A home. It's something we all need. But for too many, having a safe place to make a home is out of reach. The challenges can seem insurmountable. And yet, each and every day, people are coming together to provide safe, quality and affordable housing for those in need. Welcome to Let's Talk Housing. I'm your host, Mita Naidu. Join us as we listen to and learn from people in British Columbia who are creating strong, inclusive communities where everyone can thrive.
Hello and welcome to season five of Let's Talk Housing. I'm your host, Mita Naidu. As we begin today's podcast episode, I'd like to acknowledge that I'm recording from the unceded and unsurrended land of the Halkomelem speaking peoples. Also for transparency, this episode is being recorded in January of 2025 and reflects the issues and priorities of that time. Today, on Let's Talk Housing, we are joined by Brad McCannell, VP of Access and Inclusion at the Rick Hansen Foundation.
Doug Tennant, CEO of UNITI, and Jewels Cressman, Community Advocate. We'll be talking about accessible housing and its importance and impact in community. This is Let's Talk Housing. I'd like to open the conversation by hearing a bit about what inspired each of you to focus on accessible housing. What brought you to this place? Doug, what drew you to this field? Yeah. Thanks, Mita. I got involved with this 34 years ago when I met my stepdaughter, Krista, who has down syndrome.
She was three at the time. I was aware that there was discrimination but I wasn't aware at how pervasive it was. Things such as, people protesting her going into her school as the first person with a developmental disability in the school. And so that sort of shifted my paradigm on life and gave me a focus. And over the past 34 years, I've worked as a volunteer, as a frontline worker, and now a board member.
And now in my current position for the last 13 years is the CEO of UNITI, and UNITI is the partnership of three not for profit organizations, one of which, supports people with developmental disabilities and acquired brain injuries. And we found about 20 years ago, that there just wasn't the same housing options for people with developmental disabilities. And so that became part of our mission was to create, and, maintain and run housing that would be inclusive to the entire community.
That's the short version. Right. Right. And I know it's more complicated than that, but it's beautiful to hear that your passion was ignited by family for this work. Thank you for sharing that story. Jewels, what about you? I'd love to hear your story. Why is accessible housing such a meaningful cause for you? When I joined a housing co-op in Coquitlam, I have served on the board three different times. I'm currently the outgoing President.
As we dissolve and go into a new co-op under the name Packard Housing Co-op. When I came in here, I was using a scooter because I had a disability at the time. They weren't really sure what was going on, but I needed a scooter and then a wheelchair. And for a long period of time, I was unable to do outside activities without the assistance of a wheelchair. Then my health improved somewhat. But it was important for me to have an accessible unit.
So I was switch from what was a regular unit to an accessible unit. And you were talking about how is that impacted my life? And I have to say, one of the things that is funny is people assume that because I'm in an accessible unit, I must use a wheelchair. So I get some kind of nasty comments occasionally, like, why do you have an accessible unit? You look fine. There's nothing wrong with you. And they're not nice about it. I'm not talking about people that are polite and are interested.
I'm talking about people who think that they know what they're talking about and they don't. And so they can be quite rude and a little bit uppity, and then you just have to use it as a teachable moment and go, oh, wait a second. Not all abilities are different abilities, as I call them, are visible and so just because they look fine to you doesn't mean I don't benefit from having, a bathtub that's got accessible bars all around it. I have a wider space to be able to change and do things.
If I ever need to go back into my wheelchair, I have that access, etc. And so it's been a positive opportunity for me personally to learn about the challenges that come both in and out of using some sort of mobility aid and also just personally navigating the world with different abilities. So that's kind of my story. Well, first, I'm glad you've got that unit. Thank you. And it's very interesting when we think about invisibility and who gets erased as a result. Right. We'll dive into that more.
Brad, tell us a story. Tell us your story. Oh, gosh. My story. I've been quadriplegic for 44 years now. And this whole accessibility thing is a second career for me. I spent 25 years in the television business, and in 1990, I owned and operated the second largest production company west of Toronto. So we were a very busy group.
