Written evidence submitted by Shelter [DPH 036]

Executive Summary

• Shelter welcomes the opportunity to respond to this inquiry.
• Shelter exists to defend the right to a safe home and fight the devastating impact the housing emergency has on people and society. In 2021/22, we provided housing and homelessness advice to over 17,000 households through our emergency helpline and 15,500 households through our local hubs. Our online advice and support pages received 5.1 million visits.
• Disabled people are uniquely and disproportionately impacted by the housing emergency. Our research in 2021 found that 54% of people who had ‘a disability that limited them a lot’ were impacted by the housing emergency in some way.[1]
• Decades long failure to address our growing housing emergency and the needs of disabled people within the housing sector has left many disabled people without the safe, suitable and affordable housing that everyone should be able to expect. 
• Failed policies and politics are putting disabled people at risk of homelessness or having to live with unsafe conditions.
• Unsuitable and inaccessible housing and communal areas strip disabled people of their right to live in and navigate their homes and local areas independently. This can have limiting effects for them in other aspects of their lives, such as going to work or to school, visiting friends or participating in communal leisure activities. It also increases pressures on other services like health and social care.
• Disabled people are less likely to own their own home, and more likely live in the social rented sector than are non-disabled people. However, a growing proportion live in an expensive, often unsuitable and unsafe private rented sector.[2]
• Disabled people are also more likely to be out of work or work part time, and therefore in need of housing support to pay their housing costs.[3] Yet private rents have increased significantly beyond the support that is available from local housing allowance.
• Habinteg Housing Association estimates that 400,000 wheelchair users are living in unsuitable homes whilst 20,000 wheelchair users are on social housing waiting lists, due to a dire lack of accessible homes.[4]
• Suitable housing and support where needed for people with learning disabilities and autism is also not being delivered at the rates needed. Housing LIN estimate that there will be a shortfall of over 27,000 supported housing units by 2037, based on current delivery.[5]
• Shelter’s front-line services work to support disabled people to maintain and find suitable housing. But structural barriers make that job extremely difficult.

KEY RECOMMENDATIONS

1. Invest in a new generation of 90,000 social homes per year, including a significant proportion of both adaptable and adapted homes
2. Require local plans to include provisions to address homelessness and social housing waitlists, including specifically for adapted homes
3. Require developers to build onsite social rent homes and work with councils to understand the local need for adapted homes
4. Progress a robust Renters Reform Bill through parliament to scrap section 21 evictions and outlaw blanket bans on letting to households claiming benefits or with children
5. Restore local housing allowance to at least the 30th percentile and re-linked to the real cost of renting so that it covers at least the cheapest third of local homes. And consider whether the 30th percentile is sufficient to prevent homelessness for households including people with a disability.
6. Review the means test and intention to live in the property requirement for DFGs and ensure that its accessible to everyone that needs it.
7. Explore ways to tackle refusals to make adaptations, including by creating a legal requirement for landlords to support applications made to the Disabled Facilities Grant.
8. Include all the necessary information on the Private Rented Property Portal, including accessible information on rights and responsibilities regarding repairs and adaptations for disabled tenants.
9. Research the impact of rent in advance and guarantor asks and introduce limits on when and how these can be reasonably used to tackle exclusionary practices in the private rented sector which disproportionately impact disabled renters.
10. Provide local authorities with adequate, ring-fenced resource and capacity so that the rights of disabled tenants to can be proactively and effectively upheld.

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1. What can the Government do to ensure disabled residents across England and Wales have access to accessible and adaptable housing?

In 2021/2022 financial year, the Department for Work and Pensions’ Family Resource Survey showed that 16 million people had a disability in the United Kingdom.[6] This is nearly a quarter of the UK’s population. Further, Habinteg Housing Association estimates that 400,000 wheelchair users are living in unsuitable homes whilst 20,000 wheelchair users are on social housing waiting lists, due to a dire lack of accessible homes.[7]

Disabled people are less likely to own their own home, and more likely live in the social rented sector than are non-disabled people. A growing proportion live in an expensive, often unsuitable and unsafe private rented sector.[8] Disabled people are also more likely to be out of work or work part time.[9] Given also the many of the challenges discussed below with securing accessible affordable housing or adaptations in the private rented sector, disabled people are more likely to require low-cost rentals such as social rented homes.

