#37 Find housing for wheelchair users

This episode of the All 4 Inclusion Pod focuses on social housing for wheelchair users.

Wheelchairs users may make up 8% of the disability community, but accessible housing will make people feel less isolated.

Some of the benefits of adaptations to a property boost living standards for non disabled people and people with other disabilities to.

I can only share my personal lived experiences as a wheelchair user.

I also speak briefly with Alex and Haydn, Co Founders from Happy Smiles CIC who tell us a little bit about what Happy Smiles do to support the disabled community.

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Thank you for taking the time to listen to this episode.

Transcript

Scott Whitney (00:08.822)
Hey Alex it's Scott from the All 4 Inclusion Pod. Would you like to drop me a voice note so you can tell our listeners a little bit about Happy Smiles CIC?

Yeah, we'll hear a little bit from from Alex shortly, but first of all just wanted to speak about misconceptions because we did a webinar on misconceptions very recently 

Scott Whitney (00:30.518)
It went down well and people brought out different misconceptions that they face with hidden disabilities, but people with physical disabilities face misconceptions as well. Some of this is... 

Scott Whitney (00:49.89)
very, very avoidable. Now, one of the fights that I have is with housing. So I am currently in temporary accommodation and I don't have the right amount of carers I should have. The reason for this is because before they can deliver these carers, I need to be in 

Scott Whitney (01:18.222)
permanent accommodation. So I apply and I bid on social housing. This is the way we all do it. But the difficulty is that there aren't enough accessible properties for people in wheelchairs. Now, I've been thinking about this and we know 

Scott Whitney (01:48.47)
years ago when the right to buy scheme came out and people purchased their council properties, their social housing. What didn't happen was... 

Scott Whitney (02:03.48)
these houses that were bought, haven't been replaced. So there's fewer houses in the pot. There's fewer houses to go for. Spoke to occupational health yesterday and they told me that the waiting time in Manchester at the moment is over two years to get any funding for any adaptation to the property, which means I need to move into somewhere. 

Scott Whitney (02:33.0)
That is perfect for me. 

Scott Whitney (02:36.696)
That's a tough ask. That's a tough find. So bearing this in mind, we need to find something that isn't ground floor, level access, wet room. 

Scott Whitney (02:54.982)
and it needs to have hopefully wider doors. You need to be able to turn and move around in the property. So like I said, it's a tough, tough ask. I'm bidding on properties and what happens is I'm getting rejected on these properties. And the reason I'm getting rejected is because the property isn't suitable. And on social housing, 

Scott Whitney (03:23.458)
You don't get to see anything inside the property. All you do is you get to see a photo outside of the property. So you don't know what the floor plan is like, which makes things more difficult. And I've spoken about this so, so many times. Adding an extra couple of inches to a door frame makes so much of a difference for a wheelchair user. So the right to buy scheme has has taken away a lot of. 

Scott Whitney (03:53.198)
available housing. We've then got people living longer and I thought about this, I thought about this very very hard and I think 30 years ago 

Scott Whitney (04:10.894)
If I was born 30 years earlier and we was not in 2025 but we was in 1995. 

Scott Whitney (04:24.202)
I whether I would be alive and I look and I think about things like sepsis, when I had sepsis there's been a lot of leaps and jumps with you know helping people survive sepsis. I look at when I had heart difficulties 

Scott Whitney (04:54.654)
And people are living longer. So what that means is they're staying in their social housing for longer. So whereas someone with a disability may be in social housing previously, in adapted social housing previously for 30 years, they might now be in it for 50 years. So the houses 

Scott Whitney (05:23.38)
aren't becoming available as quick. So we've got a smaller pot and they're not becoming available as quick as they were before. 

Scott Whitney (05:33.324)
So science has helped us live longer and that's a brilliant, brilliant thing. But governments aren't building new properties that are available in social housing and at the same time are, I say wheelchair friendly, but... 

Scott Whitney (06:01.4)
We've got to think there's other disabilities other than wheelchair users because wheelchair users only equate for 8 % of people with disabilities. So we need to be thinking of people of short stature as well. 

Scott Whitney (06:19.094)
and people with other disabilities that may need adaptations in the property. So I'm looking at this and looking at this from my perspective as a wheelchair user. And I understand that's not everyone, but what we should be looking at doing is not just building these new tower blocks that have 

Scott Whitney (06:48.322)
high rent, we need to be building social housing, social housing that is accessible because a wider doorframe and social housing wouldn't be bad for someone that's non disabled. 

Scott Whitney (07:02.528)
Social housing with a wet room wouldn't be bad for someone who's non-disabled. So if our social housing is more accessible for everyone, there's going to be then more housing available for people like myself. 

Scott Whitney (07:25.1)
That's my little conversation about housing today. So I'm to go to going to go and listen to Alex as we finish off the show. But if you've got any subjects that you'd like me to talk about, please send me an email on the show notes. There is a link to fan mail and that will then come direct to me as well. So. 

Scott Whitney (07:54.488)
Feel free to send ideas and suggestions or topics to discuss across. But I'll leave you with Alex and Hayden from Happy Smiles. 

Hey, Scott. It's always wonderful to hear your voice. Hiya. Yeah, there's Hayden. So here it's me, Alex and Hayden. we are the co-founders of Happy Smiles Training. And we would love to tell you. 

Scott Whitney (08:24.014)
all about it. So we co founded Happy Smiles five and a half years ago, hadn't was it? We're disabled people's life training provider, over 90 % of our whole organization from our advisory boards of volunteers are all disabled people. We align ourselves with the social model of disability and believe people are disabled by society. And we go and deliver training based on that model and lots and lots of different topics from language. 

Scott Whitney (09:18.401)
to hate crime and more in schools, businesses, community groups, all the way from your local school through to global brands that we worked with last year like Levi's and more. So yeah, Hayden, we love it, don't we? You have to say that now because you're on recording. Anyway, shout out to you, Scott, and all the amazing people involved with All 4 Inclusion, you absolute legends. And I hope people enjoy the podcast.