A transfer to a more tranquil life

When vision impaired residents Steven and Elizabeth needed to transfer homes, Gary, from Housing Choices South Australia’s Housing Team facilitated a move to a property that suited their specific needs.

Steven is vision impaired, while his partner Elizabeth is blind, and this makes them feel especially vulnerable to safety concerns.

Gary and the wider Housing Team were able to facilitate a transfer to a different Housing Choices SA property. The new home needed to accommodate Elizabeth’s seeing eye dog Lacey and Steven’s son Jesse, while being close to their former location.

“Gary worked so hard with our disability support coordinator and the Housing Choices SA team, and he just made this happen. We are just so grateful,” Steven said.

“I’ve been through a lot of, housing organisations, through most of my life, and I’ve never had support like Gary has given.”

This is the first time Elizabeth and Steven have lived in a house that’s new to them both, and they are delighted. They said moving into a new home together has brought them closer together and enabled them to  support each other’s goals.

Having met a few years ago a Beyond Blindness event, it wasn’t exactly love at ‘first sight’, Elizabeth said: “But he invited me over, made me the best spaghetti bolognese ever and started playing Pink Floyd on his guitar. And I guess that was it!”

Their shared love of music is evident in their new home, instead of a lounge, the back room is full of vinyl records, all kinds of guitars, a piano and drum kit.

But the best thing about the transfer might be that Elizabeth and Steven had the space, and the safety, to host Christmas for the first time – complete with an enormous pine Christmas Tree.

“It was such a heartwarming feeling to be able to have everyone over and just be like, ‘this is our place, welcome’,” Elizabeth said.

“I guess we want to just let people know that just because it’s community housing, it doesn’t mean it can’t be a real home. This is home for us.”