Universal Design: accessible housing gets support from Federal Housing Advocate

 

                                     

                                                                         NO ENTRY!

                              

We have all heard or experienced that too many Canadians are having a hard time finding a safe and affordable place to live.

Accessibility doesn’t seem to be mentioned all that often.

So it came as good news to the Accessible Housing Network (AHN) that Canada’s Federal Housing Advocate, Marie-Josee Houle, recently urged the Canadian government to incorporate Universal Design in its catalogue of pre-approved blueprint designs for homebuilders. This will result in homes that anyone, regardless of their ability, can enter and exit easily and live in comfortably and successfully. 

The AHN, comprising about 70 organizations, has long advocated for homes that can accommodate all people throughout their lifetime.  Its co-chair is Stouffville resident Dr. Salvatore Amenta, a tireless advocate for the rights of the disabled. I’m sharing his article below on how Universal Design is vital to a large segment of the population, including the huge number of baby boomers who will turn 80 over the next few years.

But first I did a little research on how Universal Design started. If you are healthy and active, you can live your life almost anywhere: no matter how many stairs your house has.  You can can work well with ‘normal’ height kitchen counters, you can turn doorknobs and scoot into the bathroom any time you want. You even have the stamina to stand at the stove and cook a whole meal.

But, throw a sudden injury, an on-going disability, waning strength and stamina or a wheelchair into the mix, and your life looks a lot different. 

And that’s the way it was for the many injured soldiers returning home in 1945 after the Second World War. For many, their homes were no longer liveable and society had to confront this new reality. 

A few years later polio came along. Ronald Mace, born in 1942 in the United States, contracted the rampant disease when he was nine. Next step: the wheelchair. He persevered, however. Even though he had to be carried up and down stairs for his classes at university and helped into the washrooms, he graduated as an architect. Thinking that there must be a better way, he came up with the idea of Universal Design for his home designs. Universal Design can include such features as wider bathroom doorways, lower kitchen counters, lower light switches, ramps instead of stairs, and other adaptations depending on people’s needs both in their homes and public spaces.

For more insight into an issue that will eventually affect many of us, please read Mr. Amenta’s article below.  Please share, if you wish.

BREAKING NEWS:  

Federal Housing Advocate calls for Universal Design

By Salvatore Amenta

 

Since the Accessible Housing Network considers Universal Design the key to housing for all, AHN welcomes the Federal Housing Advocate’s recent call to require it for the pre-approved plans in the government’s forthcoming catalogue.  

 

Universal Design (UD) anticipates everybody’s needs before they arise – for parents with strollers, delivery workers, movers, young and old.  Automatic doors and ramps are very popular, yet we keep building homes only for the able-bodied.  After an accident or chronic illness we incur costly renovations to stay home – unless it was built to be accessible and adaptable to begin with.  

Universally-designed housing accommodates people of all ages and abilities; it is easy to enter and live in barrier-free, for life.  Australia mandated UD in its national building code, and AHN has petitioned Parliament to do likewise.  

Since accessible housing is rare, Marie-Josée Houle urges government to provide an adequate supply.  However, an adequate stock of it can’t be built for future generations unless the provinces and territories follow a national standard.  And the housing crisis can’t end while there’s buck-passing and delay.

Fortunately, accessible housing is affordable – if we just change HOW we build!  Accessibility Standards Canada and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation agree:  adaptable housing costs a little more but saves a lot more in renovations, and accessible apartments cost the same.   

 

Accessible housing is also safer – leading to fewer falls and ambulance calls, ER visits, hospitalizations (Visit AHN’s website.)  It raises our standard of living.

 

The Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (2005) and Accessible Canada Act (2019), aim to make Ontario fully accessible by 2025 and Canada by 2040.  But they are concerned almost exclusively with PUBLIC spaces, as if accessibility isn’t important in PRIVATE spaces!

This may explain why builders settle for minimal requirements and building codes require only 15% of apartment units to be "visitable" (rather than livable).  The needs of “normal” people seem to trump those of the “disabled.”

But StatsCan’s figure of 27% is only the tip of the iceberg.  It hides millions of Canadians who do not report being virtually blind without glasses, deaf without hearing aids, grounded without mobility devices. 

The good news from StatsCan is that 75% of seniors own homes worth about $750,000. Millions of them could afford to buy the accessible housing they need with their trillions in equity.  By mid-century their number will double in some areas!  

Why isn’t the housing industry capitalizing on this?  Few developers and municipalities are providing accessible housing (like the Daniels Corporation, with its “Accessibility Designed Program”, and Edmonton with its Lifelong Homes).  In September of 2023, only 33 of Ontario’s 901 real-estate developers were members of the Accelerating Accessibility Coalition.

 

We are all an accident or illness away from disability, suddenly facing barriers in and out of the house.  Seemingly unaware, the housing industry keeps building units that are inaccessible, non-adaptable, and also unaffordable.

But housing has been declared a human right, so to delay it is to deny it – especially for seniors who don’t have long to live.  Some are resorting to MAiD for the desperate lack of proper housing.  The housing rights of persons with disabilities are being violated and seniors are being forced into long-term care where thousands died of COVID.

 

Marie-Josée Houle is urging collective action on housing, stressing that “we have an incredible opportunity to build inclusively from the start, which will make a real difference in peoples’ lives”.  Her call for Universal Design advances the Accessible Canada Act’s goal of a barrier-free Canada.  

Accessible housing for all – now!

Salvatore Amenta, Co-Chair, Accessible Housing Network

E-Mail: AccessibleHousingNetwork@gmail.com