Report: Tennessee increasingly unaffordable for working adults with disabilities
“Working adults living with a disability in Tennessee are facing increasingly unaffordable barriers and a higher cost of living, according to a new study released by the Tennessee Disability Coalition. ‘As a whole in Tennessee, people with disabilities live in higher rates of poverty, have less stable housing and they’re more likely to be food insufficient,’ said Jeff Strand, Tennessee Disability Coalition coordinator of government and external affairs. ‘They’re already facing a number of systemic barriers to a high quality of life. It costs 51% more income for a person with a disability to achieve the same standard of living than a person without a disability.’ The Tennessee Disability Scorecard, released this week, found Tennesseans living with disabilities face a higher cost of living than elsewhere in the U.S., on average, in part due to poor access to affordable housing, high unemployment rates and increasing medical costs.”