The only way the Government can ensure it is meeting the housing needs of disabled persons now and in the future is to commit and invest in a mass scale building program of 90k social rent homes a year. The Government not only needs to invest in a new social homes program, but it needs to guarantee that adapted homes are included in that program. While Shelter understands that the Government intends on requiring new builds to be adaptable, this is simply not good enough given the current shortage in already adapted homes and the increase of persons reporting disabled. Therefore, Shelter strongly urges that in addition to requiring new homes to be adaptable, which will take time between build and adapting those homes, that the Government strongly considers a portion of new builds to be adapted. Those adapted units need to reflect true housing needs for persons with disabilities and their families, including tenure, size and structure.

Social rent homes bring security and stability for tenants. It is the responsibility of the Government to ensure housing policies, strategies and guidance, nationally and locally, are proactive in addressing the housing emergency with the right types of home that meets current needs and looks to future trends. Given the increase of persons reporting a disability, national and local plans, and funding programs need to require developers and strategic partners to include onsite adapted social rent units in their bids and plans.

Recommendations:

• The Government needs to invest in a mass scale building program of 90k social rent homes a year, which the housing sector agrees will address homelessness and social housing waitlists. This could identify the number of adapted homes needed locally.
• Developers should be required to build onsite social rent homes and work with Local Authorities to understand the number of adapted social homes that are needed, and other specific housing needs for those who are visually impaired, neurodiverse and have limited mobility.

2. Does the National Planning Policy Framework ensure the Equality Act 2010 is complied with when building housing?

The National Planning Policy Framework is flawed in addressing true housing need on a local level and therefore, as a national framework, is also flawed at implementing a planning system that delivers the homes that are needed in an equitable way. Connected to that is how local housing need is calculated and how local plans are currently not required to plan for specific provisions (social rent) to address social housing waitlists. In that vein, it means the NPPF does not do enough for disabled persons and their housing needs, and the knock-on effect demonstrates that while the NPPF and housing strategies, are compliant in the letter of the Equality Act 2010, it is the actual implementation and practical that should be assessed for equality.

Recommendation:

• Require local plans to include provisions to address homelessness and social housing waitlists, including specifically for adapted homes

3. Since the Government consultation ‘Raising accessibility standards for new homes’ (July 2022), what has been done to improve housing provisions for disabled residents in England? And has it been sufficient?

4. What role should the Government, Local Authorities and developers have for ensuring the delivery of suitable housing for disabled people?

As mentioned in Shelter’s responses to questions 1 and 2, the primary focus of housing policy for the Government and Local Authorities should be prioritising social rent homes and increasing the number of new builds at scale to reach 90k social rent homes a year, and requiring that the number of adapted units needed are part of their national and local policies.

For Government, this means a serious commitment and investment of grant funding and issuing national regulations and guidelines that set meaningful requirements for Local Authorities and developers to follow. This includes changes to how councils assess local housing need and requiring local plans to capture true housing need by setting out plans to provide provisions to address homelessness and social housing waitlists. By providing the right laws and regulations, Local Authorities are then guided and steered effectively when developing plans and when negotiating with developers during the planning process.

For Local Authorities, their responsibility should develop local plans that are updated every 5 years, and clearly set provisions that will consider social housing waitlist numbers in their housing strategies. By looking to their social housing waitlists and temporary accommodation placements, Local Authorities will then capture the types of social rent homes that are needed, and this will include the number of adapted homes that individuals and families need. Being steered by these metrics will give local councils and planning authorities the tools they need to properly consider planning permissions.

Developers and housing associations must also do their fair share to meet communities’ true housing needs. Developers should take into account the need for accessible social rent homes by working with Local Authorities to understand the needs of those on housing waitlists and the types of adapted homes.

5. Does the Disabled Facilities Grant fully support housing adaptations?

While the government has provided one off funding commitments in recent years, improvements to the Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG) are needed if they are to effectively support housing adaptations.

