Five-year-old Beau begins each day by being carried by a parent to the family’s living room, where his wheelchair awaits him at their home in Beamsville, Ontario.
Diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy at 17 months, Beau is unable to walk independently due to the disease, which damages nerves and causes severe muscle weakness.
Beau’s daily life presents barriers most would never think about when raising a child, said his mother, Rachel O’Hagan. The doors to their house aren’t wide enough for a wheelchair, which means Beau has to be carried from room to room, including the bathroom.
He cannot access the sink to wash his hands or brush his teeth on his own, or reach the light switches. As he gets older, O’Hagan said she and her husband Bryce know these challenges will only get worse, especially since he weighs too much for them to lift.
“These are all things he could do on his own if the house could accommodate him,” she said.
“He wouldn’t need our support… He could move around freely.”
Amid a housing crisis that has Canadian policymakers and developers scrambling to increase supply, those living with disabilities are urging leaders to enshrine accessibility in more new construction housing than the country has ever seen. historically.
“It really seems like an impossible situation for us, I won’t lie,” O’Hagan said.
“We want our son to be able to access everything he needs.”
Beau’s situation mirrors the early life of Tracy Odell, a 66-year-old woman living in Toronto who was born with the same condition.
Growing up, Odell attended what is now known as Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, which he described as “an institution for children” where they live and receive their education.
But when he turned 18 and was left out of the program, his options were slim.
“A nursing home was accessible, but the apartments weren’t. Houses weren’t built that way. You had to specifically look for an apartment that didn’t have stairs in the building and had an elevator,” Odell said.
“As for the design of the apartment, we had to make do.”
Decades later, Odell is surprised by how little has changed, calling the affordable housing options available in Canada “deplorable.”
“This is a hugely urgent issue,” said Jutta Treviranus, director of the Inclusive Design Research Center at OCAD University.
“There is a housing crisis for everyone, but the housing crisis is much more intense for anyone who needs affordable housing because the lack of supply is exponentially tighter.”
Treviranus said it’s not surprising that Canada lacks enough housing to meet the needs of the disabled community, considering how infrequently their voices are heard at the decision-making table.
“An accessible home is an adaptable home. It’s a home that has options,” he said.
“There is no fixed solution or one-size-fits-all approach to providing accessibility.”
Federal housing advocate Marie-Josee Houle called on Ottawa in her 2022-2023 report to “embed accessibility from the start” into its National Housing Strategy.
That included recommendations such as ensuring that all new government-funded housing units met a minimum “visitability” criterion, defined as having a level entrance, wider doorways and hallways, and a wheelchair-accessible bathroom on the floor of the building. entry level.
All levels of government have a role to play in pushing for more affordable housing, whether through changes to building code requirements or financial incentives tied to grants, said Stephanie Cadieux, the federal government’s chief accessibility officer.
When asked if Canada had fallen behind its peers in that regard, Cadieux acknowledged: “We’re not ahead of the curve yet.”
“We’re not building houses that work for everyone. The way we build houses is largely designed for healthy people,” he said in an interview.
“It is important that we start through policy to insist that we are building homes that are adaptable to people’s changing needs over time. Ultimately, if we do that, that will ensure that everyone can live where they want to live. .. because that housing offer will exist. Currently it does not exist.”
Cadieux said there is a huge opportunity to change the face of affordable housing across Canada right now, particularly as the federal government targets 3.87 million new homes by 2031.
“Now is the time,” he said.
“It’s been proven time and time again that it’s much more expensive to fix something after the fact when it comes to accessibility than it is to do it up front.”
Studies conducted by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. support that claim. A 2019 comparison by the national housing agency showed that it would cost between 185 and 779 per cent more, depending on the type of housing, to make an existing home affordable in Montreal compared to a new home.
A previous CMHC report said building a new accessible and adaptable home carried an additional cost of only six to 12 percent compared to standard construction, depending on the model and city in which the home would be built. .
“With our population aging and demand for adaptable and affordable housing increasing, it is in the real estate industry’s best interest to adjust its supply accordingly,” he said.
Daniels Corp. is a developer in the Greater Toronto Area that has accepted that call through its Accessibility Design Program. First introduced in 2017, the builder set out to create homes designed in an accessible way for people who use mobility devices at no additional cost.
The units, available for rent or purchase, have features such as roll-in showers and roll-out balconies along with accessible common spaces, including lowered concierge desks, accessible kitchens in party rooms, and waste chutes with automatic door openings.
So far, the developer has completed 38 affordable units, with 124 under construction and another 36 in the pre-construction design phase.
“When we work with our commercial contractors and say, ‘This light receptacle and this switch should be here and not here,’ there is no cost to that. There is a minimum cost from the beginning of a project if you look at building bathrooms in the units that don’t have a bathtub,” said Heela Omarkhail, vice president of social impact at Daniels.
“It was really these types of features and often finishes that we looked at (and said), ‘Okay, if we can make some of these improvements from the beginning… instead of trying to incorporate them later, can we be? More responsive to the needs of the accessibility community?”
But Omarkhail acknowledged that there is much more work to do on that front. He said there is a gap of affordable units available compared to the needs of Canadians; Estimates suggest that more than a quarter of them live with some form of disability.
“If you look at our market in the GTA or Canada as a whole, we’re not building 15 to 20 per cent of homes with improved accessibility features,” he said.
Kate Chung, co-founder of Accessible Housing Network, worries that “people with disabilities are being totally ignored” in the process.
But he said ongoing efforts to boost housing supply in Canada could serve as a turning point.
In early 2024, the federal government launched its Housing Design Catalog program, a reboot of a post-World War II-era initiative aimed at providing standardized housing designs that reduce the time needed for design, approvals and the construction.
A government report published in the summer said feedback from stakeholders consistently highlighted that greater accessibility must be an essential feature of the design portfolio.
“The non-profit sector and accessibility advocates reinforced not only the importance of universal design features in addressing the needs of Canadians today, but also the growing need as Canada’s population continues to age.” , says the report.
Chung said this recommendation, if carefully adopted, could point Canada’s housing crisis in the right direction.
“There’s an opportunity here. You’re going to build all these homes and you have control over the design of the homes,” he said.
“Everything needs to have a universal design, so that anyone of any age or ability can live there and continue to live there, even if they have a stroke or a heart attack (multiple sclerosis), a truck, no matter what. for them, whether they end up with a permanent or temporary disability.”
Today, the Toronto bungalow where Odell lives is imperfect, but good enough to survive, he said. It has an elevator to go up to the front porch and enter the house, along with a rear ramp built by her husband.
She doesn’t have access to the basement or adjustable counters in the kitchen to help her get there.
Its doors are wide enough to pass through, although they are marked with scratches due to space limitations when entering a room with the aid of a wheelchair.
Still, Odell said she’s lucky to have a home in the community that isn’t hampered by more barriers.
“If I were looking for anything else right now, I think it would be very, very difficult,” he said.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 27, 2024.
