How can inclusive design, disability theology & housing theology influence house building to benefit everyone?
Rev’d Rach Wooden has recently been ordained as Deacon in the Church of England and has just started her Curacy in the Diocese of London. She is also a Specialist Housing Occupational Therapist working in the housing and regeneration department across two inner London councils.
She is passionate about inclusive and accessible design and below discusses how the ‘triptych’ of inclusive design, disability theology, and housing theology could come together to influence the way we design and build housing for all.
Inclusive and accessible design is still relatively unknown to many when it comes to thinking about the homes we need, although hopefully, this will change now that the Government has committed to raising accessibility standards for new homes. But I had hoped it might appear in some of the recent theological reflections within the new field of ‘housing theology’. As I could only find a very brief mention, I decided to write a piece for my final assignment at theological college entitled, Disability and housing: how should disability theology influence the theology of housing and the design of our homes?
Housing theology and ‘suitable’ homes
I believe that housing is a spiritual matter. Our homes and communities shape our relationships with each other and also with God. Housing theology helps us to think about these things. Recent housing theology has grown out of our current housing crisis and from Archbishop Justin Welby’s call for a top-to-bottom reimagining of almost every aspect of housing development. Housing theology essentially has a vision for good housing, which focuses on ‘home’.
Everyone needs a place to call home; a place of safety, which is affordable and stable, sustainable, and protects our beautiful world. A place where we can help foster community, be hospitable to others, flourish and see our dreams come to life.
Because I believe that real justice is only achieved when everyone can have access to this vision of ‘home’, I am absolutely committed to ensuring that new homes and communities are also suitable for everyone, without discrimination. But what does ‘suitable’ mean?
Habinteg’s analysis of the English Housing Survey 2018/19 highlighted the fact that 91% of UK homes do not provide even the lowest level of accessibility and 400,000 wheelchair users are living in homes that are unsuitable, un-adapted or inaccessible. Homes cannot be truly satisfying or hospitable if they are inaccessible, so ‘suitable’ (i.e. accessible) housing has to be integral to any discussion about housing theology and the housing crisis.
Disability knowledge and good architecture
Even if there has only been minimal mention of 
accessible homes in recent housing theology literature, I was delighted to find some great reflections of what good architecture looks like in disabled scholar and Shakespeare Lecturer Amy Kenny’s brilliant book, My body is not a prayer request: disability justice and the church.
Amy talks about embracing disability knowledge to influence architecture. This can facilitate inclusion, creating spaces with and for disabled people - which fosters mutual flourishing - and where everyone can belong. She says that “each human is worth the effort it takes to make a space accessible”.
Disability theology considers how the Bible and Christian faith can speak positively about impairment. God cares deeply for those who are pushed aside and excluded by society. The early church took up the mantle of inclusive community - their distinctive lifestyle and service impacted the wider community for good and this remains a calling for the church today.
But disability theology also reflects on our failures and this must include our negligence when it comes to the way we have designed our homes. We should be unashamedly apologetic that we have continually built homes based on our biased experiences of the world as non-disabled.
Even when we do provide accessible options, we’re often not thinking inclusively because we often build the accessible option around the back of the home, out of the way! Why do non-disabled people still expect disabled people to change in order to fit in?
Disability theology & accessibility
Disability theology encourages us to listen to those who have experienced injustice, and acknowledge that non-disabled people (myself included) have lived with social advantage for millennia, including the way we have designed and built our homes.
It asks us to reflect on our history and make a choice not to repeat it but to live a different way. This means we actively need to make choices to build homes that are all designed as inclusive and suitable for life-long living. It means building homes that are accessible and adaptable; homes that consider different types of needs (e.g. physical, sensory, cognitive, neurodiverse) as well as providing an appropriate quantity of homes that are designed to cater to those who need greater space requirements, such as wheelchair users.
We know that choosing to build an accessible home improves the quality of life for the current occupiers. It also makes housing more sustainable, reduces the significant environmental impact and the cost of redesign and retrofitting, reduces upheaval for the residents, and works towards the creation of community by ensuring there are no physical barriers in the designs.
All of these aspects are included in the vision for good homes in housing theology and disability theology because they imagine a world where justice, kindness, and humility really are prioritised and can become a reality.
In a nutshell, I believe that these theologies can and should influence the way we design and build. They can help us reflect on our past, our present, and our future and encourage us to dream of a world where there is justice in the world of housing.
They should nudge us to think carefully about the design of our homes and make us determined to build better homes for all people – homes that are welcoming to all. When we design and build for disabled people, we all benefit anyway, so inclusive and accessible home design is also just good common sense.
If you’d like to contact Rev’d Rach Wooden, you’ll find her on LinkedIn.
