A disabled woman whose spine was broken when she had to be carried up stairs due to a faulty lift has not left her flat in months.
Yasmin Colbourne, 80, was already battling with the council to be moved to more suitable housing after her mobility deteriorated following a move to her first-floor flat in the North Laine.
Medical letters which would have given her a higher priority were not added to her file for 18 months until her case was featured by ITV Meridian in July 2021.
But even after this latest incident, during Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June, she says the council is not offering her a home she can accept.
She has been offered a number of properties in the east of the city, but says she needs somewhere in the west, closer to her daughter in Shoreham.
Ms Colbourne, 80, said: “I’m actually trapped in this flat. I haven’t been out in about three years, apart from hospital visits when they come and get me in hospital transport.
“I haven’t been in a shop or shopping for probably three or four years.
“It’s not nice to be stuck here. I’m sat in here on my own 99 percent of the time, because my daughter comes once a week. She can’t spend a lot of time here.
“It’s like being put in solitary confinement because I don’t see anybody.
“If I stay here I shall be confined to this flat for the rest of my life. I don’t want that.”
Ms Colbourne lives in Alfred Davey Court, Bread Street. Six fire doors on her level are too heavy for her to move and a new lift installed in 2020 regularly breaks down.
She last used the lift to get to the garden for Jubilee drinks, but it stopped working just five minutes later.
She said: “The manager’s frantically phoning the lift engineers, trying to get somebody to come out on the bank holiday.
“In the end, two guys who live upstairs who are quite able bodied pushed my wheelchair to the bottom of the stairs.
“They carried the wheelchair up and they helped me by pushing and pulling and trying to get me up the stairs.
“I scraped all my shins on the edges of the stairs. The day after I could hardly move so I called 111 – I fractured my spine in two places.”
Ms Colbourne has been in her current flat ince 2016, when her mobility was much better.
But it started to deteriorate soon after she moved in, and she has now been on the council’s Homemove waiting list for ground floor housing in the west of the city for five years.
Her disabilities now include curvature of the spine causing severe back pain, osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, heart problems, diabetes and a blood clot in the lungs.
Ms Colbourne said: “I fight for breath all the time. If I go from here to my kitchen, which is a few feet away, I have to sit down.
“I can’t lift anything. If I try to move anything, I get fractures and pain in my back.
“My spine is crumbling and I’ve lost about four or five inches in height, so all these things added up aren’t good.
“The council never ever answer emails. It makes me angry, because they don’t seem to listen to you.
“They don’t acknowledge emails, they don’t answer emails. Half the time you phone, you have to leave a message and they don’t phone you back.
“They offered me one place at a sheltered property near to where my daughter lives, which is brilliant. But when we got there, I couldn’t even get into the front door in my buggy.”
Emma Tobin, head of wellbeing at Stonewater said: “We absolutely empathise with Yasmin’s situation.
“We’ve been fully supportive of her requests for a move to a more suitable home and understand she’s been on the council list for a long time.
“Our team have and will continue to work closely with Yasmin to support her application for more suitable housing, recognising that her current needs are different from when she originally moved in.
“We’re sorry to hear about Yasmin’s injury and that she had to rely upon other residents to help her back up the stairs.
“We understand that there have been four occasions where the lift has broken down this year, with the last issue reported to us on 3 June 2022.
“We understand that many of our residents struggle when the lift is out of action and so we have a four hour call out agreement with the lift management team – providing no new parts are needed – to minimise disruption to our customers.”
A council spokesperson said: “We’re very sympathetic to the resident’s situation and are keen to help.
“However, there is an acute shortage of affordable accommodation available for people with mobility issues.
“We cannot comment on specific cases. But in general terms, the more flexible people can be about where they are willing to move to, the more likely it is that we will be able to help them.
“People who are willing to move both to all areas of the city or move out of the city have the best chance of us being able to help them.
“Everyone assessed as requiring a fully wheelchair-adapted property gets priority, along with other eligible applicants, on properties advertised as such.”
