Disability & Housing, Part 2: Accessible Housing

Joeita Gupta:
I'm Joeita Gupta, and this is The Pulse. There is radio silence when it comes to the question of accessible housing. If you consider that one in five Canadians lives with a disability, it's a shocking omission from public discourse. Not only are we not talking about accessible housing, but clearly we aren't building it. This means that people with disabilities are forced to scramble and to make the most of a bad situation. It means that they're moving into houses or apartments which only partially meet their needs. Maybe not even that. Often people with disabilities have to renovate their homes at great personal expense.
Other times, if the person is a tenant, for example, the lack of accessible housing can result in costly and time-consuming human rights complaints. Today, we discuss accessible housing. It's time to put your finger on The Pulse. Hello and welcome to The Pulse on AMI-audio. I'm Joeita Gupta. I'm joining you from the Accessible Media Studios in Toronto. Today, I'm wearing a red shirt with three-quarter sleeves and a square neck. The shirt is red with black stripes. My black hair is tied back in a ponytail, and I also have a pair of black headphones. We're talking about housing here on The Pulse. In the second of three episodes dedicated to the topic, I'm delighted to welcome to the program Tracy Odell.
Tracy Odell is the past chair of Citizens with Disabilities Ontario, and she's also the second vice chair of the Council of Canadians with Disabilities. Hello, Tracy. Welcome to The Pulse. It's really great to have you on the program.

Tracy Odell:
Hello. I'm really happy to be asked to be here.

Joeita Gupta:
Tracy, what is accessible housing?

Tracy Odell:
Well, that's a big question. It does not mean that it's close to the bus stop. It means that it will assist people with a number of different types of disabilities to be able to get in and out of their house or apartment without barriers, and that would have the features needed to provide that.

Joeita Gupta:
Now, what got you thinking about accessible housing? I don't just mean as an individual, but you're also a part of the Accessible Housing Network. There must have been something that made you realize that accessible housing isn't just a nice thing to have, but it is really essential for all people with disabilities.

Tracy Odell:
Well, myself, I had to go live in an institution as a child, like a residential institution. Upon turning 18, that was the time we had to leave because it was a children's hospital and there was nowhere to go. Things were not accessible. It was dark ages. There were dinosaurs roaming the earth when I was an 18-year-old. But just nothing was out there. We didn't have the laws that we have or anything to getting that happening. But as luck would have it, there was a demonstration project that was being done through the Ministry of Community and Social Services. Through that I was able to land a spot sharing an apartment with two other ladies and live in the community outside of the hospital.
I have a physical disability. I use a wheelchair and I need help with everything from going to the bathrooms to being fed, the whole thing. The services were wrapped around that housing and incorporated in. There was a space for the staff to hang out and then you called them when you needed them or you booked time that you needed. Then shortly after that, the government stopped building that kind of housing project. I've just always been concerned about where people like me will go after they've done their rehabilitation or they come out of a hospital, or they move here, maybe they're a newcomer.
Where can they go and live? I've just always been involved with that in a volunteer basis. Most recently in my role with Citizens with Disabilities Ontario, we decided to join the Accessible Housing Network along with numerous other organizations and is starting to get representation coast to coast.

Joeita Gupta:
For those of us who don't know, what is the Accessible Housing Network?

Tracy Odell:
Yes, it is a network. It's not registered with the government as a charity or anything like that. It's just a network of organizations. I think there's some individuals who are just volunteering. But we have a list of I think going on 50 or so organizations from the Toronto Council on Aging to spinal cord injury. Canadian Federation of the Blind is on there. The ODSP Action Coalition, lots of organizations like that.
Some are more involved in a leadership role with the organization and others are members and they just help to promote and support things. For example, whenever there's an election, we attempt to [inaudible 00:05:55] but we tried to get pledges from the various MPs or MPPs or anybody running for office. Right now we've got the mayor's election going on in Toronto where I live.

Joeita Gupta:
Yes. You reach out to MPs and MPPs just to keep them in the loop and get their support around accessible housing. But right now there's also an election happening in Toronto. It's actually a by-election for the mayor of Toronto. And as we know, the mayor of Toronto has a lot of power when it comes to development of housing in the city. Is that the kind of thing you're getting involved with as well?

Tracy Odell:
Well, what we are doing as a network is we are contacting the people who are running for mayor and asking them to sign our housing pledge that they will support having 100% accessible housing. We are deciding that in conjunction with Universal Accessible Design. I can explain that in a bit because that's worth explaining, but we're just trying to get them to pledge that they will support that. There's a number of things on the pledge that I'll be able to read out to you if you want.

