Homelessness and emergency housing pathway when disabled

strawberryrose
strawberryrose Community Member Posts: 2 Listener
edited May 11 in Housing and independent living

Hi,

I have a homelessness application with the local council. I’m seeking advice from other disabled people who’ve been through the homelessness situation / know more about it, as I’m really scared. I am a wheelchair user and also have health conditions which gets worse with mental and physical exertion - ie moving around a lot would deteriorate my health.


they’ve given me 4 options:

1.move into supported living. But this would require me giving up direct payments and only being able to use the care that comes with the supported living home. Atm, the only reason I have a good quality of life is because of my PAs (being able to choose exactly who I want to care for me, and how they do it, and how much time they spend, because I can use hours flexibly and spend more on certain things). It’s only because of being able to use direct payments flexibly that I’m able to get out of the home and this is invaluable to my quality of life. So I cannot accept this option.

2.go into the emergency housing pathway. This would require being moved to emergency housing —> temporary housing (multiple moves) —→ final settled housing (can take years to get to this step). They can’t tell me how many moves I would make. The problem is I have health conditions where symptoms get worse with exertion. Multiple moves would make me very unwell. They say housing would be suitable for my medical needs, but I’ve heard so many horror stories and even the charities say the council often don’t place people in suitable places. The only way to challenge it is judicial review.

3.get private rented accommodation. But I can’t find any that is adapted/accessible and within my price range (ie within local authority housing benefit rates). It is very hard for me to live with others due to sensory processing difficulties.


4.wait at home and apply to be on social housing register, wait for a place to come up (but could be years).


please can someone help? Has anyone been in this position before or knows someone and can share experiences / advice?

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Comments

  • Mary_Scope
    Mary_Scope Posts: 4,570 Scope Online Community Children and Family Specialists

    Hi @strawberryrose and a warm welcome to the community from me!

    This sounds like a very stressful situation and I'm very to sorry hear you are going through this.

    Shelter may be able give you more specialist housing advice as they are a homeless organisation and there is also Disability Rights UK that may also be good to contact as they will be able to provide legal information.

    Hopefully any of our members that will be able to relate will be in touch soon as well to share their experience and offer support.

  • Stellar
    Stellar Community Member Posts: 451 Pioneering

    Unfortunately, there's so much demand for housing support from councils thanks to unregulated landlordism and the failure of successive governments to rebuild social housing stock (and seize empty properties owned by ppl living offshore). This is before going into the dire state accessible housing specifically. That's why you don't have many options.

    as someone who has been through the homeless system as a disabled person, 2 and 4 are your best options.

    3 is another possible outcome, but likely only if the council finds you something. They can pay your deposit and first month's rent on your behalf while acting as a guarantor for you. If you don't have a guarantor, you'll find it almost impossible to access private rentals yourself, especially given the Renters Reform Bill doesn't ban landlords from making guarantors mandatory, nor fully ban discrimiination.

    ask your PAs to provide testimony, alongside getting the council to do an occupational assessment (they do not accept GP evidence by itself because they can just write whatever you tell them too). that way, the council have to take this into account so they can reduce the amount of moves you have to make. ie. so that you don't move multiple times through temporary housing

  • strawberryrose
    strawberryrose Community Member Posts: 2 Listener
    https://forum.scope.org.uk/discussion/comment/1124814#Comment_1124814

    thank you, I think my worry with number 2 - emergency/temporary housing, is that there would be a minimum of 3 moves (from emergency to temporary and then settled), and even if I did get evidence that I can’t move too much, there may be several other moves. On top of the health deterioration.. I’d need to move all the mobility equipment I use daily (profiling bed, reclining chair provided by NHS, electric wheelchair, manual chair and rollator). It’s going to be impossible for me as the cost of moving the profiling bed itself and uninstallation/reinstallation has been quoted at £495 each time (it’s a private bed bought for me by someone a few years ago).

    In your experience, how many moves did they make you do, with the emergency / temporary pathway?

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