supply of new accessible homes, the report reveals shortcomings in accessing the Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG), leaving disabled people unable to make essential adaptations to the homes they are in.

While the DFG, flawed as it is, is available for disabled people in all kinds of tenures, much temporary accommodation (TA) is not a tenure at all; people are placed under a licence agreement. There are few legal rights under licence agreements; people can be moved at very short notice, which does not encourage long term planning for the individual in the accommodation, or for the local authority placing them there. Why look into adaptations if you don’t know whether you’ll be there next week?

The report doesn’t specifically look at temporary accommodation, its focus is disability and housing more generally, but it doesn’t preclude it either. Some of their worst examples are of people who have been stuck in TA for decades, highlighting the horrendous impact unsuitable TA can have on disabled people's lives.

This is not surprising; it echoes what we have found through our work with people in TA. Inaccessible housing is keeping people with disabilities confined to their rooms and stripping them of their basic right to move around independently. We have heard multiple cases of disabled people being completely housebound due to the inaccessibility of their properties, including one person who had been stuck in their room for six years. Another hadn’t had a shower for six months because the bathroom was on a different floor which he couldn’t access. He had last been able to shower during a short stint in prison.

At an estimated 37%, the proportion of people with disabilities in TA is much higher than the approximately 20% of the general population. Conditions are often even worse in TA as there is little oversight and limited supply.

Local Authorities are not exactly spoilt for choice when looking for temporary accommodation for the homelessness applicants they owe a duty of care. And with limited resources and lack of training, housing officers often don’t pick up on disabilities when people present to them, leading to unsuitable placements and limited understanding of the scale of the problem. What is known is not the full extent of the problem.

The fact that there is so little suitable move-on accommodation, as evidenced in this report, only makes it harder to move disabled people out of temporary accommodation and into suitable, dignified independent living. Let’s hope whoever wins on the 4th of July affords this dire situation the attention and resources it desperately needs. A systemic solution is long overdue. Far too many disabled people are suffering in silence.