Re: [GBlist] Accessible housing (was Eco Condos in Montreal)

[Ellen Cooney <ekcooney@earthlink.net>]

susannah@cyber-dyne.com wrote:

> Whew, where to start?  :-)
> 
>  
> The green part:  While there do exist a few people who will have perfect 
> health and no injuries until they read reach a ripe age, and a few 
> others who will die young, most people will have one or more periods of 
> a year or longer, in young adulthood or middle age, when they are laid 
> up -- a back injury, or mono, or a complex leg fracture, for example.  
> Is it really realistic to expect people to move out of their homes,  
> into subsidized housing, and then back into a new house after they 
> recover?  That's our current system, but it doesn't seem like a 
> particularly green or efficient use of resources to me.  For folks with 
> a permanent disability, is it realistic or green to do an extensive 
> remodel every time they move?
> 


This is just a snip, but Susannah's note pretty much describes what my husband 
and I have experienced in looking to buy or build a home. We've pretty much 
concluded that our only choice is to build a custom house, and that it would 
probably have to be outside urban areas.

I would be delighted if, as Corwyn put it, there was diverse housing for diverse 
needs -- but it just is not out there. All too many builders, developers, 
architects, etc. do what Christopher Holmes has done with the ecocondos -- 
decide that accessibility is too expensive. (Where have we heard that before? 
"It's just too expensive to build green." "It's just too expensive to install 
alternative energy") Everyone assumes that some other project will include 
accessibility, but they don't.

As a businessperson, this perplexes me. Why would I design a product that 
automatically excludes 20% to 30% of my potential customers? Depending on 
location, 10% to 15% (and more in some locations) of the population is over age 
65. Another 5% to 10% has some mobility limitations. Add in folks of my age 
(just turned 50 this week) who want to buy or build a house that will last the 
rest of their lives, and with baby boomers coming along, you've lost a huge 
chunk of the potential market. We're not the folks buying starter homes; we 
should be a pretty attractive market.

As a person interested in building with principles -- building green, creating 
community -- I am taken aback when those principles are pursued to the exclusion 
of large groups of people or in ways that make those folks second class 
residents. A nearby cohousing project, for instance, offers a very limited 
number of handicapped accessible units, but they are only 850 sq. feet, 20% to 
50% smaller than other units.

I hold out hope that we will see more of the "visitable" home designs that 
Susannah mentions, or the adaptable designs that Christopher saw in England. I'd 
gladly pay for an upgrade package to gain accessibility where I would be paying 
for upgrades that had been planned for, not ones that had to tear apart a new 
home simply because the design did not take accessibility into account.

Ellen






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