Opinion. Double Highway 40 Already. Louis Shalako.

The north-south axis is what's missing from this social and economic equation.

Louis Shalako

Highway 40 should have been doubled thirty or forty years ago.

It is a kind of ring road, one which with the growth of the city, would eventually bisex it.

(Bisect. – ed.)

It’s a very schizoid little highway, never quite able to make up its mind as to whether it is a four-lane, divided highway, a two-lane, provincial highway, a county road, a quiet residential street, or maybe just a death-trap and a hazard to human health. If it had indeed been doubled, many years ago, the petrochemical industry in Sarnia would have probably still suffered roughly the same decline. The difference, is that we might have had a better shot at some other kinds of industrial development, which does not depend on pipelines and tanker ships full of asphalt…which is, ironically enough, what roads are made of.

It’s not like we don’t have plenty.

The City of Windsor has a huge battery plant under construction, with a huge foreign investment, as well as billions of public money from the federal and provincial governments.

St. Thomas, just south of London, has something similar. There are auto plants in Ingersoll and Listowel. What these places have in common is the Highway 401, which leads to Detroit to the west, and presumably, all the way to Quebec to the east. It is the busiest highway in Canada. Through Toronto, is the busiest highway in the world if you can believe such statements. Sarnia is connected to London by the Highway 402, with the twin spans of the Bluewater Bridges taking traffic over the St. Clair River to Port Huron Michigan, and then it’s roughly an hour to Detroit on the American side. The bridge was opened in 1938 and was a busy corridor for war trade and production during WW II.

The Highway 40 was built to coincide with the construction of the 402. The 402 was built on acquired land, in a process which took years. Essentially, it followed a concession line, where a property on one concession butted up against the back of a property on the next concession. It was driven through the woodlots, which minimized costs and the loss of farmland. Highway 40 followed the path of Modeland Road at the north end, and then kind of hooked into the existing Churchill Road at the south end. It used existing rights-of-way. You can see the evidence of this just west of the Beehive intersection along Plank Road. The extension of Highway 40 goes south to Wallaceburg. That’s the set of stoplights right at the Ineos/Styrolutions plant, recently in the news for benzene levels. Only short stretches of the road are four lanes, divided by a ditch. The rest, for the most part, is two opposing lanes, with a speed limit of 80 kilometres per hour. That means head-on closing speeds in excess of 160-kph in the event of collision. That’s because everyone speeds a little bit, and some folks by a lot—

Then there are those stoplights, advanced green signals, and uncontrolled intersections such as MacGregor Sideroad and Scott Road. There are some concerns…

At the north end of Modeland Road, the speed limit is 50 kph, but this is well away from the high-traffic, commercial and industrial areas of the city. Chemical Valley traffic can be fast and aggressive, which I am always reminded of when I go to the smoke shack on the rez before dawn on a winter’s morn. Honestly, I should plan things a little better, I mean, it’s dark, with snow or drizzle or fog, and it’s like these people aren’t some little old man out for a Sunday drive and a carton of smokes. Quite frankly, some of you guys should get up a little earlier, leave a little sooner, and slow the fuck down—for crying out loud.

But, essentially, we have two issues. The first is Chemical Valley traffic, and the fact that the highway represents the fastest north-south axis, and then there is traffic between Sarnia, Wallaceburg, Chatham, and then on to Windsor—where all the big auto plants are, and then there is Detroit on the Michigan side. At the time of writing, the two halves of the new Gordie Howe Bridge are about to meet above the Detroit River—they’ve actually snagged the two ends together with some temporary girders while getting set up to drop the last sort of pre-fabbed bridge section into the middle…a few boxes of some really big bolts, and that puppy will be all set for the paving, one would think.

Simply doubling the Highway 40 where it is now two lanes doesn’t really solve the essential problem. The highway south of Wallaceburg is two lanes—and the route goes right through the centre of a small town, with small bridges over the Sydenham River.

It would be best to bypass Wallaceburg, and the same is true at Chatham, with the route sort of going through town and hooking up with the 401 south of the city. A technical point, I would bypass Wally-World on the east, and Chatham on the west. This is due to low, swampy ground west of Wally-World and simply shortens the distance by going to the west of Chatham.

