Spring 2022: Disability and Housing
Get an inside perspective on a local shelter, explore universal design, and review the laws that protect the rights of people with disabilities and their service animals.
Edition: Spring 2022 Disability and Housing
In this issue we get an inside perspective on a local shelter, explore universal design, and review the laws that protect the rights of people with disabilities and their service animals. This issue also includes a featured section where we dive into the topic of divisive concepts and the role intersectionality plays in our fight for disability rights.
Edition
Taking Shelter
By Winter Trabex
My journey from stable housing, to homelessness, and back to stable housing has been a difficult one. I have experienced eviction, the shelter system, being on the street, living in an RV, staying with a friend, and finally moving into my current stable housing situation.
I’m transgender and disabled....
Recommendations for a More Inclusive Shelter System
Physical accessibility
Ensure that all public areas of shelters (e.g., entrance, kitchen, bathrooms, common and sleeping areas) are accessible to participants with disabilities including vision impairments, deaf and hard of hearing, physical and mental health disabilities, severe allergies and chemical sensitivities,...
Know Your Housing Rights
By DRC-NH staff
In both private and public housing, federal and state laws protect the rights of people with disabilities. Those laws apply to a variety of housing providers including landlords, property managers, homeowners’ associations, and condo boards. Prohibited: Discrimination against people with disabilities...
Are Institutions a Thing of the Past?
By Kelly Nye-Lengerman
Throughout history, people with intellectual and developmental (ID/DD) and other disabilities living in institutions may have experienced abuse, exploitation, and isolation. In order to prevent these transgressions in the future, we must continue to insist individuals living with ID/DD have choice,...
A Little Help from Your Friends
By DRC-NH staff
Federal and state nondiscrimination laws protect the rights of people with disabilities to have service animals and emotional support animals in their apartments, even when the housing provider has a policy that does not allow pets (or a certain type of animal such as a dog). Service animals are individually...
A Place to Call Your Own
By Sheryl A Larson, Ph.D.
Everyone needs a safe place to live that they can afford. People with intellectual or developmental disabilities (IDD) are no exception. The University of Minnesota’s Residential Information Systems Project (RISP) has collected and shared information about the places people with IDD live since 1977. This...
Prohibiting Discrimination Against Voucher Holders
By Lindsay Lincoln, Esq.
“We don’t take Section 8.” This is the devastating and all too common response many voucher holders in New Hampshire receive from landlords and property managers while searching for a place to live. Unfortunately, it is legal.
The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program, also known as the Section...
Accessibility Opens Doors
By Kathy Bates
Accessibility has allowed me to be an independent spirit. I’ve always believed that there is dignity in risk, but accessibility can give you a safe place to try new things. Because my adult life has included accessible living spaces, I’m not afraid to try most things at least once. (That said, it’s not...
Universal Design Resource List
Universal design is the process of creating products and environments that are accessible to all people.
The Seven Principles of Universal Design include:
Equitable Use
Flexibility in Use
Simple and Intuitive
Perceptible Information
Tolerance for Error
Low Physical Effort
Size and Space for...
Housing Insecurity Makes an Impact
By ABLE NH Staff
In 1991, New Hampshire was the first state in the nation to close its inhumane institution for people with disabilities promising a better quality of life for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families. In recent years, failure to create integrated, universally...
The Banned Concepts Statute: A Significant Threat to the Disability Rights Movement
The Banned Concepts Statute:
A Significant Threat to the Disability Rights MovementBy DRC-NH staff
Recently, Disability Rights Center-NH joined a diverse group of educators, advocacy groups, and law firms in filing a federal lawsuit challenging the ‘Banned Concepts’ law, a new state law which we believe will discourage our public school teachers from honest conversations about race,...
The Truth will Build a Better Future
By Deborah Opramolla
Historical opinions change, historical facts do not. Many of us learned about Harriet Tubman in school. We were taught that she was an enslaved woman on a plantation in Maryland. She successfully freed herself from her masters by using the Underground Railroad to get to Pennsylvania. Tubman then returned...
First Steps in Advocacy
By Imani Barbarin
Standing at the front of my fourth-grade classroom, the speech I had practiced with my parents was liable to fly out of my head at any second. Each year, since I was old enough to stand on my own and do so, I made a speech to my class about my disability. It was an easy way to decrease the sheer number of questions I was...
Let’s Talk Progress
By Dr. LaMondre Pough
I am LaMondre Pough, the CEO of Billion Strong, a global identity movement by people with disabilities. I was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), a rare neurological disorder, when I was 18 months old. As a result of SMA, I am a full-time wheelchair user, and I require assistance with all my activities of...
New Hampshire’s ‘Divisive Concepts’ Law and the Big Chill
By John Greabe
Much critical commentary on the so-called “divisive concepts” provisions in this year’s budget legislation – the label comes from language in an earlier version of the bill – has focused on their content- and viewpoint-based restraints on speech. These speech restrictions prohibit state...
