Life Project or Just a Slogan? The Unresolved Issue of Housing

In recent years, "life project" has become the buzzword in disability policy. It’s everywhere: in legislation, at conferences, and throughout various reforms. Yet, there’s one question we often leave hanging, even though it’s the most decisive: concretely, where is this project supposed to take root?

Recent research has highlighted a positive trend: many day services are finally moving away from a "containment" or purely performance-based logic, opening up to the local neighborhood instead. The goal is to restore an active, adult role for people with disabilities—one that creates value for the community. It’s a vital shift because it transforms time from being "occupied" to being "lived." However, this paradigm shift risks remaining a beautiful theory if we don’t address the most basic material requirement: housing.

Searching for a home: not an equal path

For most of us, looking for a home is a matter of checking ads, visiting a few places, and making a choice. For someone with a disability, it’s the start of an obstacle course that is both expensive and often frustrating.

The first barrier is disarmingly simple: real estate listings almost never include information on accessibility. You won't find details on door widths, maneuvering space in bathrooms, or balcony thresholds. What a real estate agent might see as an insignificant detail is, for a wheelchair user, the boundary between autonomy and the impossibility of living there.

Real estate agencies, for their part, rarely know how to help. It’s not a lack of goodwill, but a lack of tools: accessibility is often reduced to whether or not there are steps. But a house without stairs can still be a trap if a hallway is too narrow or if the way a door opens blocks movement. Accessibility isn't something you guess; it’s something you measure and experience firsthand.

The invisible cost of a right

Then there’s a financial aspect that is rarely discussed: accessibility is subjective. It depends on the aids used, one's movement strategies, and the type of assistance required. This means that while a non-disabled person might find a home after a few visits, someone with specific needs might have to see dozens.

Every visit has a cost: time, travel, and often the need to pay a personal assistant to accompany the person and evaluate the feasibility of the space. People end up spending thousands of euros before even signing a contract, just for the "luxury" of trying to exercise a basic right.

Beyond the walls: the neighborhood as home

Even if you find the perfect apartment, the problem shifts outside. An accessible home in a hostile neighborhood is, effectively, a golden cage. Impracticable sidewalks, inefficient transport, or unreachable shops turn domestic autonomy into a forced dependence on outside help. Living means being able to experience the local area, not just being confined to a compliant room.

Furthermore, for a person with a disability, moving house means breaking an invisible but vital web: the neighbor who knows how to help in a crisis, the pharmacist who knows specific needs, the local shopkeeper who simplifies a daily task. These micro-balances aren't "extras"—they are what make independent living possible. Rebuilding them requires an enormous effort that the urban context doesn't always allow.

Housing as an infrastructure of citizenship

The UN Convention (General Comment No. 5, 2017) is clear: living independently doesn't mean "doing everything alone," but having control over one's own choices. If access to housing remains an uncertain and prohibitive path, the "life project" ends up being nothing more than an empty conference slogan.

We must stop viewing housing accessibility as a niche for technicians or a problem for individual families. It is an infrastructure of citizenship, just like roads or schools. Without a real home—accessible, integrated into the social fabric, and sustainable—the life project remains, in the most literal sense, a utopia: something that has no place to exist.