And I got a call from my old friend Rick Hansen, and he asked me if I'd be interested in being the Project Manager for the largest congress and exposition on disability ever held, at least to that point. It was called independence 92. And as a producer, I thought, this is great, I'll go do this.
And I went there and I was, up till then, I wasn't part of the community of people with disabilities, I was injured, I got rehab, I went back to work... I was a busy guy and life was good, but I had no exposure to people with disabilities whatsoever until this conference. And this conference was 2700 delegates from 93 countries around the world with every conceivable disability you can think of. And in that conference, I met Justin Dart, who was one of the founders of the ADA.
I met Henry Enns from Disabled Peoples’ International. I met Laurie Beachell, part of the independence movement, and I was blown away by the fact that there was so much to be done and so few people doing it. And actually Henry and Laurie Beachell looked at me and said, you should be here. We need people who know how to communicate.
And so at the end of that conference, I wrapped up my television production company and sold it to the highest bidder and then opened up Canadian Barrier Free Design, the first professional access consulting firm on the West Coast. And from there I went on to... I specialize in large public events like the Olympics and the Paralympic Games and those kinds of things and airports and stuff like that.
But my whole exposure to that community, suddenly I just recognized how we were being held back and we were being held back mostly by the built environment. And that had to change. So I was the guy to do it. So just airports and just the Olympics. Oh gosh. No. Those are not small things, Brad. Well, I had the great pleasure of being on the International Paralympic Committee access working group.
So that was determining the access to be provided at all venues and all events for the Paralympic and Olympic Games. So that led me into everything from corner stores to bakeries to... The interesting thing I found is when it was the 2008 Games in Beijing, and then the 2010 games here in Vancouver, we were able to put 200 people, using wheelchairs on the side of a mountain to watch a downhill ski race. Nobody had ever done that before.
But whether it was the big, big projects or the little corner bakery, the one thing they all had in common is they knew what accessibility meant to them, to their organization. And that's one of the things that's really important. Access is not black and white. It's gray. And how it affects your organization is critically important. And it's the same in housing. That's the same in commercial retail space.
Knowing how it affects your operation is the only way you're going to know what the return on investment is, whether that's cash profit or employee benefits or whatever it is, the only way to take that is to take it personally. And that's what I've been trying to get people to do now for almost 30 years in the access business. So, Brad, I think that's the perfect segue to talk about the impact of the Rick Hansen Foundation.
Tell me about what the organization has done so far to meet evolving, accessible needs over the years. How do you ensure your programs remain relevant and impactful? Well, the foundation has been around for 35 years. Maybe more than that now. So we've taken a national and international approach. We're a unique position to bring organizations open for people with disabilities to go to the corporate world. And that's something that Rick Hansen can do that perhaps nobody else can do as well.
And so that's been a real key to what we've been moving forward to try to bring that knowledge forward and to integrate the needs of people with disabilities into the every day thinking of of bureaucrats, of government, of corporate people.
But what we realized, I was brought into the foundation ten years ago to develop the Rick Hansen Foundation Accessibility Certification Program, and what we recognized was the built environment was the key to the success of all the other pillars of accessibility, whether it's employment, transportation, communications, web access, they all rely on the built environment. Even if you're working from home, you're in a built environment.
So, the bottom line was, without accessible destination, accessible transportation was not as important. And even the best HR program in the world wouldn't work if I couldn't get in the building. So the built environment became our focus. Along with the school program. Our school program is really important to us, but the Built Environment program, what we had to really do is get industry to recognize the return on investment.
It's just laying there and they're just ignoring, and help them understand this isn't about more regulation is not about more red tape. It's about you. It’s about your family. It's about your mom. So the the built environment became a focus. We recognize that the industry has evolving needs as well. The demographics are changing. The industry needs are changing. All this stuff has to come together.
