Is Homeownership Accessible?

Chet Cooper, the founder of ABILITY Magazine, and Millard Fuller, the founder of Habitat for Humanity, came together for the ABILITY House project. Each ABILITY House is an accessible home built for a family wherein one or more members have health conditions or disabilities. What makes the project even more empowering are the volunteers who are specifically targeted have the full range of disabilities, including physical, learning, and mental disabilities, to demonstrate that much too often people with disabilities are overlooked as a valuable resource for employment and volunteering. The project founders noted that the disabled were an underutilized resource of community participation, and many talents and skills were overlooked. There is no reason that all people with disabilities cannot be called upon to volunteer and mentor. These projects bring the whole community together. “We are all connected. Who doesn’t want their community to flourish?” says Fuller in an interview with ABILITY Magazine. 

ABILITY Magazine was founded in the 1990s as a public awareness vehicle. This era was about the time the American’s with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed, and Chet Cooper realized that although it presented more opportunities as the doors for persons with disabilities opened in areas such as employment and education, for this social advancement to flourish, there needed to be a way to translate the new legal rights to the public and change people’s attitudes. ABILITY Magazine uses celebrity interviews and human interest stories to build awareness that disability is part of the fabric of life. 

ABILITY Awareness, a non profit organization, was founded in 1995 by Chet Cooper to help provide solutions for persons with disabilities. ABILTIY Awareness promotes opportunities for people with disabilities in housing, employment, volunteerism, education, and media. ABILITY House is a project of ABILITY Awareness along with partnering Habitat Affiliates.

The Habitat for Humanity goal is to provide decent and affordable shelter, and in 1999 its ABILITY House partnership with the Birmingham, Alabama affiliate, made this goal a reality for Chris Wright. The building began and within 7 days of blitz building, Chris was the proud recipient of the first ABILITY House. Chris is a paraplegic who lost the use of his legs at the age of twenty-nine from traverse myelitis, an infection of the spinal cord. ABILITY House is no different from any other Habitat Homes–the recipients are not given a hand out but a hand up, for they have to put in volunteer service hours helping build other Habitat homes. Chris put in 300 volunteer hours to meet this requirement. 

Although the first and most important goal of an ABILITY House is to provide homeownership, part of the mission is to promote and to raise awareness of the need for visitable housing. The visitability movement asks developers to incorporate into all homes they build–not just those specifically built for people with disabilities–three basic features that allow people with limited mobility to enter and move about the home. Those features are at least one no-step entrance, a bathroom on the first floor that is big enough that someone can enter with a wheelchair and close the door, and doorways that are wide enough for a person in a wheelchair to navigate around the first floor of the home. These features not only can help increase the value of a home but also make it welcoming for all people. 

ABILITY Houses have many accessible and visitable features, but Chris’s house is also tailored to meet his specific needs. For example, the home has an intercom system that allows Chris to screen his callers and buzz them into his home. Chris’s home has many other accessible features, such as a wraparound deck, front and back entrance ramps, wider doors to fit a wheelchair, and many other features that make the home not only accessible but visitable for all people. 

Money, marketability, or attractiveness does not need to be sacrificed to include accessibility features. Aesthetically, “accessibility” can be integrated into a home and landscape design so that it is unnoticeable or an attractive feature of the property. 

ABILITY House has built several homes since the first in Connecticut. Joie Bracket and her two daughters were the recipients of one of the homes. Both the daughters have ocular albinism, a genetic condition that causes decreased visual activity, or low vision. Their home demonstrates to the children that any level of loss need not hamper a full and productive life. 

In Benson, North Carolina, Selma Smith, who is a quadriplegic, was also a recipient of an ABILITY House. It includes Universal Design features to allow Selma to move freely around her house. Universal Design is the creation of products and environments meant to be usable by all people without the need for adaptation or specialization. 

Other projects of ABILITY House include The ABILITY House College Students with Disabilities Initiative. College students with disabilities are involved in all stages of planning and construction of ABILITY Houses. 

The ABILITY House Veterans with Disabilities Initiative, in cooperation with the Department of Veterans Affairs’ vocational rehabilitation and employment service departments, the Paralyzed Veterans of America, and numerous private and state veterans’ services agencies, also participate in ABILITY House construction, and veterans are also targeted as potential recipients of ABILITY Houses.

The importance of ABILITY Houses is described perfectly by Christina Gilmore, Ms. Wheelchair America 1999, in an excerpt from an ABILITY Magazine article: 

“A good friend once told me ‘You cannot experience life from your back porch.’ Looking back, I realize that this friend not only wanted me to experience what life had to offer, but he was also encouraging me to share my accomplishments and depth of experience with the world as testament of the true abilities of those with disabilities. 

“I cannot help but relate the words of wisdom I received from my friend to my experiences with the ABILITY House. For anyone to experience the wonders of life, one must mentally and physically be willing to venture out beyond what typically feels comfortable and safe. For most of us this comfort zone has and will continue to be our homes. Mentally, people with disabilities have always been willing to leave their ‘porches’ to experience life and contribute to society, but physically they have not always had the opportunities. Accessible housing has been a difficult challenge for many in the disabled community, and it is this challenge that has kept them from truly experiencing the good and the bad that comes with life. 

“Now, thanks to all of the efforts put forth by the volunteers and sponsors of ABILITY House, Chris Wright now has the opportunity to leave his porch and experience life while also having the freedom to come home again to a place where he feels comfortable and independent.”

Since the ABILITY House project began in 1999 nine ABILITY Houses have been built. ABILITY Awareness has a lot on its plate for the next couple of years, with fourteen houses planned in Orange County, California. Also, there are houses in the works in Everett, Washington; the Gulf Coast area in Mississippi; Raleigh, North Carolina; Fresno, California; and Ashland, Oregon.
 
“The ABILITY House project spotlights the need for accessible, visitable housing and serves as a conduit of collaboration between nonprofits and community-minded corporations,” says Susan Desmond, project director for ABILTIY Awareness. “At the same time, ABILITY House projects provide volunteer opportunities for people with disabilities, highlighting their often overlooked skills and proving their valuable contribution to society.”
 
Resources:

ABILITY Magazine–www.abilitymagazine.com
ABILITY Awareness–www.abilityawareness.org
Habitat for Humanity–www.habitat.org

Portions of this article are reprinted with the permission of ABILITY Magazine.