Otherwise, there is too much two-lane, two-way road, and too much cutting through a city or a town to make it an efficient route from Sarnia to Windsor, bearing in mind the sort of trucking traffic necessary to put any kind of battery plant or EV vehicle plant in Sarnia—we’ve long missed the boat on that one. If one does consider the possibility, it makes more sense to build parts and accessories in Sarnia, and then ship them over the Bluewater Bridges, use the double-stack rail tunnel, or the 1-95 Interstate Highway to get them to Detroit. Detroit—not Windsor.

There is your conundrum. The distance from Sarnia to Detroit is simply shorter than the distance from Sarnia to Windsor. From Sarnia to Windsor, on the Canadian side, is an easy ninety minutes—by car. A big transport truck is just a lot harder to drive, and arguably, slower as a consequence. A four-lane, divided Highway 40, bypassing smaller centres, is a desirable thing in its own right, and it does open up certain possibilities, because it would eliminate one or even two border crossings, for trucking traffic between Sarnia and Detroit, or even Sarnia to Windsor using the I-94 through Michigan…two border crossings means two administrative roadblocks, as all paperwork has to be cleared, some random number of vehicles will be pulled for inspection. It means two security roadblocks, and often huge backups of traffic, at the bridge. This is especially true on holiday weekends. There have been too many accidents along that stretch of the 402, westbound, leading up to the border already. The fact that an all-Canadian route might be a little longer in terms of physical distance, balanced against the hurdles of a double bridge crossing, is a kind of economic and social equation, in which we measure the costs versus the benefits. I see it as economically strategic. The east-west axis is served well enough, it is the north-south axis that has been missing for many years.

An obvious first step would be to double the Highway 40 from Lambton College to South Indian Road. The obvious second step would be to double the highway all the way to Wallaceburg. This could be done in two to three short sections, as the budget and the season allows. Traffic would be slowed by construction, but only for the summer months, and quite frankly, it’s slow enough already. Four lanes all the way would alleviate that and bring important economic benefits all along the line, including Wallaceburg, Chatham and points in between.

There are some other projects which might tie in, just as the original Highway 402 and the Highway 40 tied in with each other, at the time.

It has always baffled me as to how we expect to attract new industry to Chemical Valley, when South Vidal Street is in such poor shape in relative terms. There’s all kinds of industrial space along there, and yet Vidal Street is the first thing prospective buyers see when they go to look at a potential industrial site.

Also, as long as we’re looking at building roads, why not extend Wellington Street all the way to Blackwell Sideroad, which would also require upgrades. This can be seen as an alternative or emergency route when the next big accident closes the Highway 402 and traffic is backed up way out to the airport or even further. This would only be used by heavy trucks in an emergency, but the road surface would be engineered with this type of occasional duty in mind.

It would also tend to take the east-west load off of London Line/Exmouth Street, when people just need to bypass the bottleneck and get to the other side of the city. The only other east-west roads that cut through the entire town would be Lakeshore Road, Michigan Avenue, and Confederation St, with Confederation the only one rated for heavy vehicles.

Anyhow, it’s something to think about. As for the provincial government, they’ve been thinking about it for a long time.

The time to act is now.

 

END

 

A Brief History of Highway 40.

Council Seeks Widening of Highway 40.

MP Says $25 million Sewer Upgrade all That’s Needed.

Windsor Battery Plant 30 % Complete. (CTV)

Honda Commits to Four Ontario Plants in EV ValueChain.

Ineos/Styrolutions to Close.

Highway 402. (Wikipedia)

Highway 40. (Wikipedia)

The New Highway. An excerpt from My Criminal Memoir, available for free as an audiobook from Google Play.

The book on Google Play.

St. Thomas to See Population Surge.

Thank you for reading, ladies and gentlemen.

 

 

 

Digging Deep. Approvals Are Nothing. Shovels in the Ground Are Everything. Louis Shalako.

This building is under construction at 1550 Venetian Boulevard, Pt. Edward, Ontario.

Louis Shalako

Approvals are Nothing. Shovels in the Ground Are Everything.

