Local woman Dee Hoey from Boharnabreena, south Dublin featured on RTE recently highlighting the absence of housing in Dublin for people with disabilities.
Dee says she had already experienced lockdown before Covid-19.
Before she turned 30, she had an active life.
She worked full time, went to the gym and played camogie.
Then, as a newly-wed 15 years ago, everything changed because of a brain tumour.
She is now in a wheelchair, cannot work and is dependent on others.
Dee and her husband have separated. While she is eligible for the Housing Assistance Programme, she can’t find anywhere to rent that is suitable for her needs.
She has been on the local authority list for four years.
In the meantime, Dee is living with her ex-husband’s parents. She said this is difficult, but she has nowhere else to go.
It was not feasible to move back to her parent’s home, where the bathroom is too small and there are stairs.
Thankfully, her parents-in-law had an extension on their house that can facilitate her, but Dee said all she can do is look out the window.
The house is in a rural location. There is no bus service, and a gravel driveway means Dee cannot bring her wheelchair outside.
The reason she spoke to RTÉ News is, she said, because she has tried everything else.
“It’s frustrating because I’ve got on to all the TDs and I’ve done all the letters and the emails and the phone calls, anything I can think of,” Dee explained.
She describes herself as independent but she wants to be free to use that independence.
Dee is not the only person trying to obtain wheelchair-suitable accommodation.
The Irish Wheelchair Association has launched a national campaign ‘Think Ahead Think Housing’ to tackle the shortage of social housing for people with disabilities across Ireland.
The campaign is working directly with Dublin county councils and local authorities nationwide, among others, to ensure people with disabilities across Ireland are included and represented in social housing planning and delivery.
Over 5,000 people with disabilities are currently waiting for social housing in Ireland. Irish Wheelchair Association believes this figure is an under-representation of the actual need.
A recent report has also revealed that 1,300 young and middle-aged people with physical disabilities have been forced to live in elderly nursing homes because of the lack of accessible social housing.
Think Ahead, Think Housing is encouraging disabled people to state their current and future social housing needs now, by applying to their local authority through its newly revised housing application form which was published last month.