The Government has finally announced the details of the Renters Reform Bill, which should give more rights to anyone whose home is rented from a private landlord. These reforms are long overdue. Because those of us who rent privately often get the roughest of all the housing deals available.
While council housing has become scarce due to ever more aggressive right to buy schemes from government, public housing remains far more affordable than private rents – with some areas seeing private rents four to six times greater than public sector properties.
If you can get on the list for public sector housing, you can be waiting years to get to the front of the queue. And if you knock back a potential home for whatever reason, it’s like a real life game of Snakes and (property) Ladders – down you slide back to square one.
I’ve been stuck in the rental market for decades. As a single Disabled parent of a Disabled child, I simply can’t work or earn enough to get the money together to get on the property ladder. And I am not the only one, ONS data shows that Disabled people can be up to 20% less likely to own our homes than non-disabled people.
The last property I rented was damp, full of black mould, and exacerbated my underlying health conditions. When I finally moved out of that property, I felt like King Theoden when the spell is broken in the Lord of the Rings film – I could finally breathe again without breathing in spores. The effects of the mould were palpable to all visitors – within about half an hour, lethargy would set in, as they inhaled the toxic matter and began to feel unwell. New Health Foundation research has found that 15% of all Disabled households live in non-decent (draughty, cold and damp) homes.
I was bedbound with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and an extra layer of mould poisoning in a bedroom where it was inescapable. Unable to get rid of it, and unable to move until last year, it had a catastrophic impact on my health.
My bathroom and bedroom were upstairs, and I would fall down my stairs. But I couldn’t get a stairlift put in because of the way the door opened into the street. If it opened into the house, it blocked the way for a lift. If it opened into the street, the council wouldn’t allow it in case I accidentally lamped someone with a hunking great piece of plastic.
Bathing was precarious – I had to step into a bath and hope the grab rails were enough to stop me from falling. Most of the time, I took the erratic bus to the gym fifteen minutes away, with its computer-says-no attitude towards disability which saw it fail to fix the only Disabled shower, fail to fix any of the door locks, fail to remove families who chose to use the only Disabled cubicle because they preferred it to the family cubicles, and failed to provide either grab rails or useable seating. It was also swamp-sweat levels of damp. So it was kind of pointless even trying to dry off.
Meanwhile, the non-Disabled change had massive air con units. (We won’t even get into their decision to remove the poolside parallel accessible ramp and replace it with a straight-into-the-pool ramp to access the viewing areas. God help anyone with electric chairs.) Yes Village Hotels and Village Gym, it was you. And your staff sucked when it came to understanding, dealing with, and fixing raised access issues you are obliged to sort out under the Equality Act. If the bus didn’t come, I couldn’t wash. Eventually, Arriva cut the bus service entirely. So I stopped washing. Not really. But it did mean I was back to taking my life in my hands again and risking slipping in my inaccessible bathroom.
The house was part furnished, and the sofa, which came as a must-stay, was low and deep and literally further physically disabled me, until I managed to get a rise recline chair. These are often out of price range for many Disabled people if they don’t qualify for one as an adaptive aid.
The rent was mercifully affordable – I had a deal with a property-owning friend – but the access, around the house, and to the local amenities was so soul-destroyingly poor, that in the end I moved. And for anyone claiming housing benefit – rents have long outstripped its upper limits within the private sector, especially as Local Housing Allowance has been frozen since the pandemic first began.
Moving was a major ordeal too. I roped in umpteen amazing friends to do the packing and moving legwork. And having known my previous landlord, I was good for paperwork. But now, I was in the open market. And the city I moved to saw me competing with between three and ten households for every property I viewed. There isn’t the stock. Which pushes up the rents, and the clamour for accommodation.