Locally, approvals for housing developments of all kinds add up to either 2,400, or even 3,500, depending on who you ask, or maybe just in how we choose to define them. Yet there are very few shovels in the ground. Some of the approvals go back so many years, they have been forgotten.

So, how many affordable, geared-to-income units has the County of Lambton built in the last twelve months? Three, ladies and gentlemen…just three. Habitat for Humanity is doing a better job than that, although mere charity can never be a solution for low-cost housing. It doesn’t even work that well for poverty…

The former Bayside Mall was successfully demolished, and a new building put up for Shared Services and the Ministry of Community and Social Services. Driving by, at some point, one began to wonder at the lack of progress. The Covid-19 pandemic put a hold on a lot of projects. But this one never started up again. No further work has been done, and an announcement has been made that the whole thing is off, whether that is temporary or permanent is a good question. It’s a big, flat area in the middle of downtown, and nothing is happening there.

Affordable, Geared-to-Income Indigenous Housing at 940 Confederation St. has been delayed due to unexpectedly high construction costs. (40 units)

St. Demetrios Church on Murphy Road has hit a roadblock due to funding program changes. (Up to 46  units)

Former Devine St. School to become senior’s housing.(100 units)

An elected official has stated that there was a change in ownership. Whether that means the land or the company have been sold, or whether one or more partners walked away, is unclear.

Former St. Peter’s School to become senior’s housing.(104 units)

Former High Park Church to become affordable housing. (20-23 units)

Housing eyed for former St. Paul’s Church in Sarnia. (Unknown number of units)

Developer has plans for the historic Central United Church. (10-15 accessible units)

Out of the Cold Program to utilize Laurel Lea Church on Exmouth Street. This is a winter-seasonal homeless shelter, with a possible plan for further affordable housing.

So, Kathleen St. has been proposed as the site of some new development for affordable housing. The city owns the land—unfortunately, the county is in charge of social housing, which means that it won’t get built anytime soon, no matter how much fair, impartial and objective news coverage it appears to receive. (50 units)

The city has or is giving away an underused parking lot on Victoria Street, again, the county will be responsible for actually building it. I have a funny feeling that one ain’t going to happen anytime soon. Mayor Mike Bradley, seconded by Councilor Bill Dennis, both members of county council entered a motion challenging Lambton County Social Services to complete any project within eighteen months. This may relate to the council’s response to a request for a study of putting washrooms at Rainbow Park. (See below.)

The county’s project, Maxwell Place, has some serious problems. The project, affordable, geared-to-income housing for vulnerable senior citizens is stalled for the second time. Holes were excavated, foundation work was done. One day all the contractors went home and nothing has been done since. Apparently, the county is looking for a contractor willing and able to complete the project. Which won’t happen as long as litigation is before the courts. Also, people aren’t talking, this is especially true with the possibility or likelihood of litigation before the courts. Another fine mess, whether that has anything to do with the prefab construction methods or what is unknown, however the upper structural modules are said to be in storage locally… (24 units)

So county council, in what appears to be a misinterpretation, refused to put in ‘washrooms’ at the Rainbow Park homeless encampment, when really, portable johns would appear to be desirable as an interim measure. According to Mr. Agar, ‘a city park and a city homeless encampment is a city problem’, I might have had a little more sympathy if the county could actually complete a project of almost any sort, in any sort of time frame, and at almost any sort of cost—

When county council voted pretty much unanimously to fund a five-year study on homelessness and affordable housing shortly after the 2018 election, that was a dead giveaway. And, of course, they can’t do anything until the study is completed, which it was. And it was the most wishy-washy, most waffling sort of document that has been seen in many years around here, with plenty of talk about leveraging synergies and shifting paradigms, and identifying core areas of need, assessing individual requirements and designing one-size-fits-all living spaces, (unless there's something different about you), and partnerships, and stakeholders, and consultations—they can never get enough consultations with stakeholders, ladies and gentlemen. Oddly enough, the only stakeholders not invited are the ones who are actually supposed to live in these places, assuming they ever get one built. In that sense, it’s like the ‘consultations’ undertaken before the legalization of recreational cannabis: the only people who never got to speak were the very people who were supposedly to benefit from said legalization. I may be exaggerating slightly, but I think not—

There are some success stories.

