Disabled struggle with housing woes

CAPITOL HEIGHTS, Md. – Multiple sclerosis gave Monica Spann bouts of debilitating fatigue, weakness in her legs and vision problems. It also left her scrambling for a place to live.

As her disease progressed, the single mother found it harder to navigate the stairs in her home. Soon she was no longer able to work and couldn’t afford the rent.

Spann spent months living with her two children in her parents’ basement until she found a place she could afford that didn’t have stairs. But “afford” is a relative term: After the rent is paid, the family is left with just $860 from Spann’s $2,010 monthly check from the Social Security Administration to pay for everything else. Her situation recently became even more tenuous when she was cut off from Medicaid and found herself without any health insurance.

The affordable housing shortage plaguing metropolitan areas has come down particularly hard on the disabled, who have higher rates of poverty and lower rates of employment. At the same time, much of what is affordable is off-limits to them because it’s not accessible. Housing advocates say the problem will only get worse, as the rate of disability increases with the aging population.

Spann said she was shocked that keeping a roof over her family’s head would turn out to be such a challenge.

“I never even thought that would be a concern because there are a lot of people living on Social Security or disability,” Spann said recently. “I see this is nothing someone can live off of. It’s really not – especially when you have children.”

High rents are not just a problem for the disabled. The nationwide slump in the housing market has done little to ease the affordability crisis in pricey markets such as Washington, D.C., where the median home price in 2006 was $431,000 – nearly twice the national median.

The Center for Housing Policy released a study earlier this year that examined 210 metropolitan areas. It found that workers in two of the fastest-growing job categories – retail salespeople and food preparation workers – would not be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment in any of the areas using the accepted standard of affordability, spending more than 30 percent of income on housing.

For the poorest Americans, housing would be out of reach even if they spent every penny of their income on it. A 2006 report by two nonprofits, the Technical Assistance Collaborative and the Consortium for Citizens with Disabilities, found that the average rent for a modest one-bedroom apartment was equal to 113 percent of the average income of a disabled person relying on the federal Supplemental Security Income program. That’s up from 69 percent in 1998, when the biennial study was first published.

Against this backdrop, people looking for housing that is both accessible and affordable face a double whammy, said Margery Austin Turner, who led a study on housing in the Washington, D.C., region for the Urban Institute. She said the problem is not a lack of accessible units, but the absence of any mechanism to match them with potential tenants who need them.

In addition, many of the most accessible units are in newer buildings, which tend to be more expensive, said David Burds, executive director of the ENDependence Center of Northern Virginia.

Under federal law, disabled renters can make adjustments to their homes, but they have to pay for it out of their own pocket. Landlords can require them to undo the modifications when they leave.

Advocates for the disabled say the solution lies in broader rent subsidies, as well as zoning changes to encourage development of housing with support services. State or regional databases like one developed in Massachusetts can help match accessibility features – whether it’s a lack of stairs, doorways wide enough for wheelchairs or a specially designed bathroom – to potential tenants who need those things.

For Spann, the need for housing became critical in August, when she learned the rent on the house she lived in was going up. She had quit her job in April on her doctor’s advice, after spending a month in the hospital because of a flare-up likely brought on by tax-season stress at her accounting job. At the time, she had applied for disability benefits, but had not yet been approved.

Spann found few leads on anything she could afford.

“I was like, how are you supposed to survive out here if you have a fixed income?” she recalled.

She ended up moving into her parents’ home with her 16-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son. It was crowded, and there were lots of stairs.

Spann eventually sought help from Independence Now, an organization that assists the disabled in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. The group provided a list of rental complexes with accessible units that helped speed her search.

In January, Spann and her children moved into a spacious, three-bedroom mobile home. Despite 16-year-old Brianna’s negativity – “It’s a trailer,” she complains – Spann is delighted, particularly since the home is all on one level. There are steps leading to the front door, but Spann says the National Multiple Sclerosis Society will pay for a ramp when it becomes necessary.