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0800 03 08 009 Mon - Fri 09:00 - 17:00 Innovation centre Highfield drive, St Leonards, East Sussex. TN38 9UH
Call us
Call us
S. London Office
Finance Office
0800 03 08 009 Mon - Fri 09:00 - 17:00 The Barn, 3 North Court Lewes, East Sussex. BN7 2AR
0800 03 08 009 Mon - Fri 09:00 - 17:00 Unit 6, Pilton Estate, Pitlake, Croydon, Surrey, CR0 3RA
0800 03 08 009 Mon - Fri 09:00 - 17:00 Innovation centre Highfield drive, St Leonards, East Sussex. TN38 9UH
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Make a change, housing for people with learning disabilities

Change is needed and housing is in crisis

Yes, change is needed if we are to get housing for people with learning disabilities. In fact, generally, social housing needs to step up.

Housing for people with learning disabilities

How can we grasp the ideas of another culture or another person, when the very way we and they define our worlds uses a different context, a different language even, or perhaps no language at all.

How is it possible to cross the divide and come to some comprehension of what it is like to be marginalised by society, even to be imprisoned by it, when you have done nothing wrong except you have a learning disability? The Sufi saint Jallal’uddin Rumi said that we could not define or come to an understanding of God in this world because God is not of this world. Yet that does not stop our spiritual search or a love of the divine.

Let’s go forward side by side

How can we exist side by side with individuals that appear to have a way of living so different from our own, yet are people we know, people in our families, people we care about?  How can we live together and not fall out? Not allow them to feel rejected or abandoned, slighted or put upon? In the 21st century and with the advent of the new great disease after HIV, this has brought new challenges.

We can learn from history. There is a Turkish saying: “he who is burned by the soup blows on the yogurt”. Our past experience has been that those who are different from us are our enemies, or outcasts. We won’t take on their ideas or bother to understand them. This however is false reasoning.

Food changes us

I only have to look at the food in the supermarket and how it has changed since I was a boy to understand how our tastes have changed and how these tastes have been affected, to the good, by other countries and cultures. And as I think about it, my own personal ideas and ideals – how they have changed over the years and been influenced by other people. So we can change the way we look at homes and who has them. We can get housing for people with learning disabilities. Not for Profit Housing | A Unique Charity – Zetetick Housing

However there are some people in the UK that won’t eat anything with garlic, or whatever the colour of their own skin still maintain a view of others that is really coloured by race. Or whose ideas are so fixed and yet their foundation so unsure that they can’t let anything in, any other idea, thought, ideal, view, because to do so would, as it appears unconsciously to them, destroy their sense of self.

Change is needed

Perhaps we all do it, shut out ideas, don’t really listen, and if we have been hurt, burnt as in the turkish saying, it’s even worse.  However, I am aware that having a child with a disability, the importance of providing them with a home and then allowing them the independence of having their own home. But how do we provide housing for people with learning disabilities?

housing for people with learning disabilities
housing for people with learning disabilities

Together we can do it, by being open, by working across charities, through volunteering, and donating time and money I look for our #commonground, what we have in common, and celebrate our differences. So that not only can we provide housing for people with learning disabilities, we can provide homes.

Many of us across the globe have given up on change, because it is as if change exists in a different culture, and is therefore not for us. Similarly, many have given up on politics, one of the drivers for change. All the turmoil of recent years that has affected the marginalised so badly means it is even more urgent that we change and work harder to let the spirit, soul, community, and common ground back into our lives, because it is through this we communicate with each other in the things we share, in the things that bring us together and affect the change we need.

Break the deadlock

It is also a time for us to break the deadlock between one idea and another, one religion or another in their conflicts, one political view or another in theirs. We need to think outside the box, with completely new ideas for life, completely new ways of approaching change and transformation.  Perhaps it is time to change the rules, to look at things differently.

How to do this means people giving up their worldly power, being less protective of their ideas and ways. Why? Because the way we have done it just doesn’t work…does it? This is why Zetetick Housing has a unique way of doing things and getting housing for people with learning disabilities. There are people willing to lease their houses to us, so we use the private sector, developers, or anyone that has a house and is willing to allow us to bring it to the quality our residents need.

India with burning pyres of Covid-19 dead, Sub-Saharan Africa ravaged by HIV/Aids and war and poverty, the western world plagued by obesity and heart problems. Look around you at the graffiti, the fear we have for each other, the lack of awareness and poverty of education and knowledge, the violence that pervades our world, the greed, and then here and there a few people planting the seeds of love. What of the internet and social media – has this brought more good to the world? Or has it allowed more corruption and distortion?

Each of us might examine our own ability to communicate, to listen, to care, to love, to be true to all we know and to ourselves, our own powerlessness in the face of war and famine, of poverty and corruption, and all the other things that may blight our society.

If you are willing to look with clarity, join our campaign to provide housing for people with learning disabilities. But don’t let it stop there. So many people are homeless, marginalised, discriminated against, and it is the ordinary everyday kindness, compassion and care that can change that. We may not be the whole answer, but as a charity we are a start. If you come with us we can cross the finish line together

Change is needed

Slowly, slowly, try to do a little, knowing that what you want and what is possible…they are worlds apart. Start now.
Start Now

About the author

Jonathan is the CEO of the charity Zetetick Housing

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