Bayfront is one of a small number of local success stories. It can hardly be described as affordable, even so, it does tend to take the pressure off of other apartments and condominiums in the local area. Presumably, the tenants/lessees aren’t all that interested in home ownership per se, and here, at least on the river side, you have views of the water. Clearly, the tenants can afford to pay the rent.

The Addison is a newly built apartment tower, the property once housed what used to be a grocery store and a department store. It is ‘relatively affordable’, yet no one on disability or welfare could afford even a one-bedroom, even if they had a partner, bearing in mind clients of ODSP lose all or a portion of their ‘shelter portion’, if they attempt to share housing costs. I told the Ministry that this tended to cause homelessness many, many years ago. (They don't care. - ed.) This sort of thing is ‘baked in’ to the legislation. The social workers can’t do much about that, and for governments, Liberal or Conservative, it seems to create some sort of mental block. The result, is that they might study it endlessly, but no one has the guts to take that one big step, which would result in a total, ground-up, nuts and bolts revision of the guidelines. The real problem, is that it costs money, the government is responsible to the taxpayers, and the NIMBYs and nay-sayers are all over the place. They’re down on the riverbank, burning a candle in order to raise awareness of the stigma…etc, etc, etc, and getting some good front-page coverage while doing it.

Looking southeast, London Rd. and Christina St.

The former Sarnia General Hospital Site sat empty and derelict for some years after closure. Homeless people and others were breaking into the site and stealing copper wire, piping, anything that they could turn into a dollar. It was a nightmare for the neighbours, police and the city. The city eventually paid to have it taken down, turned it over to private enterprise, and at least there is semi-detached housing along Elgin Street, and a pair of low-rise towers are presently under construction. They have progressed to the point of brickwork on the exterior, doors and windows are in, one would assume interior finishing work is progressing. What the actual rent scale will be is unknown. The city paid $5.4 million for demolition and the developers paid $1,000.00 for a property estimated at a value of $1.4 million. One hell of an incentive, but maybe that’s what it takes these days.

A development of approximately 154 detached homes is slated for a parcel of land along London Line. A model home appears to have been built. Yet high-end or luxury housing is not going to solve the problem of affordability in this town, this county, or anywhere else in this country. This end of the market really does rely on market forces, rather than any great subsidies from multiple levels of government. This market exists—and the customer can afford to pay the mortgage.

Here’s the County’s own Report Card, in which they give themselves all A’s.

Looking northeast from the same intersection. Churches make bad housing, except for God.

There is a supportive housing thing on London Road. In a recent news story, there were only a small number of at-risk youth in residence. The folks that built it had $1.2 million of their own money to contribute. The money came to some extent from their success with Emergency 401 or something like that.

Here is a proposed combined detached/townhouse development in Petrolia, which seems logical enough as it relies on market conditions and customer demand. It requires some rezoning, which will quickly be granted. This story was published June 6/24. Yet, even if it happens, it does take some time for ‘shovels in the ground’ and the project to come to fruition.

Point Edward Apartment Takes Shape Quickly.

Brush Cleared for Housing in Point Edward.

Former Holmes Foundry Lands Planned for Development.16 Acres in Total.

Poor people study the sports pages. Rich people study the interest rates. The Bank of Canada has just lowered the rate from 5 % to 4.75 %. There are institutional lenders, then there are institutional borrowers. OPM, ‘other people’s money’, a bit of a mantra among entrepreneurs. As my grandfather would have said, don’t bet the farm on it. Very few corporations have a couple of hundred million laying around, just waiting to be thrown at a housing development. This is not like the stock market, where you can make multiple trades a day, totalling in the millions, and perhaps make a quick profit—or a quick loss. There is a time lag. Nothing happens quickly in this industry, and sometimes nothing ever happens at all, even with ‘approvals’. The bigger the project, the longer the time lag. A new development takes time to build, it takes time to sell it out and fill it up, and it takes time to recoup that investment. The real professionals are looking at the ‘split’, how much does it cost to borrow, interest paid, and how long does it take to pay it off—and how long does it take before the development produces a profit for the shareholders. The split is between income and outgo—a word I may have just invented.