Limits to eligibility for tenant or homeowner (as opposed to landlord) applications, which uses a method assessing an individual’s ability to pay back loans, impacts disabled renters’ ability to get adaptations made. Some tenants may be able to shoulder the costs of adjustments, but for those are unable to and are not eligible for support or with reduced support, they shouldn’t be left the impossible choice of either debt or unsafe housing. Furthermore, the expectation to intend to remain in the property (usually for five years) unnecessarily deters applicants. While the policy only requires an “intention” to remain, tenants are often deterred because they are not confident their circumstances will not change. Their home may be unsuitable in other ways meaning tenants might prefer another home, but still require adaptation to make them safe.

Delays to responses and essential supporting activities, such as Occupational Health Assessments, also hamper the use of DFGs. Shelter’s services also see significant delays to getting works done and unsuitable or poor works, because of a lack of clarity over responsibility or poor service from contractors. This is particularly impactful in the private rented sector where disabled renters can be forced to move out before assessments or adaptations can be made, putting them back to square one.

However, the key challenge Shelter would like to highlight is refusals to make adaptations by landlords. This is particularly problematic in the private rented sector. 18.8% of disabled people live in the private rented sector yet only 8% of DFG funding was due to be spent on adaptations in private sector homes in 2019-20.[10]

While landlord awareness and understanding of the needs of their tenants, the extent or impact of the adaptation requested or about how the grant works are key barriers, there is also a significant lack of incentives and expectations for landlords to take requests seriously.

Adaptations are essential to ensuring that disabled renters’ homes are safe for them to live in, just as fixing hazardous disrepair is. Shelter urges the government to guarantee the safety, mobility and independence of disabled tenants by making requests for adjustments synonymous with the need to fix disrepair. This includes for people with neurodiverse and mental health conditions where reasonable adjustments may be needed to ensure homes are safe and suitable. Where adaptations are refused, tenants should be entitled to free legal support to challenge decisions.

However, without tackling insecurity in the private renting, disabled renters will not feel confident and able to request repairs and adaptations, and to challenge landlord refusals because of the risk of being hit with a section 21 eviction notice. This fear of eviction is not unfounded. 1 in 5 (21%) of disabled private renters said that they’d been threatened with eviction because they’d asked for a problem in their home to be dealt with that was not their responsibility.[11]

The experience of one of our clients, Stephen, illustrates how refusals to make disability adjustments not only pushes people into homelessness, but leaves them at the mercy of discriminatory landlords and letting agents. 

Stephen is a disabled man who has used a wheelchair since a road traffic accident in December 2016. His family became homeless in February 2018 after they asked their private landlord to make some disability adaptations to their home. The landlord responded by serving the family with a Section 21 ‘no-fault’ eviction notice. Stephen and his family were forced to sleep in his car, and when they were able to find a suitable property, were turned away the estate agent because they received housing benefit.

The government must address these structural barriers preventing effective distribution of the Disabled Facilities Grant.

Recommendations:

• Progress the Renters Reform Bill through parliament to scrap section 21 evictions and ensure that any loopholes that enables landlords to retaliatory evict tenants are closed.
• The government should review the means test and intention to live in the property requirement for DFGs and ensure that its accessible to everyone that needs it.
• The government should explore ways to tackle refusals to make adaptations, including by creating a legal requirement for landlords (private and social) to support applications made to the Disabled Facilities Grant (DFG). Expand legal aid eligibility to challenges against landlord and grant application refusals

6. How can the Government ensure it provides sufficient provisions to support disabled residents who do not live in new build homes?

See responses to questions 5 and 7.

7. What can the Government do to support disabled tenants in the private rented sector?

Increase security

The private rented sector in England is characterised by insecurity, poor conditions and high rents. These factors disproportionately and uniquely impact disabled people who are increasingly reliant on the sector.

Section 21 evictions allow private landlords to evict tenants with just two months’ notice, with no requirement to give a reason.

