For People With Disabilities, A Fight For Access To Housing
2018; Project HOPE; Volume: 37; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1377/hlthaff.2018.0050
ISSN2694-233X
Autores Tópico(s)Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism
ResumoEntryPoint Health AffairsVol. 37, No. 3: Advancing Health Equity For People With Disabilities, A Fight For Access To HousingMarilyn Werber Serafini AffiliationsMarilyn Werber Serafini ([email protected]) is an independent journalist and health policy consultant based in Washington, D.C.PUBLISHED:March 2018Free Accesshttps://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2018.0050AboutSectionsView PDFPermissions ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissionsDownload Exhibits AbstractThe City of Los Angeles continues to struggle to make available housing that is both affordable and accessible.TOPICSDisabilitiesDisabledNonprofit statusNursing homesEngracia Figueroa had to wait twelve years, but in September 2017 she received the "golden ticket," as she calls it: a Section 8 federal housing voucher to help her afford a place of her own in Los Angeles. Figueroa's celebration, though, soon turned to panic. Despite an exhaustive search, she hasn't been able to find housing that will accept her voucher and accommodate her wheelchair. Now she fears the voucher will expire and she'll plummet to the bottom of the list.Figueroa lost a leg and suffered a spinal cord injury twenty-five years ago, when she fainted and fell in front of an oncoming commuter train. She says that she's struggled through plenty of housing that doesn't work for her. She's currently bunking with a friend in a studio apartment, but she can't get her chair through the bathroom door or use the stove. Figueroa has been stranded in the apartment for days at a time while waiting for elevator repairs.At one point, she even landed in a nursing home for a year, when that was the only accessible housing available to her. In her forties, Figueroa is dynamic and positive, but she was by far the youngest resident at the nursing home and called it a "nightmare. I'm in there with people who are senile and dying.… It's not the place for someone who [can] live life and be independent."Figueroa's story has become commonplace in LA, say advocates and government officials alike. More than 200,000 city residents are in need of accessible units, yet fewer than 100,000 such units exist, according to an October 2017 assessment by the City of Los Angeles and its Housing Authority.1 In housing, accessibility is a broad term that is generally used to describe whether a unit meets the needs of people with disabilities. For people in wheelchairs, for example, doorways and hallways must be wider, and kitchen counters need to be lower. For people with hearing impairments, emergency alarms must be visual, such as strobing lights.In reality, the situation may be worse than the official assessment suggests. LA officials say that the estimates are rough and that they have a poor understanding of the need and supply. Moreover, there's agreement that some units have been misidentified as accessible and that many accessible units have gone to people who don't need them."There's not enough affordable housing being built, by a long shot, or we wouldn't have 34,000 homeless in LA," says Laura Guglielmo, executive officer of the Los Angeles Housing and Community Investment Department. "And it's that much harder for people with disabilities."The LawsuitsThe situation has forced LA into two legal battles that are drawing national attention. LA settled one lawsuit in 2016, but the other is just heating up. Both involve hundreds of millions of dollars, and while progress toward meeting the settlement conditions is slow, the city is gearing up for major changes.Three advocacy groups filed one suit in 2012, claiming the city was falling far short of legal requirements to ensure affordable, accessible housing. As part of the settlement, LA agreed to spend at least $200 million to guarantee the addition of 4,000 units over the next ten years.2 Under federal law, 5 percent of units that receive federal funding must be accessible for people with mobility impairments, and 2 percent must be accessible for people with auditory and visual impairments. LA has already established requirements that double those numbers. The units can be new or retrofitted, and the city can also demonstrate that existing units meet the requirements.The settlement marks the largest in history when it comes to affordable accessible housing, and disability advocates hope it will send a strong message to other cities. Indeed, there's some indication that legal action in other cities may be forthcoming."The success of our litigation in LA has riveted the attention of disability and fair housing advocates in all parts of the country, and we have many inquiries about whether the same enforcement is possible," says Michael Allen, lead counsel for the three organizations that brought the suit and a partner at Relman Dane & Colfax, a national civil rights law firm.Guglielmo, who is managing the settlement operations, says she's also hearing from officials in other cities, mostly in California, who are facing similar disability housing challenges and want to know about LA's plans. She says she hopes to create a model program.The second lawsuit gained some heft in June 2017, when the US Department of Justice announced it would intervene, using the False Claims Act to attempt to recoup millions of dollars in federal funding that it alleges LA fraudulently accepted without delivering promised accessible units.Along with Mei Ling, a city resident and wheelchair