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16 May 2018
Did you know that a high proportion of social housing tenants are disabled or in poor health? That information is unfortunately correct, disabled people are at least twice as likely as non-disabled people to make up numbers of social housing tenants. About 48.5% of all rented households in the social sector have at least one person whose ill health limits their activities, much higher than in other property tenures. (Percentage of households with at least one person with a limiting long-term illness or disability by tenure)
One huge implicating factor within this area is that people with some degree of visual impairment increases with age and, as we mentioned in our previous blog nearly half of all social housing tenants in the rented sector are over the age of 55. 1 in 7 people over 65 live with some degree of visual impairment, within 10 years around 1 in 7 of the ageing majority of tenants will also have sight problems whereby special adaptations will have to be made to their social housing conditions.
Furthermore, local authority waiting lists show that 23,886 wheelchair users are in urgent need of wheelchair accessible social or affordable housing in England. With the numbers of older people set to rise, so does the risk of disability or illness and special adaptations will have to be made to these people’s homes.
How do we tackle these challenges? At AKW we like flexible solutions and our bathroom for life plans are a value-for-money solution with minimal added costs. The speed and efficiency with which adaptations are provided can make the difference between older people staying in the comfort and security of their own homes or being forced into residential care. You can see our bathroom for life plans here. Or alternatively you can see all the main challenges faced by social housing and our proposed solutions, by requesting our Whitepaper.