The impacts of section 21 evictions are significant. Unexpected, short notice moves put tenants at risk of homelessness. Shelter’s own research has found that 39% of disabled renters took longer than 2 months to find a new home the last time they moved.[12]

With a severe lack of suitable social and supported housing, disabled tenants facing eviction are being forced to live in often unsuitable, unsafe temporary accommodation or being exposed to the private rental market where they often face discrimination, high costs, and a lack of support. Shelter’s research into the cost-of-living crisis in 2023 found that 78% of disabled private renters said that they would struggle to find somewhere suitable for them and/or their family if they were evicted.[13]

Even where renters aren’t being evicted, insecurity impacts them greatly. 50% of disabled renters said that worrying about being evicted has negatively affected their mental or physical health, compared with 29% of renters without a limiting disability.[14]

It also prevents them from enforcing their rights. Shelter’s research found that 25% of renters have forgone complaining about disrepair in their home because of a fear of facing a retaliatory eviction. This research also found that those who had complained about disrepair in the home, were more than twice as likely to be served a section 21 notice than those that hadn’t complained.[15] For disabled renters this could mean forgoing vital adaptations needed to make their homes safe.

The Renters Reform Bill promises to scrap section 21 evictions. Shelter welcomes the bill, but believes that it needs improvements if it is to provide greater security.

Recommendations:

• Progress a robust Renters Reform Bill through parliament, increase protections for renters against frequent, short notice evictions and ensure that all loopholes that enable landlords to abuse section 8 eviction grounds are closed. 

Improve conditions

14% of homes in the private rented sector have a HHSRS Category 1 hazard.[16] For disabled people these hazards pose a threat to the health, their independence and their lives.

The Renters Reform Bill is a huge opportunity to address poor conditions in the rental sector. Scrapping unfair section 21 evictions is the cornerstone of the bill and if done effectively should significantly improve renters’, disabled and non-disabled alike, and local authorities’ abilities to enforce tenant rights.

But there are other measures needed to improve conditions and landlord practice within and in conjunction with the Renters Reform Bill. 

The Renters (Reform) Bill sets out plans to introduce a property portal. If designed well, this will help local authorities crack down on criminal landlords and make it easier for good landlords keep up to date with the latest regulations and their obligations. The portal should detail whether homes are in a good state of repair and contain information about local authority enforcement action enabling councils to crackdown on poor housing conditions and illegal practice. The portal is also an opportunity to greatly improve awareness of rights and responsibilities amongst landlords and tenants by providing information in an accessible way, particularly with regards to disabilities, adaptations and adjustments.

The government has also committed to establishing a Private Rented Ombudsman, as well as extending the Decent Homes Standard to the private rented sector. Shelter welcomes these proposals however, without ensuring that they are adequately funded new regulations will not be properly enforced by local authorities, who currently lack the resources and staffing to enforce existing legislation effectively.

Recommendations:

• Include all the necessary information on the Private Rented Property Portal, including accessible information on rights and responsibilities regarding repairs and adaptations for disabled tenants.
• Provide local authorities with adequate, ring-fenced resource and capacity to crack down on bad practice in the private rented sector.

Tackle discrimination

The Renters Reform Bill is also a vital opportunity to tackle the widespread discrimination disabled renters disproportionately face. While half (51%) of private renting households claiming housing benefits include someone with a disability, 52% of landlords said in a Shelter survey that they do not or prefer not to let to people claiming benefits.[17]

The government has promised to outlaw blanket bans on letting to households claiming benefits, a practice that has already be found to be indirectly discriminatory under the Equalities Act 2010.

Shelter supports this change, however, without further action disabled renters will continue to face exclusion. Government should consider other strategies used by landlords and agents to deny tenancies to lower income applicants and those claiming benefits. Encouraging “bidding wars”, requesting multiple months’ rent in advance or a guarantor, are all examples of methods by which prospective tenants are prevented from securing housing that they could otherwise afford.

