Young disabled people need accessible housing as much as older disabled people | #ForAccessibleHomes News

Suffolk resident, Laura, 30, has been waiting for a wheelchair accessible home from her council for over a year and a half. Here she explains how difficult daily life has become for her, living in a home that’s too small to fit her wheelchair in, and asks why there isn’t more accessible housing ringfenced for younger disabled people.

I’m a 30-year-old wheelchair user, and I’m facing the possibility of a 20-year wait for a wheelchair-accessible home. This is what the housing statistics from my local council suggest.

Two decades is an incredibly long time to wait for somewhere that allows you to safely live your life. Research carried out by Habinteg in 2022, meanwhile, shows that some people joining a local authority waiting list for a new-build wheelchair-accessible home may have to wait up to 47 years.

I live in a tiny, ground-floor flat with no space for a wheelchair. I can’t even get my wheelchair through the property, let alone be able to move it around. Even my walking frame is too wide for parts of it.

I’m an ambulatory wheelchair user. That means I use a wheelchair for mobility but retain the ability to stand or walk in certain circumstances or for short distances. However, I need my wheelchair more and more as my condition is deteriorating quickly. I’m falling more often and injuring myself trying to get around my home. I find myself clinging onto doorframes, radiators and furniture for support.

Dehumanising situation

My bathroom is only around three metres from my bedroom, yet I have repeatedly fallen trying to get there. Sometimes, I cannot get myself back up from the floor and have to drag myself across the carpet to the sitting room, where I can pull myself onto a low sofa, check whether I’m injured and gather enough strength to get back to bed.

Having to drag yourself across the floor after soiling yourself because you couldn’t safely reach the toilet is not just inconvenient. It’s dehumanising and humiliating.

And this is the reality of living in an inaccessible home.

Many of the general-needs bungalows and ground-floor flats available where I live are older properties that simply cannot be fully adapted for wheelchair users because of their design and layout. Fully accessible properties are incredibly rare. The reality is: you have to wait for an existing one to become vacant because the person living there has died or moved into residential care.

Inaccessible newbuilds

Newer properties aren’t necessarily the answer, either. Some new-build general-needs bungalows are described as ‘adaptable’, but that doesn’t mean they are wheelchair accessible. Developers can be reluctant to make major adaptations to a brand-new bathroom, such as replacing it with a wet room.

Housing association homes can also come with age stipulations, such as “must be 40-plus” or “preference for those aged 65-plus”. They can also come with Section 106 requirements attached, meaning that even if an accessible property is only a few towns’ away and is otherwise perfect for a wheelchair user, you can still be rejected because you don’t meet the local connection criteria. This can happen even when you have the highest level of housing need for the home.

What hurts most is that there are sheltered housing schemes for people aged 55 and over, which contain wheelchair-accessible properties, but there are no equivalent schemes specifically for younger wheelchair users.

People seem to understand that older people need accessible homes so there is more provision for them, but it seems they’ve forgotten that younger disabled people also exist.

Decades-long wait

Right now, I’m scared I won’t ever get accessible housing. I’m worried I’ll spend decades trapped in bed, watching my life disappear while I wait for somewhere I can live with safety, independence and dignity. 

Some disabled people might not have decades to wait for accessible housing; many of us have complex health conditions. 

Having an accessible home would give me a better quality of life and my dignity back.

As almost 98% of homes (1.9%) in England are not wheelchair accessible, according to government’s 2024 Disabled people in the housing sector report. We need the government – as Habinteg is calling for – to ensure that every local plan defines what proportion of its new homes must meet the wheelchair user standard. This would help me and other young disabled people get the housing we need in the near future, not 20 years down the line.