ABSTRACT
‘It makes no sense’, lamented Nushi, a middle aged, disabled man repeatedly. His asylum claim had been refused. He waved his arms, moving with exasperated jolts as he described threats that he was about to be evicted and made street homeless. Speaking anonymously in a short film made for local councillors, he recalled the toll his previous period of homelessness had taken on his physical and mental health: ‘they push you to be crazy … They want me to become dirty, nasty and crazy’ (Yeo and Spencer, 2018). When hearing this conversation, Francisco, an activist from the disabled people's movement grimaced in despair. He was well aware of the ever-increasing restrictions and injustices imposed on disabled people in the United Kingdom in an era of austerity. He observed that removing entitlement to housing because a person's mental health has improved is like ‘having a sight assessment with glasses on, being found to have good vision and losing entitlement to the glasses’. He repeated Nushi's words: ‘it makes no sense’. Yet, as this book will show, such practices are not an irrational oversight, but the direct result of deliberate policy and practice.
