Black disabled women worst impacted by the cost of living crisis

AS THE cost-living-crisis tightens its grips on UK households, those that identify as being black, disabled and female are battling the unfolding cost of living crisis in more ways than one. 

The inflation rate rose by 9.4% by the second quarter of this year – its highest rate in 40 years.

Black households are reported to have less than £1,500 savings and make up the 34% of people from ethnic backgrounds whose salary won’t cover the mortgage, rent and energy bills.

The latest figures from New City Hall found that nearly a third (31%) of black Londoners are financially struggling and one in five Londoners earning less than £20,000 have gone without food regularly or occasionally.

For the 14 million disabled people in the UK, the crisis bodes even worse as they are twice as likely to be living in poverty.

Lydia Daniels, not her real name, is a freelance creative that lives with a multitude of neurodivergent disabilities including OCD, dyslexia and autism as well as ADHD and dyspraxia.

She tells The Voice that the sharp rise in costs to live in a city like London as a black disabled woman with her condition hasn’t been without its challenges. 

“I have something called sensory processing disorder. This means that I always joke and say, it feels like my senses are on crack all the time because my brain doesn’t really give me a choice about what I do and don’t process,” she says. 

“Some people who aren’t disabled in the same way that I am, might be able to, for example, filter out a conversation that’s happening on the next table to them because they’re not interested in it. 

“Whereas my brain will sort of go into overdrive trying to process the conversation that’s happening on the next table and also the conversation that I’m in.”

While living as a neurodivergent, Lydia says that she is also extremely sensitive to noise and is always fighting to maintain her energy as her brain can become “static” when exposed to high decibels.

Traveling for work as a full-time creative is inevitable and often avoids the London Underground when working in the city, she tells The Voice.

“I’m just very wary and very considerate about where I put my body. If somebody brushes past me by accident and of course people do that, that’s completely normal, especially in London, there are lots of people on the transport network all the time,” she explains.

Struggled

“I can’t cope with that. I also can’t cope with the sort of excessive noises and bright lights. And so, I can’t go on public transport because it’s just an impossible situation to navigate. By the time I get to my destination, I will be just suffering from overwhelm in a way that means that I won’t be able to do whatever it is I was supposed to do in that area.”

Since relying on her car to travel for work, Lydia says that the £40 a month she spent to fill up her car has skyrocketed to at least £60 or more wherever work needs her to travel as far as Wales or Devon. 

Despite a fall in wholesale figures, the cost for petrol has surged by up to 188.74p followed by diesel at 196.36p which she admits is being maintained by the £1.04 rise in what was previously known as Disability Living Allowance.

Dr Enobong Okokon, who worked as a specialist paediatric consultant before coming down with “an assortment” of rheumatic disabilities in 2010 after contracting meningitis, tells The Voice that she was one of the leading campaigners fighting for disabled people like herself to work from home who struggled to get to work long before the Covid-19 pandemic. 

She says that the true hardship of the cost-of-living crisis hasn’t been felt yet for millions of vulnerable households.

“I don’t think we’re ready. I don’t think anyone knows what’s going to happen yet. I don’t think we feel it yet – and this is not to seem like a victim – but to be frank we are already living in food poverty and health poverty in this country and emotional poverty in this country…it’s either you eat or your children eat,” she admits.

Inflation

“The pandemic and working from home has brought so many benefits, but it also means that my bills have rocketed. This month my bill went from £113 to £250 in one month for gas and electric.”

According to government figures, the average gas bill was £575 a year and electricity bills totalled to £764 in 2021 but that figure has since jumped to almost £700 more.

As the cost to live reared its ugly head, ex-Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced the roll out of a support package worth up to £1,200 with a £400 grant now offered to cover energy bills and a further £650 to be given to those receiving means tested benefits like Universal Credit or Working Tax credit.

However, the one-off, tax-free payment doesn’t include people on disabled benefits, who will instead receive just £150.00 to make ends meet with Tory leadership contender, Liz Truss, refusing to commit to more cost-of-living support.

Keeping the heating on will be a struggle for households as the colder months approach with energy bills expected to spike by £4, 200 in the New Year.

It leaves both Lydia and Enobong, who need to keep their heating on more than average to ensure their health doesn’t decline, in a vulnerable position until summer peaks. 

Lydia tells the Voice that the revised support package from the initial £200 loan won’t be enough to safely see through people like her through the crisis. 

Stigma

“Just £400 is a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of money that the cost of living is rising by. We have to have real, tangible measures. We have to have benefits rising in line with inflation,” she explains.