Shelter’s research found that 12% of disabled private renters had not been able rent a home they wanted to in the last 5 years because they couldn’t afford the rent in advance, and 7% because other tenants had offered more rent in advance than was being asked for and 6% because they needed a guarantor and didn’t have one at all.[18]

In Shelter’s experience, renters claiming benefits are more likely to face guarantor requests or multiple months’ rent in advance as ‘additional assurances’, again disproportionately impacting disabled people.[19]

Recommendations:

• Progress the Renters Reform Bill, and effectively prohibit bans on letting to renters claiming housing benefits
• Research the impact of rent in advance and guarantor asks and introduce limits on when and how these can be reasonably used.
• Make landlord insurance compulsory, guaranteeing some level of protection against missed payments without further disadvantaging those on low incomes. 

Unfreeze and restore local housing allowance

The local housing allowance (LHA) has been frozen since March 2020, based on rents in 2018-19 – since then, rents have risen by their fastest ever record rate.

Disabled people are disproportionately likely to need housing benefits. Half (51%) of private renting households (equivalent to over 800,000) claiming housing benefit or the housing element of universal credit include someone with a disability. This compares with 3 in 10 (29%) of all private renting households.17

In 2011, LHA was cut from covering average (50th percentile) local rents to the bottom 30%. Since then, repeated freezes or below-inflation increases have broken the link between LHA and the real cost of renting. Rents are now at their highest levels since records began while LHA has been frozen for more than three years based on pre-pandemic rent levels.5

With an extreme shortage of social rented homes, the consequence has been a rise in homelessness, with the number of households who are homeless and living in temporary accommodation more than doubling since 2010.6

The lack of affordable homes in the private rented sector available to all housing benefit claimants is intensified for families with disabilities who may be even more restricted in terms of the type or location of homes that will fit their requirements.

More than half of private renters in receipt of housing benefits have a shortfall to the cost of their rent. On average, households must make up £151 per month. And the particular housing needs of people with disabilities are not explicitly taken into account in the list of costs associated with Personal Independence Payment (PIP)16 or reflected in Disability Living Allowance or Carers’ Allowance for families with disabled children. Households in receipt of these benefits should not be expected to use them to top up shortfalls to their housing costs.

There has been a dramatic reduction in the number of advertised homes within LHA limits, so that now just 5% of advertised private rents are affordable to people receiving housing benefit. For households with disabilities, this makes it incredibly unlikely that they will be able to find an affordable and accessible new home.

The result is disproportionately rising homelessness for disabled people. The most recent statistics showed that over the past year there has been a 11% increase in the number of households including people with physical ill health or disabilities who are owed a homelessness duty by their local authority. For households with learning disabilities there has been a 12% increase and with mental health difficulties there has been a 6% increase. This compares to a 4% rise amongst households with no support needs.[20]

Shelter works with many clients with disabilities who are facing homelessness due to the acute lack of affordable and appropriate privately rented homes within the LHA rates.

Our Merseyside hub supported Gareth and his 11-year-old son Callum. They both have disabilities – Gareth is unable to work as a result of his disability and relies on Universal Credit to support his family. He came to Shelter for advice after he was told the rent for their home would be increasing by £50 a month. Gareth was already topping up a shortfall to his rent with money from his disability benefits, but this increase would leave him with a completely unmanageable £81 a month gap between rent and the applicable LHA rate. When Gareth told his landlord he couldn’t afford the rent increase, he was served with a section 21 eviction notice. With help from our advisors, he started to look for a new privately rented home. Gareth and Callum need to stay in their local area so they can be close to Gareth’s adult sons who provide care and support to them and to make sure that Callum can keep attending his school. It was impossible to find a suitable new privately rented home and they have been unsuccessful in bidding for social homes.

Local housing allowance should always reflect the real cost of renting and should at least cover the 30th percentile of rents, which is the last stated intention of the policy. However, due to the more restricted choice available to households with disabilities, we urge the Department for Work and Pensions to consider whether returning LHA to average rents (the 50th percentile) would be more effective in preventing homelessness especially for disabled people.

Recommendations:

• Local housing allowance should be restored to at least the 30th percentile and re-linked to the real cost of renting so that it covers at least the cheapest third of local homes
• The government should review the level at which LHA is set with particular regard for whether the thirtieth percentile of local rents is sufficient to allow households including people with disabilities to afford suitable homes which meet their needs.

September 2023

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