And it's all about the practical application of universal design and delivering that is in our DNA. Can I ask you to define universal design? Universal design is not a thing. It's not a prescription. It doesn't tell you how wide a door should be. It doesn't tell you anything about what you should do for acoustics. There are a set of principles developed by Dr Greg Rice back in the early 1980s. And the idea is quite simple.
If you've made an environment work and functional and safe for young people, and work for older adults and seniors, everything else in the middle would work itself out. So these are principles. Universal design is an approach. It's a way of looking at a built environment. And once you start seeing barriers to people with disabilities, you can't stop. And that's our great advantage. Yeah. When people go through our course, you can just see the lights go on.
Now, when an architect discovers that a handrail is not just for support, but it's actually navigation, it tells people with vision loss where the landings are. Tell them where the path of travel is. By wrapping that handrail around, it says, come with me. I'm going to keep you safe and that's why it's so important that they meet that code and that they follow that. But when they take the course, they see the penny drop. It's not like, okay, I checked a box.
I did number one of the seven principles I've got. It's a way of looking at things, it's a way of shifting the culture to see what we really need in the built environment is just a broader user base. Right now, everything's designed for 18 to 55 year old males. How did that happen? Not the majority of the population. So universal design is an approach. It's a set of principles. But by itself it's not going to change the world. Education and culture shift is going to take that.
That lens is critical in how we think about housing and how we think about buildings and how we think of development. Doug, what's the perspective of UNITI when it comes to addressing unique housing needs, developmental disabilities? You know, what have been the pressing needs? Yeah. And I just wanted to say to start that our main building in South Surrey, Administration and Services building, worked for and received the gold standard from the Rick Hansen Foundation.
And it was a really useful thing to go go through in terms of learning sort of that universal design. And as an organization that supports people with developmental disabilities and acquired brain injuries, many of whom also have physical disabilities... It was a really useful process for us to go to.
I’d sort of add, from our perspective, what we have found is that there's a paradigm of disability, particularly around people with developmental disabilities, where there's a role that they exist to receive help. And it's a very charitable model. And as Brad said, we find when we talk with people and listen to people, that in fact, they want to have everything that everybody else has.
And so we look at our role as supporting people with developmental disabilities to have the same access to housing, to have the same variety of housing as everybody else in the community has. One way to sort of make this clear is that when people in the general community think about people with developmental disabilities in housing, quite often it is about people with developmental disabilities still living in institutions.
It's about the idea that, oh, well, you have a developmental disability, then automatically you want a roommate. The idea that a person with a developmental disability, the first home that they move into after their family home is their forever home. And that's not the experience of most people. Most people go through a variety of different housing as they progress. And so we look at it, UNITI is listening to people. What is it you want for housing?
And that's why we actually started developing housing. We're not developers. We became a developer because there wasn't the type of housing that was needed. And ironically enough, that type of housing was just like housing. That was welcoming to people with developmental disabilities. So we sometimes try to make things strange and weird, but in fact, at the end of the day, our job is to support people with developmental disabilities to have the same opportunities for housing as everybody else.
Right. You're filling a gap. You're filling a need that people just didn't take into consideration because they weren't listening. Jewels, you're someone that also directly engages with the community. What are you hearing from individuals and families? I just think about our place here. We were built in 1981. We have 170 units, but there's only four accessible units, what they term accessible units.
My corridor from the front door to go around the corner into where the bedroom door is, is such a sharp corner that you can't help but take off the drywall on the corners, because there's no bumpers on the corners. It wasn't built with the proper concept of what a person with different abilities needs in order to live and enjoy their home the same way anybody else does in the other units.
But also the community is looking at things like, since we've got the BC Accessibility Act that's come in, we have changes. And I had a member come to me recently with something. I was so grateful she mentioned it to me. She is visually challenged.
And so at night when she wants to come in our back entrance through the loading zone area, when she gets dropped off for a ride, she can't use it because even though there's lighting, it's not adequate for her to be able to safely navigate the sidewalk to get into the back door. So she goes to the side entrance and comes in that one instead. And that doesn't have an automatic door. It's further away from where she is, and I don't think it feels quite as secure for her either. But it is.