When the conditions are right, building and development will begin anew. Until then, not much joy.

Time for analysis. This is where we compare apples, oranges—and green bananas, which as we are all aware, go bad fairly quickly…

First the commonalities. The successful projects were private ventures. Some of the unsuccessful ones were also private ventures. In an assumption, the successful projects had funding secured, arguably, before the pandemic, and before the interest rates started really climbing. Inflation played some role, bearing in mind the Bank of Canada rate was raised from a nominal .25 % up to 5 %, all of which happened in a very short time. However, if you and your bank had signed a contract, and approved your funding at a given rate, the bank will honour that contract unless it is time-limited. Use it or lose it, in other words.

Some, but not all of the unsuccessful projects may not have had their funding secured. They may not have had funding at all, relying on government grants and low or zero-interest loans. Some of those programs were also time-limited. Any government program has only so much funding. It is first come, first served with some of these programs.

Some of the ‘unsuccessful’ projects may not have been the result of serious intention. If you’re trying to interest buyers in your property, the fact that you have perhaps gotten some variance in the zoning or other bylaws, the fact that some pie-in-the-sky project has been approved by a municipal or county council, might carry some weight with potential purchasers.

Some of the even more unsuccessful projects may represent fantasy more than reality. This especially applies to old churches. The congregation may no longer be able to support the costs of such a building, and the mother church may have gone bankrupt.

Yet they hate like hell to see the thing torn down as well. It’s a perfectly good building and a perfectly good cause, right?

In a previous story, I discussed the difficulty of converting the classic 1960s elementary school to housing, and the issues sort of double or triple if the thing is multi-story, for example the old SCITS here in Sarnia, on Wellington Street. Some folks thought it was a no-brainer for affordable housing. Assuming relatively low rents as ‘affordable’ any economic case, not even for profit, just to keep the building going over the longer term, is unsustainable. Affordable rents do not cover the costs of an unaffordable building.

Locally, several of the churches listed above are huge, very old-fashioned structures. They might even be described as beautiful in their own way. Some of them are historic, but only the bats and the chimney swifts really want to live in that big belfry on the end of the building. The rest of the place represents one big, tall, vast space. That space has no supporting structure. To divide that up into floors will require that structure to be put in place. So now, you’re figuring out how to dig foundations deep into the ground. At the very least, you need to get a backhoe into the building…

The writer is not an engineer, what he does do is to ask questions—or maybe just run a few thought experiments. The writer spent much of his life in construction, and structures are not entirely unfamiliar.

Some very nice people are talking about fundraising. At the risk of being rude or insulting, you can’t fund such a project within any sort of time-frame by running bake-sales or charity bingo games.

(Otherwise the Canadian Armed Forces would be doing it. – ed.)

What they are looking for is public funding, or some rather large donations. Yet the government is not unsophisticated when assessing such requests. Neither are the large donors, and not too many people have ten or twelve or more millions laying around, and if they did, you are really going to have to impress them. You are really going to have to make a case, a good case, for that particular building. So far, this has been unsuccessful.

These are the green bananas, going off rather quickly.

There are actually a few shovels in the ground here in Sarnia-Lambton. The skilled trades, the professional contractors, are the only people who can make things happen in the sense of construction and renovation, and they will go where the money is. For the most part, that is private money, paid by professional developers. Any contracting business runs on money. The skilled trades do not work on charity. They have their own homes, families and their own mortgages to feed.

Update: the county has just offered to buy St. Bartholemew Church, which is in the north end of this city. This may be a bit of a revenge ploy on the part of county, as the NIMBYs and naysayers will be freaking out at the thought of poor people moving into the neighbourhood, bringing down property values. This is where that good old stigma rears its very useful head. Essentially, in this scenario the county looks good and the city will be revealed for what it is. This is why they simply must mention mental health and addictions in any news story of poverty, homeless and disability. There will be endless rounds of consultation, site plans, and there is many a slip between the crouch and the leap, as my old sabre instructor used to say...