Joeita Gupta:
Well, you've certainly got your work cut out, I have to say, because you've got, let's see, 101 candidates and one dog running for mayor in Toronto. You're going to have your hands full with that. But Tracy, I want to go back to something you said earlier. You talked about accessible housing versus universally designed housing. Universally designed housing is also known as European housing, or so I've heard. What is the difference between the two?

Tracy Odell:
A universally designed house will have features built in, including some features that you can add later if you want to. For instance, the walls in the bathroom will have reinforcement. If later you want to put a handrail there, you're able to do that. Or closets will be stacked. Like say if you're in a house, you'll have a closet on the main floor that lines up with a closet up above. Later on, if you want to turn that into an elevator shaft, you can do that because behind the walls they've built in the rails and whatever might be necessary to do that. Then if you need the elevator, then that's up to you to put that in place.
It would have other features like the braille and so on. That would be helpful. And then if people needed more than that, they could add more than that. It's more than just being able to visit someone else's house, because there's also visitable housing that we hear about, which means you go to someone's house and hang around on the main floor, maybe a bathroom there, but you can't live there. There might not necessarily be a bedroom on that floor, for instance, or an office on that floor.
It's not any good for you to live in. It doesn't have necessarily the background things that I talked about with universal design, like the things that are ready and waiting. If you wanted to put an electric door, then the wiring would be there behind the frame of the door. You buy your electric door and it's installed. The wiring piece is already ready to plug into your door.

Joeita Gupta:
In Toronto, if you look outside my window, like in Downtown Toronto where I live, you will see cranes in the sky. There's so much construction happening. I suspect the same is true for cities across the country where we're seeing this construction boom. With all of this construction happening, how much attention are developers paying to universal design? You talked about all these great principles and ideas included in universal design. Are developers listening to you?

Tracy Odell:
Very few will. I think there's a couple that are waking up to it. Daniels has been very prominent in promoting their work to have accessible units within their condominiums. But then again, not everyone's in a position to buy a condominium right at this time. I mean, just the prices are through the roof. They've always been difficult for people to achieve it. Definitely, they're quite high, but they are interested and they're interested too in... They've gotten architects involved in this, which is brilliant.
Because then when people are going through school to learn to be architects, they'll be learning about this, and it'll be an idea that they can present to whoever they are building for. Say, "Hey, if you thought about this," because it'll make their units much more attractive in the future because it's not going to be long that we're going to see housing prices totally reversed. Because with the bulge in the population, you're going to have people getting older leaving their houses like they are right now and they're going to be more and more and more on the market.
But with universal design, a person wouldn't have to leave their house to go to somewhere more accessible. That would already be there. If they want to stay at home for another five years, 10 years, 20 years and if they were healthy enough to do that, they could do it because they didn't have to worry just about the basic accessibility of their house.

Joeita Gupta:
It's a big thing, especially as we hear a lot of this rhetoric about staying at home and aging in place. It's certainly a desirable outcome to have seniors avoid as much as possible the nursing home situation or long-term care and stay in their own homes. If nothing else, it saves the healthcare system a lot of money.
But again, you point out, and I agree with you 100%, not everyone can afford to buy a house or a condominium. What is the landscape like for tenants? Because if you've got a lot of tenants with disabilities, how many options are there for accessible or universally designed apartments out there for the renters who we're talking about?

Tracy Odell:
Don't get me started. I bet you could put them on an Excel spreadsheet and not get past 1,000 individual units. There's not that many. Because in a building that they approve to be accessible, as long as a certain percent of the units are accessible, that is good enough. Sometimes that's the kind of thing that the city will want. But projects that do aim to provide accessibility only go for a certain percent, and that's very difficult. It's like if there's a lottery and you want to win that prize, if you have one ticket, that's your only chance at that prize. But if you are positioned to have a million tickets, you've got a much better chance.
An apartment that's accessible is like those tickets. If you can only have an accessible apartment, you are reduced to just having that one ticket. Whereas anybody else who doesn't require it has a choice of thousands, millions of other units. Anyone that became vacant, they could go into. But if you have to wait for an accessible one... Many apartments could have people move, but the accessible one, you might not have a change of a tenant there and you're waiting. Waiting list to get in an accessible apartment that is on a list that some know where they are, it's hard to find them, but it's very difficult. It's near impossible to find something that's accessible.

Joeita Gupta:
Tracy, I really want to address the financial side of this equation. Because for a lot of people, housing is their biggest expense. We know that housing is becoming increasingly unaffordable. When we talk about housing affordability, it's not just about, at least for people with disabilities, it's not just about the mortgage or the cost of rent, but also if people are modifying their homes to make them more accessible, the cost of some of those home renovations.
What programs or projects are in place to make housing more affordable for people with disabilities, whether they're renters or whether they're homeowners? What projects exist to help with the costs of home renovations so that if someone with a disability is having to make modifications, they're not taking a financial hit because of it?

