Jim Gleeson

Solution to Soho problem appears to be to pedestrianise all the surrounding areas.

A chart showing the proportion of households that contain an adult with different types of impairment, by tenure group. Social rented housing tends to have the highest proportion of adults with impairments, then owner-occupied housing, then private-rented housing. This effect is particularly pronounced for adults with mobility impairments.

Last week we published a research note by @geographyjim.bsky.social and colleagues on housing for disabled Londoners.

Worth a read - it covers what we know about the ability of London's housing stock to meet disabled Londoners' needs:

data.london.gov.uk/housing/rese...

The author of:
Study of comprehensive transportation plan in Kurdistan (1988)
Assessment of subway for passengers transportation (A case study of Tehran) (1997) may have passed.

The report doesn't make policy recommendations but here is one thought to leave you with: homes for sale or rent are now legally required to have an Energy Performance Certificate, so is there a case for requiring them to also describe their 'Accessibility Performance' for disabled people?

Barriers at Home: Housing crisis for Deaf and Disabled Londoners Our new report uncovers the reality of inaccessible and unaffordable housing

The report also benefitted from very helpful discussions with @inclusionlondon.bsky.social and other members of the London Housing Panel. Our quantitative findings are complemented by Inclusion London's previous qualitative research www.inclusionlondon.org.uk/services-and...

This has been a long thread but there's a lot more in the full report so please take a look! It was also a team effort - huge thanks to my co-author Rohan Ranaweera, and to GLA colleagues for finalising and publishing the report while I am on parental leave.

Finally, the report is quite focused on issues facing disabled people with mobility-related impairments. That reflects the fact that our main data sources tend to focus on physical accessibility and wheelchair use. So we need more research into housing issues facing people with other impairments.

Chart showing the main reason for moving as a share of all households who moved house within the last three years in London, based on pooled English Housing Survey data for 2013 to 2022.

When households with disabled members do move, it is less likely to have been for 'positive' reasons (such as wanting a bigger place) & more likely to have been for negative reasons like their previous home being unsuitable or in poor condition, or not being able to afford their housing costs

According to the English Housing Survey, around 9% of all London households say they intend to move house in the next six months, compared to around 6.4% of all households across the rest of England. Households with disabled members are less likely, across England, to say they intend to move; but there is no significant difference in London. The proportion of London households with a disabled person, that have actually moved, is lower than the proportion who say they expect to – even when measured over an entire year (rather than six months). Around 6.3% of these households said they had moved in the last year, compared to around 10.7% of other households. Households in the rest of England without any disabled members were also more likely than those with disabled members to have moved in the last year.

Another interesting finding is that while households with disabled members are just as likely as other households in London to say they expect to move house, they are less likely to have actually moved recently.

Accessibility is unsurprisingly a big issue for Londoners who use a wheelchair at home, with 66% saying they find it difficult to manoeuvre their wheelchair around their home. And 42% of wheelchair users in London said they didn't have a place set aside at home to keep their wheelchair.

It is important to stress that while the ‘visitable’ standard is well established and straightforward to measure, a home that meets the standard may still not provide the other accessibility features a disabled household might need to live there. In an earlier analysis carried out on behalf of the government, the Building Research Establishment proposed that, to be considered ‘accessible and adaptable’, homes should satisfy 10 criteria. These include the four criteria listed at 9.6, above, plus other features such as a shower and a bedroom or bedspace on the ground floor; and suitable parking space on the dwelling plot. It also found that, across England, around half of homes built before 1919 could not even be made ‘visitable’, due to a lack of space for an access ramp; and only 21% of flats above ground floor level had lift access. Flats in London are likely to

have a higher proportion of lift access, as denser developments mean that buildings of six or more storeys are more prevalent. Its analysis found that only around 110,000 homes in 2007 met all 10 criteria – although around 2 million households needed accessible and adaptable homes. A far smaller proportion of the housing stock in 2007 met a more demanding ‘accessible and adaptable’ standard. The Building Research Establishment’s analysis has not been replicated here. However, further analysis of the English Housing Survey data shows the limits of the ‘visitable’ standard. For example: • Only 12% of homes that meet all four ‘visitable’ criteria also have a bathroom that has been adapted for disabled use. • 69.2% of homes in London have a toilet at entrance level, but only 19.5% have one that is wheelchair-accessible. • Almost a third of the homes in London with ‘level access’ are on an upper floor with no lift access. • Only a tiny proportion of homes in London (less than 1%) are fully ‘visitable’ with have accessible bathrooms, accessible kitchens and (if they are on an upper floor) adequate lift access.

