We hear from time to time the claim that not providing suitable equipment, housing and employment has a cost, but obtaining research funding to establish what those costs are, if any, is rarely forthcoming.
The Building Research Establishment in the UK has produced an issues paper on the costs of poor housing – poor housing being housing unfit and unsafe for the occupants. It is a short report listing all the costs to the health service for the number of incidents that kick back to hospital stays and ongoing health treatments.
This report is referenced in a blog post about the intolerable situation of thousands of wheelchair uses in Britain waiting for a home that has wheelchair access. Although it is a British article, it resonates with our situation here in Australia as the NDIS comes on stream. Their Lifetime Homes ambition of all new homes to be accessible/visitable has faded just has our Livable Housing Australia promise of all new homes to the Livable Standard by 2020. Deregulation seems to be the order of the day now. Sound familiar?
Australian Network for Universal Housing Design 