Housing Campaigns All too often when it comes to leaving a Spinal Injury Centre, people find that suitable housing isn't available. Instead, they can end up staying in hospital longer than necessary, or being discharged to somewhere that simply isn’t appropriate.This can mean anything from returning to a house where they will have to wash in the kitchen because the bathroom is inaccessible, to only being able to leave the property when friends or family are around to carry them out to the pavement outside. Getting the accessible homes we need We know how detrimental inaccessible housing is to the lives of people with spinal cord injury. Around 20% of people with Spinal Cord Injury are forced into residential homes, away from their friends and family, without the essential facilities for independent living, because wheelchair accessible homes aren’t available in their area. We also know that when they are discharged into their own inaccessible homes without adaptations, their quality of life deteriorates, family life breaks down and physical and mental health declines. But up and down the country disabled people are having to wait years for a suitable wheelchair accessible home. Successive Freedom of Information Investigations by Aspire have revealed that many have to wait up to five years, but in a significant number of areas , waiting times run into decades and in a few cases, over 100 years. This will only persist and get worse unless something is done to ensure that many more new wheelchair accessible homes are built. We are therefore campaigning for the government to set a requirement in the Building regulations for all new homes to be built to higher accessibility standards, including 10% to be wheelchair accessible. Our Housing campaigns: The two-speed housing system Addressing the hidden housing crisis; a parliamentary round table Research reveals shocking waiting times for wheelchair accessible social housing The impact of housing spinal injured people in inaccessible housing The impact on spinal cord injured people living in nursing homes Campaigns blog Campaigns How we help Manage Cookie Preferences