Also. I mentioned that some of these approvals go back so many years, they have been forgotten. I had forgotten this long-term care development. It doesn't really fit the definition of affordable housing, except that the elderly are people too. This story dates back to May 3, 2021, where the city sold the land for $250,000.00 and the plan is to replace Sumac Lodge. This land is three kilometres from the original site, which is still open. The site had been shut to new admissions, pending health and safety repairs and upgrades. Also, three years have gone by.  Driving by on the way to work, the location of this land is sort of difficult to confirm, although there are open areas in between homes and businesses.

 

Louis spells councillor with one 'L', my dears.

END

Analysis: Turning Federal Buildings into Affordable Housing. Louis Shalako.

Louis has books and stories available from Google Play in ebook and audiobook formats.

Louis has some art and stuff on Fine Art America.

Note. Louis spells councillor with one letter ‘L’. Other than that, he really is quite all right. – ed.

 

Thank you for reading, and listening.

What is an Accessible Home. Analysis by Louis Shalako.

Knee room under all surfaces...

 

Louis Shalako

What would an accessible dwelling look like.

What if a person were in a wheelchair, what if they were blind, what if they were deaf.

What if they were just small and frail.

Where I live, it is a three-floor walk-up. Only the ground floor is accessible to a wheelchair user, and only from the back parking lot. A person in a wheelchair could enter the building through the back door, which appears to be wide enough. Individual units, on the ground floor, have relatively wide doors from the hallway. Once you’re in the door, it is a slightly different story.

My own apartment entrance has a little strip to keep out drafts. One side is the carpet of the hallway, and one side is the tile in the apartment. It’s a half an inch high, across the doorway, and one would hope that someone in a wheelchair could surmount this little hurdle, and actually get into their apartment and maybe even close the door behind them.

***

My friend Jerry was deaf. He was able-bodied, he was able to work. He could afford an apartment, the only trouble was, he could not hear…he had a special set-up, and this was back in the 1990s. When the phone rang, a naked light bulb in a small table lamp, set beside the television, would light up. The doorbell was rigged the same way, or friends and family never would have gotten in without a key.

When the landline phone rang, Jerry picked it up and put it in a cradle. He hit a switch.

He pulled a keyboard over, and used the remote to change the channel on the TV. Since he could not hear, a ‘scrambler’ sort of thingy turned the words into text that he could see on screen, and so could I, sitting there in the living room. I watched as he talked to his mother on the phone…

Jerry was quick on the keyboard, although the spelling wasn’t so good. Deaf people have one hell of a time getting any kind of education, and that is just the truth…the black box beside the television did one other thing, it put closed captions on every show, every channel, the code embedded in the signal right from the broadcaster.

This was a big thing at the time—

Jerry spoke fairly well, although a lot of people just assumed he was ‘retarded.’ Deaf people get no audio feedback—they can’t hear themselves talk, and this affects their pronunciation. Jerry did not have an inside voice, or an outside voice. He had one voice for all circumstances. Jerry owned a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and he rode it to work in the summer months. He was unusual, for the Harley owner. Jerry didn’t pull the baffles from the exhaust system to make it louder. What would have been the point. He was never going to hear it anyways, but as for accessibility, his apartment really didn’t require a lot of expensive modifications, and what little help he needed came from some sort of government program for the deaf. Which is terribly nice of the government, and the taxpayers, when you think about it. A lot of it comes from charitable donations to foundations for the deaf and all of that sort of thing. We have traditionally underfunded all such programs, and you don’t mess lightly with people’s traditions…

***

Jerry was deaf, but he could at least keep a job.

In my science-fiction story, The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue, Mister Scott Nettles is blind. When I was engaged in writing the book, I turned off all the lights, I closed all the curtains. When I closed the bathroom door, it was pretty dark in there, and I had to wonder how a person maneuvers their way around without vision. The fears of falling in the shower, or tripping over the cat—this is why Scott, lonely as he is, doesn’t have one—I suppose we can all empathize with the challenges of daily life, for surely we all have them in our own degree. A blind person might have a big problem with a simple touch-screen, which the rest of us take for granted.