user, the Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley (a nonprofit civil rights advocacy group) filed the lawsuit (United States ex rel. Ling, et al. v. City of Los Angeles, et al.) in 2011 in US District Court in LA. The Department of Justice, targeting the same general claim, will take over the litigation, and Ling and the council may share in any recovery.3 A motion to dismiss this case was scheduled to be heard in the US District Court for the Central District of California on Feb 20, after this article went to print. While the first case sought the addition of accessible units to better meet the needs of the disabled, the second lawsuit focuses on fraud and aims to return federal money to the general treasury."While people with disabilities struggled to find accessible housing, the city and its agents denied them equal access to housing while falsely certifying the availability of such housing to keep the dollars flowing," Acting US Attorney Sandra R. Brown said in a June statement.3Mike Feuer, the LA city attorney, has promised to fight the lawsuit. A spokesperson for Feuer called it an "abuse of power," arguing that it would "deprive the city of crucial funds needed to address our housing crisis," according to an article in the Los Angeles Times.4Complying with disability laws is a heavy lift, especially in California, where there's a shortage of affordable housing for the general population. Indeed, over 60 percent of LA households are spending more than one-third of their income on housing, according to the city's assessment.1 For people with disabilities, who tend to have lower incomes, the situation is worse. About 27 percent of people with disabilities in LA have incomes that fall below the federal poverty level ($12,060 for an individual in 2017),5 compared to 19 percent of people without disabilities.Lower-income people with disabilities generally have only the following three subsidized options: government-run public housing; nonprofit organization–operated subsidized housing; and privately rented housing, the price of which can be offset with government vouchers.Accessibility in housing not only allows people with disabilities to perform everyday activities, but it also provides a foundation for opportunity and health. Having a home that meets a person's needs is a prerequisite to finding work, being productive, and contributing to the community. Such factors can, in turn, be powerful determinants of health and well-being. "A lack of housing has a huge impact on people's health," says Guglielmo. "For people with disabilities, if [they are] not housed, their health problems are exacerbated."Progress And DelaysMore than a year after the settlement of the first lawsuit, LA is pulling together an infrastructure for change, although some deadlines have already slipped.The city "is not putting resources forward in a timely way," says Autumn Elliott, associate managing attorney at Disability Rights California, a nonprofit that represents people with disabilities and serves as the state's legal advocacy unit. Most importantly, "construction or retrofitting of units is significantly behind schedule," says Allen.The city missed a September deadline to finalize an accessible housing unit plan. It was also late in appointing a settlement monitor and an architect, and it hasn't yet taken steps to better connect landlords with prospective disabled renters.Still, Lillibeth Navarro, founder and executive director of Communities Actively Living Independent and Free (CALIF), is cautiously optimistic about the long term. "We are now sitting side by side with the city, free to talk to them as equals," she says. "We have reviewed their training modules that they intend to give to all developers.… It's a great improvement, but the proof is in the pudding."Guglielmo acknowledges the delays but maintains that both sides expected that the city might miss some of the aggressive deadlines. Still, she says, the city didn't wait for the settlement or key personnel to be in place before getting started. LA has constructed more than 300 accessible units since 2015, and "we haven't waited for the architect to do it." She was expecting an architect to be on board by midwinter to survey all of the properties that have received public funding—both new and existing units. The architect will assess compliance with accessibility standards and decide how to remedy deficiencies.LA has also begun educating property managers, owners, and developers about fair housing policies and will finish its initial round of training by June, says Guglielmo. The city plans to train about 3,000 people. The training will include information about reserving units for disabled people in the future. For now, building managers must relocate nondisabled people if they are occupying accessible units.In addition, Guglielmo is working on ways to improve outreach, as there is currently no central point of application for people with disabilities. "Housing providers say they don't know where to find people with disabilities to live in our units," says Allen, and "disabilities advocates say people are in nursing homes who would live in your housing tomorrow.