Further, I live in a university town, and to rent to students, landlords need to shell out for a special licence. If they switch to let me live there as a professional, they lose the licence. If I choose to move, they need to pay out again. So they just don’t bother renting to professionals and families, making the situation worse for everyone. (Not that Disabled students have it easy either. Apart from the crushing debt crisis, faltering job market, and a lack of housing in the places they study, new research has found that 54% have experienced damp or mould on walls or ceilings in their homes.)
I needed accessible housing, and went for every flat and bungalow I could. I eventually secured a bungalow for way more than double my previous rent. And even this isn’t accessible. In fact, according to the Centre for Ageing Better, less than one in 10 homes is suitable for Disabled or Older people to live in.
I can’t get my mobility equipment in and out. There are stupidly shaped external steps. The path is blocked by weird bits of rockery. And the doors and internal corridors are un-navigable with my wheelchair. I have to use my sticks. I have no choice.
And the bathroom is inaccessible. I used the bath to shower once, in my very early days in the property. The positioning of the sink is so close to the bath it blocks access. And the other end of the bath has a weird fixed screen. There are no grab rails, so the whole room is basically a slip and slide, over which I slipped and slid and hurt myself getting out through the narrow gap between sink and screen. I shelled out for more gym membership, and thankfully passed my driving test. So now, to wash, I still have to nip down to the gym and its wet room.
But still – yay! No stairs. For now. Come the summer, I need to move out again. Despite conversations with my landlord where I outlined a wish to stay for several years (moving is stressful, but it’s also exhausting and physically painful), he wants it back. And as it’s his, he gets it back. So I’m on the move again.
To get that property, I also had to prove my income. And while my income is enough to cover the rent and my bills, and while I have never defaulted on rent or bills in my life, I have to prove I have between 2.5 and three times the rent as income. I have to prove I have more money than I need to cover all my expenses before someone will let me cover my expenses. Or I can cough up a year’s rent upfront. From a magic money fairy.
The barriers, the barriers. As Disabled people, we can’t rent affordable housing. Accessible housing is even more expensive than non-accessible housing. Accessible housing isn’t even accessible. And if we find almost accessible housing, we’re told we can’t afford it when we can, and then we have to pay sums we don’t have to secure it. And then we have no security in the property either. We can be told to leave in a heartbeat.
There are Disabled Facilities Grants available to make rental homes accessible with landlord consent. But for so many of us, we are too afraid of putting our heads above the parapet to ask for the changes we need to make our homes safe. I’ve heard countless stories of Disabled people evicted under section 21 for asking for changes.
But even if you get a grant, you can only get another one in six years. So if my landlord had consented to me making changes to the steps and bathroom, for example (I didn’t bother asking – call it a gut feeling), and I got booted out after a year, I could be waiting for five years in another property before I could fund necessary changes. If I was allowed to stay that long.
And as for pets – often the difference between good and poor mental health for isolated Disabled people, good luck finding somewhere that will currently let you keep something loveable and fluffy with a pulse as standard. The Bill is proposing changing this. Good news for my child, whose support dog currently has to reside elsewhere and visit us. (Children are also currently often another automatic ‘no’ from landlords who see them as potential Sudocrem and crayon-wielding vandals.)
Renting is hard. But when you’re Disabled, you roll the dice, and you follow the snakes most of the time. How many Disabled people do you know who can get up any kind of ladders? Property ladders count too.
Accessible housing is key to independent living and creating choice and control for Disabled people. There has been a crisis in accessible housing in this country now for three decades.
Disability Rights UK is hoping that this Bill will create a safer, fairer and more accessible housing system for everyone. As part of that, Section 21 eviction notices are expected to be abolished, and landlords will no longer be able to refuse people claiming benefits from renting (around 40% of people in work also need to claim Universal Credit because they don’t earn enough to live on. That’s a lot of professional people and families turned away even though Universal Credit is a legitimate income stream).
DR UK is also pushing for changes to the Decent Homes Standard that will be introduced with the Bill, to ensure that Disabled people no longer have to live in dangerous homes and ensures that when we do find a safe roof to go over our heads, we can also actually afford it.
