Housing4All demonstrated again today outside Council House about the lack
of accessible housing for disabled people in Birmingham. We attempted for
a second time to speak to John Lines, Cabinet Member for Housing, but he
again refused to speak to us. We demonstrated for 3 hours, during which
time we attracted the attention of local people as well as workers from
the Council. Birmingham Food Not Bombs also accompanied the demonstration,
giving out free tea and cake.

2 representatives from the homelessness section of Birmingham City Council
invited Housing4All to make their views known about BCC's homelessness
strategy in a meeting to be arranged shortly. Despite repeated requests
from Housing4All and the Coalition of Disabled People for BCC to resurrect
the Blueprint Document "Disabled People's Issues Part 1", we have not
recievedclear acknowledgement from BCC that the document is still alive
and well.

We have further requested from the Cabinet Member the Housing Equality
Impact Assessment. Housing4All are very concerned that the lack of
physically accessible accommodation in Birmingham is percieved rather than
real. This has been shown to be proven as we have campaigned for an
individual disabled person who was initially not offered any suitable
accommodation in the areas of his choice, but who after our lobbying of
the Council was immediately offered short-term accessible accommodation.

We will therefore discuss at the forthcoming meeting our concerns about
homelessness and the supposed lack of accessible accommodation.
Housing4All will also shortly be contacting the Office for Disability
Issues to ask what they think...

photos to come...

see also here:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/birmingham/2007/10/382710.html and here:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/regions/birmingham/2007/09/381369.html