I wondered how a person finds their way around town, how do they shop, how do they find anything in the cupboards. Scott lives in a major city on the eastern seaboard of the United States, in a slightly-dystopian future, and one wonders just how people do it sometimes…

If you want to try the experiment, wait until nightfall, put on a pair of cheap sunglasses, and feel around in the cupboards for the spare bottle of ketchup. Bend over in complete darkness and rummage around in the bottom of the fridge for a couple of carrots, and then the kitchen drawer to find the vegetable peeler. What would it be like to cook your dinner in complete darkness.

A story really ought to have a point, it makes it so much more interesting for the listener. That is right out of Planes, Trains and Automobiles, with Steve Martin and John Candy.

The point is, is that there is a difference between supportive housing, which all the ineffectual do-gooders are talking about these days, and accessible housing, which also includes the ability to pay the rent. Supportive housing is where the social workers knock on the door of your eight by twelve and remind you to take your meds—or maybe to stop taking your other meds…and it’s only another eighteen months before you get into rehab and while we’re at it, can we slap a tourniquet on that terrible boiling abscess on your face where you burned yourself toking meth off a bit of tinfoil and flaming that with a high-end butane lighter…???

Oh, and how is that special ointment we gave you, and is that helping to remove the stigma of mental health. We’d like to put that on the front page of the newspaper. Do you have enough Nalaxone kits on hand? ‘Cause we give them out free, in a clump of bushes, down by the riverbank…

***

Hates his kitchen...

My kitchen is small enough that I have come to hate it. I bitch, and whine, and piss and moan something awful, problem is, I’m too broke for fast food and too lazy to go to the soup kitchen. I just fucking hate it in there, but there’s no alternative. There is no way in hell that a person in a wheelchair could do very much of anything on their own. This ignores the fact that this is a third-floor apartment. The bathroom, if anything, is worse. Never mind bars and grips and handholds, there just isn’t enough room to even get the chair into the room, let alone get out of it, and onto the toilet or into the bath or shower.

Gut instinct says you’d have to triple the floor space of the bathroom, at a minimum, that’s just for the chair, and more likely quadruple the square footage of the kitchen. This at least allows a person to turn the wheelchair around…otherwise, if you think about it, you either have to back up and start again, or go out the other end, circle back around through some other room, presumably, and come back in the door again. People would have to be able to reach things, and bending myself in half to grab an onion out of the bottom of the fridge doesn’t even get close to the physical challenges of sitting in a chair, with armrests and a footrest, and reaching down or up or just plain into, just about any storage space.

Then there’s the whole boiling-water thing, and cooking on a hot surface, or in an oven sort of challenge. This is where simple clearance between the knees and the arms of the chair comes into play, and there has to be an open space below pretty much anything, in order to even get close. Rinsing the peanut butter off of a knife begins to take on a whole new meaning.

The fridge or stove in this apartment, could not have cost $500.00 when new. Appliances for the wheelchair user are far, far more expensive. So is that additional square footage, whether it is additional to the living unit, or whether something designed into a standard footprint has to give something up somewhere else, is a question of decisions—everything has a cost, one way or another.

We are asking a landlord or developer, to build in some appreciable percentage of accessible housing units, in any proposed development, or a major renovation of an existing housing unit. We’re asking them to do it, because someone has to do it.

***

In this building, the first floor is at ground level. A similar building across the street, has the ground floor three feet down below grade. Either way, it represents certain challenges. In this building, the lobby is five feet above street level. The east end also has a porch. In order to get in the front door, one has to navigate a sidewalk, five or six steps up, a small porch, an outer door, and an inner door, and now you are in the lobby. In order to get out of the lobby, you need to go either five feet down, a few steps, (to the ‘ground’ floor), where there is another door, or up one or two flights to the upper floors, each of which has its own door for fire code compliance.

The best place to retrofit an elevator, is in the lobby, which is two stories high. Above that is the one bachelor unit in this building. The elevator would have to have a structure above the roof, in order to install the hoisting gear. Having given up one unit in terms of income, cutting holes and putting in supportive structures, the cost to make above-ground units accessible is likely to be unattractive to for-profit housing providers. That is not to say that it could not be done.

