Campaigners remain behind disabled mum’s long fight to be rehoused
By Robert Firth, Local Democracy Reporter
Protesters have rallied in support of a disabled mum who has been living for 24 years in a second floor flat she struggles to leave.
Arthritis sufferer Michelle, 50, who relies on crutches and a wheelchair, is unable to run basic errands because of her difficulty getting down the 30 steps separating her council home from the street.
The demonstrators from ACORN Southwark — a community union supporting Michelle — gathered outside the local council’s Tooley Street offices in Bermondsey last Tuesday evening, where they raised her plight with councillors attending a meeting.
Michelle herself was unable to attend the protest due to her multiple health issues, including chronic back pain and lupus.
ACORN say she has been waiting for years to be moved to safe, suitable housing for her disabilities and that last year, the council made a commitment to give her a direct offer of safe suitable housing but have gone back on their word.
Michelle said: “They have done a 180 [degree turn] on me and keep talking about my ‘needs’ not my ‘wants’.
“The council has thrown the onus back on me. Southwark is saying it’s my fault why I’m not able to be rehoused rather than realising all the properties they are giving me aren’t suitable.”
After years of trying to get Southwark council to rehouse her in an accessible ground floor flat with a bath (showers being too difficult to use with her condition) Michelle felt she had reached a breakthrough in December 2023 when then-cabinet member for housing, Cllr Darren Merrill, said the council would make her a direct offer of a suitable flat.
In the following nine months she was offered five properties, but none of these were suitable for her needs, she says. Since Southwark’s housing department was restructured in August 2024, Michelle claims she has been offered no properties.
In November 2024, an official warned her in an email that the council may stop making direct offers and return her to the council’s 18,000 long housing waiting list if she continued to refuse homes that it considered ‘fully meet [her] needs’.
“It’s very frustrating and stressful,” she said. “If I return to the housing waiting list, I won’t get a property.”
A spokesman for ACORN Southwark said: “We will not stop fighting until Michelle is housed in a safe and suitable home.”
Southwark council previously described her case as ‘complex’ and said it ‘understood’ her frustration at not being able to move into a new property.
The spokesman added: “The council’s housing teams have been working together to carry out all the assessments required in order to make sure the home she can bid for will definitely be suitable for her needs.”
Pictured top: Michelle in the second floor flat she has been trying to move out of for 24 years (Picture: Facundo Arrizabalaga)