What’s New in Autism Research—Housing and Sensory Needs Edition

As part of our Designing Homes for Sensory Differences Summit, Ann Memmott has curated a special edition of her roundup of current Neurodivergent-affirming and best practice research, focusing on how Autism and sensory needs interact with housing provision, policy and design.

Satisfaction with housing, neighbourhood and life

Scheeren et al (2020) discovered that about 8 out of every 10 autistic adults live independently.  The overall figure was higher for women, older adults, and those with a higher IQ on standard testing.  Generally they were pretty satisfied with where they were living, but were struggling more with life in general. This is a study from the Netherlands, so may not apply to the UK, but it’s still a useful one.  Often we are told that nearly all autistic people will be in care or with parents for life.  Having more accurate information allows better planning for services and support.

Sensory preferences in housing design

Do Architects get it right when designing housing for autistic people? Generally, in the past, autistic people were not asked about this. Thankfully, research such as this enable us to get a much better idea of what works for autistic people, from a sensory point of view. This is a case study of a residential building (Nguyen, d’Auria and Heylighen, 2020). The autistic people were particularly in need of buildings that reflected their noise and temperature needs, the right amount of space in any shared rooms, and the right visual factors in private spaces. Designing for a theoretical autistic person isn’t the way forward; customisable spaces are very important. So was autonomy, rather than people deciding for the residents. Figure 2 in the paper showed an area that most residents agreed was a problem for them; the Architects had decided to design it with hard, echoing materials, and a curve. See the blog ‘Most autistic people don’t like curved walls’ for more detail on the errors behind this common assumption. It is so important to ask people what works, not assume.

Homelessness and related factors

Recent evidence suggests that autistic people are more likely to experience homelessness, and their experiences of this can be different. Garratt and Flaherty (2023) asked people who were or recently had been homeless, to draw and talk about their housing and homeless histories. These included street homelessness, living in hostels, and temporary housing situations. There were a lot of autistic people in their sample, and not enough thinking was being done about their particular barriers to getting a safe and suitable home. “We urge that policies and ways of working be made more autism-aware and so improve the lives of autistic homeless people”.

Autistic people and moving home

Very little research has considered transitions between living at home with parents, and moving to independent housing options. Mason et al. (2023) searched through research papers to find out what has been said so far. From their findings, many autistic people may benefit from living independently, but of course people need the money to do this. The team stress that it is not always the case that all autistic adults prefer, or will benefit from, living independently. The Office for National Statistics show that only about 3 out of every 10 people in the UK live on their own. The chart below is an example from the Office of National Statistics showing that, for example, barely 1 in 10 women age 25-44 live on their own. Are we right to assume that ‘independence’ is a goal? If so, what do we mean by it?

Again, this shows how important it is to ask people what they want, and really listen to their answers.

Autistic people and supportive environments

Well worth a read of this paper (Whohofsky et.al, 2023), which looks at a team trying to design a building that really works for as many autistic people as possible. It includes use of technology to assist with customising environments for people. We need a lot more research which looks at this, so I’m glad to see this starting point. Useful also to see some mention of the needs of older autistic people, since at the moment there is almost no research, anywhere, looking at retirement housing options and access. After 100 years of autism research, an extraordinary omission.

Human Rights, Housing and Disability

Another useful paper (O’Donovan and Whittle, 2024). Whilst focusing on Australia, it considers the Human Right to suitable housing, and how often countries fail to uphold that set of Rights, even as signatories to international Human Rights Conventions. With so many autistic people currently kept in inappropriate settings, for example mental health wards, due to a lack of interest in providing suitable housing, we need to be far more aware of the potential power of Human Rights cases.

Further reading:

British Standards Institute and Buildings Design for Neurodiversity—PAS 6463

Local Government Association—Housing for People with Learning Disabilities and Autistic People

NHS England Housing Resources—learning disability and Autism

Student Accommodation—University of Sheffield

(a typical link to information for one university)

Making Mental Health wards doable for Autistic people (and how to improve factors such as staff behaviour and responses)

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References

Garratt, E., & Flaherty, J. (2023). ‘There’s nothing I can do to stop it’: homelessness among autistic people in a British city. Disability & Society, 38(9), 1558-1584. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09687599.2021.2004881

Mason, D., Milner, V., Clark, L., Kelly, E., Pyefinch, R., & Happé, F. (2023). Autistic people and moving home: A systematic review. Autism in Adulthood, 5(3), 236-247. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/aut.2022.0016

Nguyen, P., d’Auria, V., & Heylighen, A. (2020). Detail matters: exploring sensory preferences in housing design for autistic people. In Designing for Inclusion: Inclusive Design: Looking Towards the Future (pp. 132-139). Springer International Publishing. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-43865-4_14

O’Donovan, MA., Whittle, E.L. (2024) Housing, Homelessness and Disability: the Commodification of a Core Human Right and Breach of This Right for People with Disability. Adv Neurodev Disord 8, 141–150 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s41252-023-00385-8https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41252-023-00385-8

Scheeren, A. M., Howlin, P., Bartels, M., Krabbendam, L., & Begeer, S. (2022). The importance of home: Satisfaction with accommodation, neighborhood, and life in adults with autism. Autism Research, 15(3), 519-530. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/aur.2653

Wohofsky, L., Marzi, A., Bettarello, F., Zaniboni, L., Lattacher, S. L., Limoncin, P., ... & Krainer, D. (2023). Requirements of a Supportive Environment for People on the Autism Spectrum: A Human-Centered Design Story. Applied Sciences, 13(3), 1899. https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/13/3/1899