Family hits obstacles in search for home
Eight-year search for wheelchair-accessible housing
When Khadija Zafar first held her newborn child eight years ago she couldn’t have imagined how heavy that weight would become.
Zafar’s son wakes up each morning and, like his younger brother and sister, waits for his mom to pick out outfits, brush their teeth, and choose which toys to bring downstairs. But as her younger children race down the stairs, Zafar scoops her oldest child up.
Her shoulders and back ache as she carries him down the stairs that separate the bedrooms from the rest of their home. She tries to conceal her heavy breathing.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
For Zafar, the heaviest weight is knowing a house that should feel like a home makes her child feel like a burden. Her son has spastic quadraplegic cerebral palsy — an early childhood or developmental brain injury that results in motor deficits in all four limbs.
And while his wheelchair makes him independent, an inaccessible housing market has left the family trapped.
“As a mother we always have so much guilt in general but on top of that, you put a child with (a) disability and the things you can’t provide
Despite there being 2.6 million disabled Ontarians, there is no policy necessitating barrier-free housing
for them, you just feel terrible,” Zafar said.
The family has moved eight times in eight years, living everywhere from Hamilton to Burlington and now Waterdown.
Despite there being 2.6 million Ontarians with disabilities, there is no policy necessitating barrier-free housing. There is no mention of housing in the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, and the building code necessitates that 15 per cent of new builds have to be visitable but not livable for disabled people. But for families like Zafar’s, the housing search is as inaccessible as the lack of options.
Khadija Zafar and husband Lyle applied for subsidized housing, as they were students while expecting their first child. After he was born, they moved from the general waitlist to the accessible-housing waitlist. They are still waiting.
The family reached out to numerous community organizations but claim they never received help in securing housing. They reached out to co-op housing options in hopes of getting on their wait list, but Zafar was told that because of the high number of internal applicants who are hoping to make the switch from their current unit to an accessible one, Zafar would never make it to the top of the list.
“Because when people move to accessible housing, it’s for a lifetime,” Zafar said.
Instead, they scoured the internet for a physically accessible home within their limited budget. Zafar’s father is a real estate agent and spent his free time looking through listings that rarely list any accessibility information.
Peggy Stewart, a retired healthcare worker-turned-realtor, who specializes in finding accessible homes, said that finding an accessible rental in the province is hard to do. Stewart’s website typically has 25 homes listed that are either accessible or could be easily adapted, but these listings are scattered throughout the province.
When Stewart started as a realtor in London 19 years ago, she said she struggled to find any accessible homes in the real estate listings. She went to visit one, and from the end of the street she spotted a ramp on the side of the house.
“I’m thinking, blimey, I had no idea from the listing that it was an accessible house. I couldn’t believe it,” Stewart said.
But she said it is more common that a realtor thinks a home is accessible when it is not. After a listing agent assured her that a property was fully accessible, she brought a client to see it. When they arrived, there were steps up to the front door and the client could not go inside.
“When I phoned the realtor (following the visit), he said ‘it was only two steps.’ Two steps is Mount Everest to a lot of people,” Stewart said.
And accessibility is not only what is built into the home, but its location. A home atop a hill or away from accessible transit is not the accessible house that some listings make it out to be.
Zafar said their search for equitable housing has been complicated by neighbours filing noise complaints over their son’s vocalizations, potential landlords telling them that they don’t rent to wheelchair users as it will damage the floors, or landlords telling the family that any accessibility modifications would be considered damage and would need to be reversed before they move out.
In their last home, not only were there stairs to the bedrooms, but to street level as well.
Zafar and her husband planned their whole day around when they would take their son outside so they only had to carry him once. “He would say, ‘Mommy, can I come?’ (I would have to say) ‘I’m sorry,’ ” in an attempt to shield him from knowing it was too hard for her to pick him up again.
Their newest house is the best by far, said Zafar. They added a ramp in the garage so they can leave the home when they please, a backdoor lets the family watch a bird feeder in the yard, and on chilly nights they huddle around the fireplace together. But it is not the fully accessible home they dream of.
Kate Chung, co-chair of the the Accessible Housing Network — an Ontario-based disability collective — said the lack of accessible housing options is discouraging.
“The need for accessible housing is a crisis. The simple solution is for the Ontario Building Code to require that all new housing be universal design,” she said in a press release in which Toronto MPP Jessica Bell, who is running for reelection in University-Rosedale riding, announced she and several other NDP and Green Party canadidates has signed the Accessible Housing Pledge.
“The cost of building a new apartment is the same whether accessible or not — if it is planned from the design stage. It is renovations to conventional housing which are expensive,” said Chung.
According to Chung, those without access to equitable housing will likely be unable to work due to the challenges of getting in and out of the home, are more likely to need increased caregiving, and are at a higher risk for falls and ambulance calls.
“People are in despair,” Chung said.