… There's a communication disconnect."The starting point will be an existing website where property owners can register units with specific accessible features, says Guglielmo, whose team is planning to revise that site or create a new one for properties the city helps finance. The existing site, however, turns up no available properties when one searches using the minimal requirements for someone with a wheelchair, even at the highest searchable rent level ($9,000 a month).6Whose Rules?A major challenge for the city is to improve its communication with developers about what constitutes accessibility. Three different sets of standards exist, and over the years the city has sown massive confusion by providing developers with conflicting guidance about which standards to use, says Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, president and CEO of LA Family Housing, a real estate developer and homeless service provider agency in the city.Because developers submit architectural plans to the city for approval, they have generally based their designs on its accessibility standards—which differ from those of the state and federal governments. However, the federal government requires federally assisted units to meet federal requirements."This wasn't frustrating until there was a lawsuit, and then the city turned around and told us we had to correct our buildings," says Klasky-Gamer, noting that some of the buildings are twenty years old. "They said, 'It's our mistake, but we don't have the money to give you to correct your buildings.'… We had no reason to believe the city wasn't complying with federal rules." Moving forward, developers must hire a consultant to inspect their properties for compliance.In many cases, using one set of standards instead of another might not be significant in terms of usability. According to Klasky-Gamer, it could mean the difference between using a bent or a straight arm to grasp a handrail. However, Navarro says that her colleagues have seen too many instances of "accessible" units that would require a wheelchair user to navigate steps or to leave the bathroom door open to use the toilet, and they aren't sure whether to attribute the problem to confusion, lack of enforcement, or both.Navarro and other advocates plan to carefully monitor the city's enforcement of the settlement agreement and the laws. "Training the building managers and developers is not enough," she says. The city "has to do some spot-checking. LA must make sure developers have the right information about accessibility standards, then hold them responsible if they don't do it right."Others will be keeping a close eye on national trends: The housing problem for people with disabilities is only expected to worsen as the population ages. According to a 2017 analysis7 by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, 8.3 million older households and nearly 9.0 million younger households include a person with physical disabilities, and that means they need accessible homes. Yet only 1 percent of housing nationwide features a no-step entryway, single-level living, extra-wide hallways and doors, electrical controls reachable from a wheelchair, and lever-style handles on faucets and doors. "With the older population poised to increase dramatically in the coming decades, many more homes will require accessibility-related modifications," the 2017 analysis notes.7If such modifications are not made, many more people, including the elderly, will face the kinds of struggles that have been a nightmarish reality for people with disabilities in LA. "They live with friends and family," says Dara Schur, litigation counsel with Disability Rights California. "They live in units [that are] not accessible, and people carry them up and down the steps. They are homeless. They live in substandard housing."NOTES1 City of Los Angeles, Housing Authority. Assessment of fair housing plan. Los Angeles (CA): City of Los Angeles; 2017 Oct 25. Google Scholar 2 Los Angeles Housing and Community Investment Department. Settlement agreement [Internet]. Los Angeles (CA): The Department; [cited 2018 Jan 31]. Available from: http://hcidla.lacity.org/settlement-agreement Google Scholar 3 US Attorney's Office Central District of California [Internet]. Los Angeles (CA): The Office. News release, U.S. intervenes in "whistleblower" lawsuit against City of Los Angeles that alleges city received millions of dollars in federal grants and knowingly failed to provide housing accessible to the disabled; 2017 Jun 7 [cited 2018 Jan 31]. Available from: https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/us-intervenes-whistleblower-lawsuit-against-city-los-angeles-alleges-city-received Google Scholar 4 Reyes EA, Zahniser D. Federal government joins whistle-blower suit against L.A. over housing for the disabled. Los Angeles Times [serial on the Internet]. 2017 Jun 7 [cited 2018 Jan 31]. Available from: http://beta.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-justice-disability-suit-20170607-story.html Google Scholar 5 HealthCare.gov. Federal poverty level (FPL) [Internet]. Washington (DC): Department of Health and Human Services; [cited 2018 Jan 31]. Available from: https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/federal-poverty-level-FPL/ Google Scholar 6 Housing.LACity.org [home page on the Internet]. Los Angeles (CA): City of Los Angeles Housing Resource Center; [cited 2018 Jan 31]. Available from: http://housing.lacity.org Google Scholar 7 Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. The state of the nation's housing [Internet]. Cambridge (MA): The Center; 2017 [cited 2018 Jan 31]. Available from: http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/harvard_jchs_state_of_the_nations_housing_2017.pdf Google Scholar Loading Comments... Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. DetailsExhibitsReferencesRelated Article MetricsCitations: Crossref 1 History Published online 5 March 2018 Information© 2018 Project HOPE—The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.PDF downloadCited bySocial Determinants of Health and Disability24 September 2020
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