The improvement in basic 'visitability' is good news, but is far from the whole story. A fully accessible home requires additional features (e.g. adequate lift provision and accessible kitchens and bathrooms) which are still much rarer. We estimate that <1% of homes in London have all these features

Chart shows the proportion of dwellings in England with each of four visitability features by the year of construction, based on pooled English Housing Survey data for 2012 to 2020.

Looking back over decades of construction (using pooled English Housing Survey data for the whole country), there was a dramatic improvement in the 'visitability' of new homes around the turn of the millennium, due to changes in building regulations.

Based on single years of data from the English Housing Survey, around 16.7% of homes in London in 2022 were fully visitable because they have all four features. This figure has roughly doubled since 2012, and compares to a figure of around 11.6% in the rest of England. Based on data from 2018 to 2022, 19% of social homes in London are visitable. This is the highest proportion amongst tenures, followed by 17% of privately rented homes. Owner-occupied homes have the lowest proportion, at 9%. Chart shows the proportion of homes that are fully 'visitable' in London and the rest of England, based on single years of English Housing Survey data from 2010 to 2022.

Only 17% of homes in London meet this basic 'visitability' standard, but in the rest of England the figure is even lower at 12%. These figures have increased over the last decade, almost entirely due to new construction rather than improvements to existing homes.

There are four basic accessibility features defined in the English Housing Survey as necessary to make a dwelling ‘visitable’ by people with mobility difficulties. These are: • level access (no steps between the gate/pavement and the front door of the house or block of flats) • a flush threshold, with no obstruction higher than 15mm • sufficiently wide doors and circulation space • a toilet at entrance level.

The other key factor is accessibility: how easy or hard is it for disabled people to get into, move around in and use their homes? The details matter here: for example, one basic measure of whether homes are 'visitable' relies on four criteria to do with getting through doors and using the loo.

The English Housing Survey asks several questions to gauge respondents’ ability to keep up with their housing costs. Among homeowners with a mortgage, around 2.4% of households in London with a disabled person said they were in arrears on their mortgage payments; this is compared to less than 1% of London mortgage-paying households without a disabled person. These figures are based on pooling 10 years of English Housing Survey data (2013-22) to account for small samples in individual years. 8.9 However, mortgage-payment difficulties don’t only affect households in arrears. Again, looking over the last decade of English Housing Survey responses, around 10.3% of households in London that include a disabled person said they found it difficult to keep up with their mortgage payments. This is a similar rate to their counterparts in the rest of England; but higher than the approximately 7% of households in London that do not include a disabled person. Chart shows the proportion of households who are in arrears on mortgage payments in London and the Rest of England, based on pooled English Housing Survey data for 2013 to 2022

Reported rates of arrears are higher among renting households. In London, around 14.6% of social-housing households with a disabled person said they were in arrears. This is compared to about 11.2% of social-housing households without a disabled person. Among London households in privately rented housing, the proportion of those in arrears was the same for with those with a disabled person as those without: both were 5%. As with mortgage payments, the proportion of households who find it difficult to keep up with their rent is higher than those who report being in arrears. In London, around 52.7% of private renting households with a disabled person reported finding it difficult to pay their rent; for social renting households, this figure is 44.6%. This is compared to 34.6% of London’s private renting households, and 36.0% of social renting households, that did not include a disabled person. Chart shows the porportion of renting households who are not up to date with their rent in London and the rest of England, by disability status, based on pooled English Housing Survey data for 2013 to 2022.

Households with disabled members are more likely to say that they are in arrears on their housing payments or that keeping up with payments is a struggle. Again, these indicators of affordability problems are worse in London than in the rest of England.

The higher housing cost burden for disabled people comes despite them being more likely to live in social housing. Disaggregating the results by tenure reveals that London households with a disabled person spend more of their incomes on housing costs than other households, in both social housing and private rented housing. However, there is no significant difference among homeowners (perhaps because older homeowners are both more likely to be disabled and to have lower mortgage costs). Chart shows the median affordability ratio by tenure and household disability status in London, based on English Housing Survey data for 2018-2022

Affordability is worse for disabled households in both social and private renting. Some of this is due to having lower average incomes - and the gap would be larger still if households with disabled members weren't more likely to be receiving Housing Benefit.

