Every day, Emma Paul has to carry her severely disabled son Leo up the stairs to go to the bathroom as he can’t climb them himself.
He’s only five-years-old now, but as he gets older and bigger, his mum fears he’ll become too heavy that they could both tumble down the narrow staircase.
The sheer difficulty of moving him around means Leo now sleeps in a medical bed in the dining room, which is not ideal for Emma, who has to test his blood through the night.
Leo suffers from an incredibly rare genetic condition called KPTN (kaptin, actin-binding protein) Syndrome. He’s one of 40 in the world to have it and one of only three in the UK.
It affects his mobility, development, muscle tone and eyesight problems. The schoolboy is non-verbal, has to be fed via a tube and, at his worst, has up to 70 seizures a day.
Many might assume that a single mum whose son suffers from such a condition would be first in line for good quality council home that meets their needs.
But Emma has been living in the same private flat with her two boys for 12 years and has been warned she could be waiting 10 years for social housing.
She’s reluctant to leave the southside of Liverpool, as it’s close to a specialist school for visually impaired children attended by Leo.
But last summer, her landlord revealed he wanted to sell the two-bed terrace she has lived in for the past 12 years.
With hardly any suitable private or social housing options coming her way, Emma’s situation is becoming increasingly desperate.
Emma’s story will be one of many – with 280,000 social rented homes in England sold off between 2021 and 2020, according to the Chartered Institute of Housing.
Out of those, 121,000 were sold off under the Right-to-Buy scheme introduced under Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government.
Meanwhile 116,000 were converted to higher ‘affordable’ rents, while the rest were demolished.
Separate figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the number of households in the UK’s private rented sector increased from 2.8million in 2007 to 4.5million.
With more than a million households in England stuck on a social hosing waiting list and fewer than 7,000 social homes built last year – the crisis gripping the country is unlikely to vanish any time soon.
The Covid-19 pandemic has made things worse, says Emma, as more and more people who would otherwise be moving out of Liverpool are sitting tight for now.
Practically every week, the 42-year-old mum-of-two enters a property pool in which people have a chance to view Housing Association properties.
‘Very few things are coming up. I’ve only ever in four years, despite visiting every single week came within the top 10 when you get to view one thing, one thing only,’ she tells Metro.co.uk.
‘When they fished a little further about the nature of my son’s disability and they’d seen he’s a wheelchair user, they said they couldn’t let this out to me because it has a step to the front door and it has stairs up to the bedroom.
‘I said “why can’t pay you in a secure £400 a month tenancy? Why can’t I pay you that for the privilege of carrying my son up a flight of stairs instead of under a private landlord? It’s not ideal but it’s a hell of a lot better than where I am now.
‘The bureaucracy has got crazy to the point where it’s actually quite senseless. They deemed it as a property they couldn’t make adaptations to, for example they’ve said the council will only put a stair lift in for a child who could operate it themselves – Leo is severely learning disabled so he wouldn’t be able to operate that himself.
‘This is the kind of thing that has you literally tearing your hair out.’
‘Here I am, two years later, carrying him up a set of much more unsafe stairs – this other one was much shorter and shallower. It drives you absolutely mental.
‘If you limit me to just a three bed ground floor flat or a three bed bungalow – they’re rarer than hen’s teeth, I’d be here till kingdom come.’
Then there’s Access Liverpool – a dedicated council housing register for disabled people, but Emma hasn’t had much luck with them either since registering with them in 2017.
‘They did everything in their power to dissuade me,’ she said.
‘I remember the guy saying “you will be quicker getting a place on the property pool, if you’re looking for something in the southend of Liverpool, you’ll be waiting at least 10 years”, here I am four years later still waiting,’
‘The desperation is so great I need to get out of here for any house ‘I’m going after any house that’s safer than what I’m currently in.’
Emma, who works part-time in a bookshop, is still looking for privately rented accommodation, but with offers of up to £1,000 a month, it won’t be easy for her.
‘A few years ago I used to trawl through Rightmove and Zoopla and there’d be seven to 10 pages on average. Now when I go through you don’t fill one page.
‘What comes up I call about straight away. I check every day – like I say anything’s better than what I have – I’m told “we’ve had 30 calls within the hour, we’re not taking any more names”,’ she said.
Emma says she nearly landed a more suitable property one for £1,000 a month but was outbid at the last minute by a couple from down south by just £50.
Although she can’t prove it, Emma worries she is discriminated against as a single parent.
‘They’ll think two wages are better than one and that’ a complete fallacy because so many people – especially young people – are in such precarious jobs and have bad debts.
‘My child’s benefits are set in stone for life, he’d not going to suddenly not be severely disabled, so my circumstances are far more stable, I can tell you what I’ll be earning without a shadow of a doubt, in 10 years in 20 years, I know what I have coming in for sure.’
Emma is currently receiving support from Housing Charity Shelter. Its chief executive Polly Neate said: ‘Every day we see the impact of just not having enough social homes; from rising homelessness to people being pushed into grossly expensive and unstable private rentals that are often poor-quality and where you can be evicted just for complaining.
‘Despite the clear and urgent need for decent and secure social housing, we are still losing far more social homes than we build every year.
‘Fewer than 7,000 new social homes were built last year, but over three times as many homes were lost through sales and demolitions.
‘Our social housing stock is literally slipping away, while more than a million households are stuck on social housing waiting lists in England.
‘The government and the new Housing Secretary need to act quickly to turn this situation around. A few thousand social homes a year won’t cut it, we need serious investment to build 90,000 good quality, green social homes a year, which would provide people on low incomes with a safe and secure home they can actually afford.’
Chris Bailey, campaigns manager for Action on Empty Homes, says that every year we see a net loss of about 20,000 social homes.
He says: ‘The position of the government in recent years has been very much focused on, as they see it, supporting home ownership.
‘They’ve invested tens of billions in help to buy. Essentially the Government has taken an equity stake in the housing market, they took a 20% stake in people’s homes.
‘In that sense the government has literally bought into high house prices, and
that investment works well for the government if house prices keep going up.
‘But of course rising house prices don’t work so well for the people who can’t
afford to get onto the housing ladder.
‘They certainly don’t work well for people who are not able to get affordable
rented housing.
‘The reality is, at least 40% of the population who are not going to buy a home during their lifetime, and those people are going to be dependent on rented
accommodation.
‘There are now broadly speaking around twice as many people renting in the
private market as there were 10 or 15 years ago.
‘That essentially means more of those people are renting housing that doesn’t
have any rent controls in place.
‘The slightly ridiculous thing is we’re supporting that with housing benefits. There
are an enormous number of people now who are working who we’re supporting
with housing benefit because of high housing costs, and that doesn’t make much
sense.
‘It would be much more sensible if they had more affordable accommodation so
we didn’t have to do that.’
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