Access to Housing - Locked Out

Fascinating and challenging report from Trailblazers on issues facing young disabled people trying to get a home. Trailblazers is a national network of more than 400 young disabled people who work together on a national and local level to highlight and address the issues that are important to them. 

We aim to fight the social injustices experienced by young disabled people and to ensure we can gain access to education, employment and the services we require. We are part of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, the leading UK charity focusing on muscular dystrophy and other related conditions.

The Locked Out report is the result of findings taken from a survey of 200 young disabled people and 12 focus group meetings across the UK over a period of nine months. It reveals that many young disabled people believe that the property sector and independent living services regularly fail to deliver a good or efficient service for them. The barriers to living independently can range from an estate agent's lack of knowledge of the accessibility of housing stock to the disparity in the assessment criteria and quality of personal care in different regions of the country.

We hope this report will shed light on the list of obstacles that face young disabled people and their families who want to buy or rent a new property. We also hope that the solutions and advice offered within this report will help to create a situation where young disabled people in the UK feel confident that estate agents, local authorities, property developers and architects will deliver a service that means they can live not only independently but also where they want to live.Key findings

Key findings
 

From the 200 Trailblazers who completed our survey or took part in one of the 12 focus group discussions, it was revealed that:

• 85 percent do not feel confident that access advice given by estate agents, local authorities and other housing providers is accurate
• a lack of information from estate agents, local authorities or other providers has prevented or deterred half of this group of young disabled people from living independently
• eight out of ten people are not confident they would be able to access the same level of care and support if they moved out of their local authority
• almost a quarter say that a landlord has refused to carry out minor disability-related adjustments and adaptations or refused to let them make their own adjustments
• seven out of ten say they find it difficult to identify accommodation that is accessible to them because estates agents have poor knowledge of adapted properties in their area
•  four out of ten young disabled people have been told by an estate agent or letting agent that a building is accessible to their needs, only to arrive for a viewing and discover it is not
• almost half say they have not heard of the Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG)
• eight out of ten of those who live with parents say that if they moved away, they would not be confident that they would easily be able to find a property that would be suitable for them
•  ninety-four percent say that more information about access on websites would improve their experience of looking for accommodation
• nine out of ten say that are just as keen to get on to the property ladder as their non-disabled peers
• seven out of ten think local authorities have insufficient knowledge of their housing needs
• nine out of ten think that property developers do not do enough to consult with disabled people when they plan and build homes.

Key recommendations
 

We are calling on:

• estate agents to make it possible to search their property websites for accessible properties
• estate agents to work with groups to train their staff in understanding accessibility issues and the needs of disabled clients
• for local authorities to make it easy for young disabled people to transfer their healthcare packages between regions, which will enable them to transfer to new areas for work or relationships
• for local authorities and building developers to ensure that all new housing will be built to the Lifetime Homes Standard and 10 percent will be build to wheelchair standard design.

Click here to download the full report from the Muscular Dystrophy ...