Okay, I’m about a week late on this post, so I’m really sorry. I know I promised I’d start blogging regularly again, so here goes.

So since the last post, I had an interesting run in with ableism on the housing front. I was planning to move to an apartment community with affordable housing, and the day I was going to turn my application in, I called ahead to see if they could accommodate my disability.

Certain units are rented out as affordable housing and certain units are rented out at the normal price, from what I gather. So I called and asked if they had any first floor apartments because my disability would not allow me to walk up and down flights of stairs several times a day. The woman said that no, the only affordable housing apartment they had was on the second floor, and there are no elevators.

I asked her then if because she couldn’t accommodate me immediately when I needed to move if I could have a second floor apartment temporarily until a first floor unit opened up. She told me that no, if I were to switch apartments that I would have to wait six months, pay another membership fee ($200), repay my pet deposit ($150), and another application fee ($60). I was like, wait… so because you can’t accommodate me, I have to pay more?

I said that I guess I would have to look elsewhere, and not five minutes later I received a call saying that a first floor apartment was opening up.

I hate feeling like I’m being jerked around because I have certain needs. The woman clearly wanted me to suck it up and take the second floor apartment, which I was not going to do. I considered it as a temporary solution, but it certainly would not work long-term.

Has anyone else had bad housing experiences like this?