“We have to restore the £20 or the £25 uplift to Universal Credit and make that permanent. We need to make sure that working tax credits for disabled people still exist and that people are still able to apply for them.

“And we also need to make sure that we create policies and we amend policies to make sure that all people that are disabled that are currently falling through various loopholes, which means that they are not able to claim benefits that they need and that they should be entitled to.”

Enobong, who now doesn’t work, says that the stigma surrounding black and disabled people’s needs to change as the cost-of-living will force them to be more dependent than ever. 

“I have a family of four all in one room, that’s where we’re at. We have to recognise that that isn’t everybody, but it will be more of us and that will bring us all to the same level.”

“There’s the Personal Independence Payment [formerly known as Disability Living Allowance] and that is another thing that really annoys me, because it’s saying that it’s personal and it’s meant to make you allow you to be independent, but they’re judging you. 

She adds: “If I had cancer, and have no hair, you don’t need to know why I have no hair. If I’m overweight, you don’t need to know why I’m over- weight. A lot of people say ‘Look at these people who allow their children to McDonald’s,’ but they don’t know that they’ve been in housing that hasn’t got the energy resources to cook the food.”

Society

“Majority of people that are disabled have hidden disabilities, but the majority of us are at work. The perception that people who are disabled don’t work, is untrue,” she adds after having to give up working herself.

“When we’re in work and we’re not in a wheelchair, we need to recognise that we can still say that we have impairments and that we have a right to benefits.”

Enobong says that herself and people like Lydia “tick all the boxes” of being a black disabled female in the current climate. 

For Lydia, her experience living day-to-day at this complex intersection means she faces the invisibility of her disability, and of her race and gender.

“When we’re talking about disability, typically we’re referring to things that are visually marked. 

“So, we tend to think of wheelchair users or zimmer frame users or people with hearing aids or people with a white stick that blind people use…but we don’t typically think about invisible disabilities like complex PTSD, autism, ADHD and so on,” she says.

“I’m black and also unambiguously black; I’m very dark skinned, I’m disabled, and I’m a woman. And I exist at the intersection of all of this disprivilege and these three marginalised identities.”

Despite being “well-presented,” living as a black with a disability means “people just find it very difficult to do the cognitive gymnastics that they need to do to also understand that I am incredibly vulnerable,” she adds. 

Centuries long stereotypes of black people “being lazy, not wanting to work, being aggressive” are still seen through racist lense, Lydia believes, which is also compounded when you’re a black woman in “being diva or being high maintenance or being uppity.”

“So, when we are asking for these things [disability support] that don’t fit in with what a conventional understanding of what disability is then we’re even less likely to be believed to be and even less likely to get support because of the prevalence of various stereotypes that exist within society,” she adds. 

While accurate data doesn’t cover the full reality of black disabled people in the UK, particularly that of black disabled women, Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson, director of the Women’s Budget Group, says this doesn’t diminish the disadvantages they face.

According to their figures, 40% black women are more likely to be living in poverty amid the cost surge. 

“This is a crisis of incomes as well as rising costs. We know that poverty rates are significantly higher among people from Bangladeshi (53%), Pakistani (48%) and black (40%) ethnic groups than among White people (19%), making it harder to meet rising living costs,” she says

“This intersects with higher rates of poverty among women meaning that black women are disproportionately likely to be poor.

“We also know that even prior to Covid over a third of disabled workers were having to cut back on food and heating, and that this was exacerbated by Covid. 

“Disabled people also face additional costs, including higher energy bills for equipment they need and special diets. Once we move into colder weather in the autumn and winter, when fuel prices are expected to rise still further this will hit disabled people harder because they are more likely to have to keep their heating on during the day.

She adds: “Rising costs and disproportionately low incomes will put disabled black women in an extremely vulnerable position and mean they are among the groups most likely to be severely impacted by this crisis.”

Melanie Hibbert, a Chief Executive at Intersectionality Network which supports black disabled women, says that people who fall into this intersection have been impacted by society’s prejudices towards us and every aspect which makes up our full identity”

“Not only are we facing barriers to employment as suitably qualified people, but when in employment we are not valued for the level of expertise and skill sets that we have, which has been occurring for decades,” she says.

“In addition to not having recognition of our brilliance, we have many barriers to overcome, all this together intersects and impacts our economic opportunities across society.

We, like every other human, have basic things to pay for such as food, housing, transportation, and bills. In many cases, additional costs are included such as counselling due to our lived experiences.

“When we consider discrimination and marginalisation black disabled women tend not to be included. This is why it is important that we build our own platforms to make a genuine and inclusive impact across society.”