My housing dilemma

I am 46, and a wheelchair user having been disabled with Cerebral Palsy since birth, and I have always lived with my mother. For the last 15 years I have always wished I had a home of my own. This wish became even stronger when I became a mum, to my beautiful daughter, thirteen years ago.

My mother (the council tenant), my daughter and me, have lived in our wheelchair accessible bungalow since 1979. The bungalow entrance is ground level. The bathroom is spacious, but has had a shower and hand rails fitted. As the bungalow is classed as a family unit including a disabled member, the kitchen was not adapted for a wheelchair user. I fought for ten years to have the entire kitchen adapted for a wheelchair user, as I was cooking more and more for my daughter and me, as our food choices were different to my mother’s.. The kitchen was finally adapted, and my time spent cooking is so much more easier.

About six or seven years ago, I decided to look at my housing option as a disabled parent with one child. I wrote to our local Council to request my name be placed on the housing register. In my application I explained that my daughter’s bedroom was a small box room and my wheelchair had no room to turn in order for me to assist my daughter in such things as getting clothes out her wardrobe, and my continuous clashes with my mother, due to the fact we have different tastes opinions and outlooks, which over the years has lead to me and now my daughter mainly living in my bedroom. After some weeks I received a letter from our Council informing me, that I would never ever be offered a Council tenancy because I had adequate housing accommodation. They stated they would only consider my application, if I had another child. I found the response from the Council unacceptable. As an adult I think it is my right to choose how and where I live. And my daughter and me need our own space.

With the Council refusing my housing application, I wrote to twenty or more Housing Associations. Replies came back saying they only considered giving priority to certain cases, such as nominations from Councils, which ours stop doing, senior citizens and the homeless. However, I have been accepted on two specialist housing associations, one called Habinteg and John Grooms. I have been registered on their waiting lists three or four years now.

One solution to my housing situation, was for my mother to move out of the Bungalow, to a one bedroom flat on a Sheltered Housing Scheme for the over 55’s, which my mother agreed to. This would have been ideal, as all the adaptations for my needs have been done. But the Council has refused to consider this idea.

Now, I am trying to find a job, with the view that with a reasonable income, I will investigate the prospect of renting a suitable property privately.

I would very interested in hearing other peoples housing experiences.