There is a security camera, so I think although there have been shifts and I'm very grateful for the work that's being done, the Accessibility Act coming into play and all these things. I still think there's a great deal more work that needs to be done for sure. Yeah, it definitely sounds like that. And we're talking about individuals at this point, but people in families, people with extended families. Right. There's different needs there as well.
Building on that, how do we ensure that housing design addresses both physical and developmental disabilities? Doug, we know this past summer, construction began on Harmony Apartments, which is a development designed to offer affordable and inclusive housing for a diverse group of residents. Can you share what design considerations went in mind? I can compare the two. So we built Chorus in 2016. The first purpose built rental building in Surrey in about three decades.
And at that time we were like, okay, how many adoptable units do we have to build? And it was four. So we said, well, we'll do double, we'll build eight because that's what we believe in. And it was a very sad experience with Chorus because of the 71 homes, 20 were for people with developmental disabilities. And it turned out that none of them really had any serious physical disabilities. And so, they didn't need the adaptable units, which was great.
So we were like, okay, well, we've got eight adaptable units. That's awesome. We can now have people with physical disabilities move in. But when we looked out there and we tried, the problem was there was a disconnect between the adaptable unit and the rent that we needed to get for those units.
And because we were using our funding, that was a building built largely with our funding, to support the tenants with developmental disabilities, we couldn't address that gap and rent for people with physical disabilities. And it was very unfortunate. In fact, at the end of the day, it was just one gentleman who actually came from Kelowna who needed the adaptable unit and used it. And the other seven, we had to just rent out to the general population. So that saddened me at that time.
What I like about the Harmony Project is it's part of the Community Housing Fund with BC Housing and was supported by BC Housing, and that comes with requirements to have six adaptable units, but even better, six accessible units. So we're going to have 12 in total and six of them accessible.
I love that. We are still going to have the same percentage of homes for people with developmental disabilities, but because also the way the rents are set up, where 20% are going to be at shelter rate, so those are likely to be people with developmental disabilities, but then 50% of the rents are at rent geared to income. And that means that we will be able to use the adaptable and accessible units for people who actually need that. And I'm very happy for that. So it's a better setup.
That’s a very novel concept actually. To be able to move around where you need to be with those subsidies in place, yeah. Yeah. And it makes us accountable as a landlord as well that people aren't choosing us just because we have a subsidy, but they're choosing us because we're good landlords, which we are. Right, right. Exactly. Brad and Jewels, like what other factors? We're talking about income.
What other factors do you think are important to creating housing that fosters independence and belonging and a sense of community. Having access to resources and having someone within the community that you're part of or that you're representing that has the knowledge base of knowing where to go and who to connect with.
And for me personally, being involved in the community and different committees and stuff that I'm involved in, it's been really beneficial because it's helped me to connect with a lot of different types of people that are doing community work in the Tri-Cities area, and so I've been able to, for my members and for people in the community, be able to say, hey, I've met this person. They're able to help you with this.
Right now, we have an individual who needed assistance with income in order to continue to live in the co-op because he was disabled, but he had been supported by his family and they both passed away. And now he's all of a sudden living on his own. He's run out of his trust money and boom, how am I supposed to survive? And he did not have the skill set to be independent without assistance.
So fortunately, through SHARE, we were able to give him assistance with getting PWD started, getting his income support there for himself, start to work on other things that he needs to do and get him downsizing to a smaller unit, which will be more manageable and more in line with his income. So having the ability to know who to connect with is really important. So I think one area that we need to grow in is...
You wouldn't want to do... It’s not a fair type thing, but something where there is the ability to bring together like minded people that genuinely care about freedom of access and quality of life for all members of the community that you're part of, and just bringing people together and brainstorming and also just learning to connect with one another so you know who to reach out to.
