EP12 - Disability Dojo: Housing

The Independent Life

None of us are free from the potential of being homeless. On this Disability Dojo episode, Tony talks about housing. Centers For Independent Living are highly invested in ensuring that they work to find housing for people with disabilities by offering transition and diversion services, along with information and referral services. The number request related to these services is housing.

Affordable housing is define as households that can pay for their rent or their mortgage and still have money leftover to afford other costs of living, such as food, transportation, healthcare, education, and all activities related to daily living.

Safety is also a big consideration, as often times affordable housing units are in areas that have a higher prevalence of crime, than in other areas and people with disabilities are often 3 to 5 times more likely to be victims of crime. People with disabilities represented nearly half of the people that are homeless. When we talk about affordable housing, it is also necessary that we consider accessibility, safety, homelessness.

This dojo precedes this week’s long form interview with Mark Watson and Patrick Dodds on housing. On this upcoming episode, you’ll hear a lot jargon and acronyms related to housing that can be referenced below:

• Housing and Urban Development (HUD): Federal program that provides funding related to housing
• The Continuum of Care (COC): The Continuum of Care (CoC) program promotes community-wide commitment to the goal of ending homelessness. The program provides funding for efforts by nonprofit providers and state and local governments to quickly rehouse homeless individuals and families while minimizing the trauma and dislocation caused to homeless individuals, families, and communities by homelessness.
• Public Housing Authorities (PHA): Public housing was established to provide decent and safe rental housing for eligible low-income families, the elderly, and persons with disabilities. Public housing comes in all sizes and types, from scattered single-family houses to high rise apartments for elderly families.
• HUD-VASH: The HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program combines HUD’s Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) rental assistance for homeless Veterans with case management and clinical services provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
• Housing Choice Voucher Program Section 8: The housing choice voucher program is the federal government's major program for assisting very low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled to afford decent, safe, and sanitary housing in the private market.
• Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH): Permanent supportive housing is an intervention that combines affordable housing assistance with voluntary support services to address the needs of chronically homeless people. The services are designed to build independent living and tenancy skills and connect people with community-based health care, treatment and employment services.
• Rapid ReHousing: Rapid Rehousing is an intervention designed to quickly move families and individuals out of homelessness and into permanent housing. Rapid Rehousing is also used to keep the housing