Across the UK, the gap in disposable household income (including disability benefits) between adults with and without a disability was 30% in 2020-21; this rises to around 44% if disability benefits are excluded. Households with a disabled person often face additional costs – such as specialist equipment, home adaptations, increased transport costs, and medical care. As another example, energy makes up a larger proportion of spending for disabled people, as they need more heating to stay warm (if they lack mobility), and to charge specialist equipment. This combination of lower disposable income and higher essential costs means that households with a disabled person have significantly less income available to meet necessary disability-related needs and adaptations. Chart shows the median affordability ratio by household disability status, in London and the rest of England, based on English Housing Survey data for 2018-2022

One key factor is affordability: households with a disabled person spend a higher share of their income on housing costs, with a particularly large gap in London. This comparison also does not capture any additional costs disabled people face relating to adaptations, equipment or energy bills.

According to the English Housing Survey, 12.9% of households in London that contain at least one disabled member live in homes that fall below the government’s official Decent Homes Standard, 32 compared to 16.3% of households that do not contain any disabled members. Part of this difference is driven by the fact that disabled Londoners are more likely than other Londoners to live in social housing (the tenure with the smallest share of non-decent homes) and less likely to live in private rented housing (the tenure with the largest share). 9.3 But another factor is that, even when looking only at social housing, households in London with at least one disabled person are less likely to be living in homes below the standard (see chart below). This pattern may be because households with a disabled person are more likely to move into accessible homes; and these are more likely to be recently built, and therefore meet the Decent Homes Standard. Chart shows the proportion of homes below the Decent Homes Standard in London by tenure and whether the household includes a disabled member, based on English Housing Survey data for 2015 to 2019.

And it's probably not the quality of the home as measured by the Decent Homes Standard. Because disabled people are more likely to live in social housing and in newly built housing, slightly fewer of them live in homes that fail to meet the standard.

Chart shows the proportion of usual residents living in overcrowded homes by disability status and tenure in London in 2021, based on Census data

What's driving disabled Londoners' higher rates of dissatisfaction with their homes? It's probably not overcrowding, as households where nobody has a disability are more likely to be overcrowded (partly due to differences in age profiles and household sizes).

Chart shows the detailed tenure split of population by disability, London and rest of England 2021

The higher rate of dissatisfaction in social housing is important because disabled people, particularly those in London, are more likely to live in social housing than non-disabled people.

Chart shows the proportion of households who are dissatisfied with their housing by tenure and whether they include any disabled members, in London and the rest of England, using pooled data from 2018/19 to 2022/23

Breaking this down by tenure, disabled social housing tenants have the highest rates of housing dissatisfaction - but the gap between disabled and non-disabled households is highest in the private rented sector.

According to data from the English Housing Survey, 16.9% of London households with disabled members say they are dissatisfied with their current accommodation. This is compared to 9.2% of households with disabled members in the rest of England. In both London and the rest of England, households with disabled members are more than twice as likely as those without disabled members to say they are dissatisfied with their accommodation. However, for both groups, the rate of dissatisfaction is far higher in London than in the rest of the country. Chart shows the proportion of households who are dissatisfied with their housing by whether or note they include any disabled members.

Disabled people are more unhappy with their housing. Both in London and the rest of England, they are more than twice as likely as other households to be dissatisfied with their homes.

New research! An analysis of the housing circumstances of disabled Londoners, which finds that most of London's homes are either financially or physically inaccessible to disabled Londoners - long thread of findings follows ... data.london.gov.uk/housing/rese...

You can get a breakdown using the Census table builder www.ons.gov.uk/datasets/cre..., according to which 87% of Muslim people in the constituency speak English well / as their main language

One in six small multi-family buildings in the West Village is now a huge single-family home, part of a mansion wave sweeping over NYC

www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

There's also a difference between these short-term vacancy chains and the longer-term filtering of homes into cheaper sub-markets, which relies on market supply outpacing demand. More broadly, market supply can reduce the number that can't afford market rents and require sub-market provision.

Bear in mind that these are averages so there may be more overlap in practice, especially if vacancies are followed over a longer period.

That's what the paper says, I am not an expert on the topic.

That's a very good point. Oddly they don't specify the unit of measurement anywhere in the paper.

Presumably.