Like I have people that have reached out to me because they knew that I was at a co-op and might be able to assist someone that needed housing desperately, or I learned about through Community Land Trust that they have a fund for women fleeing domestic violence that are looking for assistance, paying for their shares to get into a housing co-op or a disabled person.
There are so many resources that of all of us represent different organizations, that we know about because of the work that we do, but I don't think there's a good cohesive way yet of connecting those dots to make it more readily available when needed. Okay, that's definitely food for thought. And that plays into the future, right, of... and shaping the future of accessible living. Brad, what are the trends? What are we going to be looking for?
Well, just on that topic, let's remember there's two issues here. One is economic and the other is the built environment. They are not the same. Not interchangeable. The accessible dwelling project that's been booted down the road to 2027. But if we can start, if every home is built to anticipate the needs of the user. In other words, be adaptable. It's not just little portions of a development, not 5%, not 10%. All of a sudden Jewels and Doug, they've got much more choice. They can work...
So the economic issues can be put into almost any development then, because almost any development would work if they follow the rules. So that's what's really important is to separate those two issues. Too often I see like a development design for seniors, but the only design that went into it is the economic model. They didn't talk about hallways with 90 degree corners. You know, one of the things we recommend is just take the corners off. It's those oblique things, right.
We took the corners off to make it easier for people using mobility devices and not hitting walls and stuff. It turned out it was a big benefit for people using sign language as they're walking along, talking to each other and the 90 degree corner comes up, inclusion hazards. But if when that corner was cut off, they could see an advanced and in a couple of instances, we put a convex mirror on the wall so you can see what's coming down the hall.
So making the built environment work for everyone... Now that's the start. Now the economic model comes into play. And organizations like UNITI can take over and start making creative, real, meaningful access for users. You can't tell me how to make my home accessible because you don't know me. Yeah, I can't use a grab bar. These... I'm a quad. These don't grab anything. So there's no grab bars in my house.
If you look closely, you’ll notice one of the bookcases beside the toilet sticks out about three inches further than it should. And that's because I lean on it. That's my grab bar. You can't know that. So from building homes for people with disabilities, the idea that you can create accessible suite for me is ludicrous. You don't know me.
So it's better to create a suite that anticipates the needs of me, or when I move out the next user and have the infrastructure ready for the needs of UNITI, the needs of the co-op users. I think that's actually a very interesting point, Brad, is that once again, you're pointing out having a space that is adaptable is key to begin with. My mother has recently fallen ill, and I'm navigating that for her. She lives with me.
So that's another consideration, is families that bring in or support individuals... Intergenerational living. You know, we don't take advantage. The other cultures do it all the time and we just don't. And it's so vexing to me. And that combined with the concept of we call able bodied people TABs because you're only temporarily able bodied. It doesn't matter whether you do a face plant when you're a teenager, you end up in a wheelchair or you're 65. You need a walker and a hearing aid.
You will be part of our community. We're the largest minority group in the world, and the only one that anyone can join at any moment, whether it's a fall down the stairs, an illness, car accident, or as they say, if you just get old. The bottom line is, it's not about somebody else. It's about you and your family. It's about your mom. Exactly. And I mean, these conversations seem very niche to people sometimes, but they are really just so broad and so impactful in community.
What would you say to people who would question the specificity of this conversation? What would either of you, anyone, say to them about how important this is for a broader, larger community? I think when you look at statistics regarding health, mental health of people that live in communities that have people of different age groups, you will actually find that they are healthier.
Seniors love to have the ability to see kids around them, especially those that don't have grandkids that are living close by. My daughter lives in a unit down the hall from me, my chosen daughter. She's a wonderful gal and she helps me out quite a bit. So she comes and helps me with some of the things that I find difficult to do. And we actually split groceries.