Tracy Odell:
I'm aware of only one program that's administered by the March of Dimes that govern, I think, it directly. It has a certain limit. I don't know the latest limit, I'd have to look it up, but it used to be say $15,000 to permit you to renovate your home. That's not going to do a lot of renovations. If you have to widen a couple of doorways or if you want to put in fire alarms that are audio and visual bulbs or something like a ramp, even elevator, it's so expensive. That money might not do everything you want.

Joeita Gupta:
Well, Tracy, I have to say, you're painting a very gloomy picture here.

Tracy Odell:
It is gloomy.

Joeita Gupta:
I think we all understand the scope of the problem, but I do have to stop you here just for a moment. Yeah, no, no, it is a really, really gloomy picture. But Tracy, I've only got a few minutes with you and I want to ask you, where do we go from here? What solutions would you like to see put forward to address the gaps in accessible housing for people with disabilities?

Tracy Odell:
Well, I think that we need a commitment from the people that make decisions that they're going to support having 100% housing that is accessible to the standard of universal design, which is already laid out at the federal level. They need to commit to do that, first of all. If they're in the position to issue permits, which happens at the municipal level, then the condition of that permit should be that all the units should be accessible. And not because you're going to fill the place up with all people with disabilities, but for that ticket so that you're not restricted to just holding one ticket if you did want move in to that building.
That would have to happen at 100% accessibility for probably 50 to 100 years to make up for the time we have lost so far. Being able to have accessible housing. We do need that commitment so that things that are built new and fresh are going to be built accessible, like no questions asked. That happens in Australia now. They have passed a law that they have to do this with all of their new buildings. The other piece I think is supporting people who want to do some renovations so that they can make their home more livable to stay there longer.
And also for new builders to pick up the chores and get this going and understand that it's going to be easy to sell units that have accessible features compared to units who don't. Because we're starting to realize as more people are getting older, it might not be myself or it might not be my brother or my sister, but it might be another relative or it might be my partner, it might be someone else who is going to need that. People will be used to... I'm thinking ahead, I think. Of course, also we need to have some support for people who can't even begin to make that rental payment.
People that have ODSP would have a housing allowance that matches what they need to pay for their rent and more housing that's purposely built by the city to be affordable for people with a variety of human conditions, like a disability is a human condition. If you live long enough, you're going to inherit at least one. That would be good.

Joeita Gupta:
I want to leave you with one last thought and you could maybe offer your reflections on it. Let's say, Tracy, that you find an accessible home. No, scratch that. You find a universally designed home and it's affordable and it's perfect. You think to yourself, okay, Tracy, this is where I'm going to live for the rest of my life. And then you move in and you realize, hang on a minute, there is no groceries to be found.
The closest grocery store is 20 minutes away. The shopping mall is nowhere in sight. I don't have access to the bus stop, and there's very little public transit here. There isn't even a sidewalk. Come winter, you're basically stuck at home. I ask you this, when we talk about accessible housing, how much of that conversation comes down to designing inclusive neighbourhoods and communities? How big a piece of the puzzle is that?

Tracy Odell:
Well, that's a very good question, and I think they go hand in hand, right? Otherwise, you're just a prisoner in your own house. One way you're a prisoner left outside the house, you can't get out, get in rather, or you can be prison inside. They do go hand in hand. One or the other is not a solution.

Joeita Gupta:
Tracy, thank you so much for speaking to me on the program today. It was a pleasure having you.

Tracy Odell:
Thank you so much. Have a great one.

Joeita Gupta:
That was Tracy Odell who joined us to talk about accessible housing. We'll have a couple of links in the description below so that you have a chance to look at some of the websites and programs that Tracy talked about today. Do check out the description. Of course, if you haven't already done so, we highly encourage you to subscribe to The Pulse so you can catch this and future episodes so you're not missing out on anything. Well, that's all the time we have for today's episode about The Pulse, but we've got the third of three episodes to get to about disability and housing.
I hope you'll tune in next week when I talk to Angela Fox, who is a podcaster and the author of a book, My Blue Front Door, where Angela's talking about her journey as a wheelchair user and how she bought her first home. There's a couple of ways in which you can contact us here on the program with your feedback. You can give us a call at 1-866-509-4545. That's 1-866-509-4545. Don't forget to leave your permission to play the audio on the program. You can write us an email, feedback@ami.ca or find us on Twitter @AMIaudio and use the hashtag #pulseami.
You can also find me on Twitter @joeitagupta. My videographer today has been Matthew McGurk. Marc Aflalo is the technical producer. Ryan Delehanty is the coordinator for podcasts at AMI-audio, and Andy Frank is the manager of AMI-audio. I've been your host, Joeita Gupta. Thanks for listening.