We split the cost of other things because the cost of living is so high and I'm on a pension, she's working full time, but we share the cost of food and stuff. There's other ways, and as a co-op, we've had people mention maybe we could have a Costco card and go and bulk buy certain things so that we have the ability to help people that are struggling within
our community. So to me, the concept of supportive environment, not just the accessible environment, but a supportive environment, an environment where you build community. Whatever development you're part of. Because truthfully, years ago when I lived in an apartment building, I could say hi to my neighbours and I knew who they were. But truthfully, you said hi. Have a good day. That was about it. You didn't really know them.
Whereas I've lived in a housing co-op for 27.5 years, and I know nearly everybody here, and not just because of my role working on the board, but just in general, getting to know them because it's a more social environment, it's a more welcoming environment usually. co-op living. And so there is a proviso that you must be willing to volunteer in some way. They want you to participate.
Our mission has to be to keep people in their communities as long as humanly possible, to stay in their homes as long as humanly possible. Even when they have to go into long term care, it should be small facilities within their community so they can stay there. And it takes all advantage of the whole community piece, the intergenerational living piece.
You know, when grandma can't go see her grandson play hockey at the local arena because the sidewalks are cracked or the door is too heavy, or the stairs are too steep, or whatever it might be to keep her away when she can't go there a little thread breaks, right? It distances her from her family, it distances her from the community and the whole system starts to break down. And we need to respect our elders more than we are.
Why can't the bottom two floors of any new condominium be set up as Long-Term Care Suites? You know, one of the suites would be dedicated to a resident in care person. And the bottom two... So as you age, you actually move down in your building.
You know, for the building owner, he retains the asset and undoubtablly some support from the health care system and return on investment for the owner, its return on investment for the community is return on investment for the person who's just trying to stay part of their family without feeling that they're a burden to it. Yeah, and Jewels and Brad, I think you really nailed it with your comments about community and including multigenerational community.
And, you know, historically, people with developmental disabilities... You talked about a thread, Brad. There was a cord that was cut because children were put into institutions and separated. And now, the joy of a tenant with developmental disability being able to go to the store, phone their mom and say, hey, mom, I'm at the store. Is there anything I can pick you up?
Such a simple, simple thing, simple act of kindness that all of us has done, a person with a developmental disability never having the opportunity to do that. And now they do. And of course they do. And that reciprocal relationship between the... we have no policy in our apartments about you have to do things together, nothing like that.
But by the very fact that there are people with developmental disabilities who are part of that housing first of all, it kind of sets, people choose to move into that place, know that. So it kind of... that's a bit of a vetting right at the very beginning. But then the people that are living there, it's just fantastic. Families, seniors, people with disabilities.
We've had four babies born in the last year, and it's just fantastic to have a community that cares about each other and also is completely great for the business community because people who live in affordable housing, they shop locally, they don't go to Palm Springs for half of the year. And if you're shopping locally, so the dollar store or the Safeway, etc., they love the fact that that building is being built next to them because they've got 100 people that are shopping at their store.
So it's great for the community, it’s great for the business community. I would add that we do quality of life surveys every 3 or 4 years, scientifically verified. And recently, they now have an indicator of like the average British Columbian.
And so people without disabilities and the tenants with disabilities who live in Chorus apartments have a higher quality of life than the average British Columbian, something that it's very unheard of, when it comes to people with developmental disabilities.
However, I would also make the argument that if we were to survey the entire building, everyone who lives in that building has a higher quality of life than the average British Columbian, because their greatest worry of British Columbians has been taken off the table, which is to have safe, affordable housing. They don't have to worry about that. Well, this TAB thanks you. All three of you. I'm going to use that now. That's a great term.
You’re such a wise panel of experts with lived experience, and I'm just so grateful for this conversation and your perspectives. We've barely scratched the surface. And yeah, there's so much to unpack. But again, thank you so much. It's been so great listening to you and hearing your different perspectives. I really appreciate it.
To learn more about BC Housing, including how to apply for subsidized housing in British Columbia, visit www.bchousing.org You can also find us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and X. If you enjoyed this episode, give us a rating. This will help others find Let's Talk Housing and join the conversation. You can subscribe to Let's Talk Housing on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.