In a recent survey, twenty-seven percent of Canadians identified as having some element of disability. We have to determine what small percentage constitutes blind people, deaf people, people with mobility issues, including wheelchair users, and then there is a whole spectrum of other disabilities which presumably, don’t require so much physical adaptation in the design of affordable housing units. At the far end of that spectrum would be padded cells and bars and cages and all of that sort of thing…that’s a subject for another day.

***

#screenshots

A serious diabetic may not be able to earn a living, without serious supports, and a person with Down’s syndrome may be ‘physically able’, and still require supportive housing, without fitting into any other stereotype or other negative categorization of a self-serving nature, ultimately resulting in some sort of cop-out or other on the part of the taxpayers, who will surely have to invest to some degree or face the consequences, for example tent encampments in parks downtown…by folks you, yourselves, cheerfully admit are kind of disabled by all this mental health and addictions stuff all over the front page.

***

The balcony. In this building, the patio doors all have a six-inch sill. On the ground floor, this keeps water out in high winds and heavy rain. It also means that someone in a wheelchair would either need one hell of a ramp inside, and the balcony is so small that a corresponding ramp is impossible outside, or we have to remove the sills and put the patio door right at deck level—in which case now we have the possibility of rain coming in through the bottom of the door. In the case of fire, the hallways filled with smoke, it might be nice to be able to get out onto the balcony, sit there and wait for rescue.

It’s just one more thing, one more consideration, one more design headache, all of which adds to cost, time and complexity, in any project, whether it’s a new build or a ‘major renovation’. There is a solution, one which requires some flexibility of thinking. What if, in units designated ‘accessible’, the patio or balcony door has a threshold that is as low as possible, and in all other units, the developer can keep the high sill, in order to address questions of wind and rain. It does take something away from standardization, where every unit has the exact same door. Standardization is not the be-all and end-all of good design. You have to give up one thing in order to get another. It’s a compromise.

***

This building was 'renovicted' and all tenants have been out since about the end of May last year. There has been sporadic and intermittent activity. We have not seen contractors here in some time...there are a few lights on in the building, and you can see refrigerators standing through the windows, pulled out from the wall but not disposed of or anything like that. One wonders what the game is...here's a thing. There is a shutdown going on at Suncor. Union members, who might very well moonlight in the off season and between jobs, would prefer to work the union job, for thirty to fifty dollars an hour, rather than twenty or twenty-five dollars an hour for some scab employer. There is a labour shortage by all accounts. There may have been cash-flow or financing problems. We simply don't know. Not too far away, there was a small fire, involving one or two units, and some smoke damage. That landlord is currently appealing fines of $35,000.00 per count, for unlawful practices in locking tenants out.

How in the hell does a guy in a wheelchair get into bed? Do they all order food for delivery, do they live on fast food and twelve-dollar delivery charges? You’d better have money, and a high-end phone with the ability to do that. You have to have the app, right.

Otherwise, you starve.

How do you convince a landlord or developer that there will be sufficient demand, for space devoted to accessible units, and that the tenants will be able to sustain those units, over any measurable period of time, in order to get some return on investment, in a manner which will make that investment worthwhile. When they move out, who moves in, or do you have to renovate again?

This all applies to small bungalows, laneway suites, garage conversions, and granny-type secondary housing units in residential areas. They are either accessible, or they are not.

If a person cannot earn the income, where does the money come from? We find ourselves in the predicament where we’re putting a million dollars of the taxpayers’ money into an apartment, geared-to-income, with a forty-seven year waiting list, and the tenant is paying one-third of their $733.00 welfare payment for the privilege of having an accessible roof over their heads and still lining up at food banks, soup kitchens, and this is what it costs to get them out of a tent down in a park on the waterfront. This is what happens when folks, through no fault of their own, are unable to maintain regular and renumerative employment, to borrow a definition from the Ontario Disability Support Program.

If supportive housing is impossible enough, then accessible housing is even more impossibler.

END

Notes. The building across the street, where dozens of households were renovicted about June 1/23, is still deserted. I haven’t observed contractors on the site in quite some time. One wonders what’s going on there. Then there is the building on Earlscourt. There was a fire which damaged a unit, caused smoke damage in several others, and the owner evicted fifty something households due to ‘safety concerns’. One wonders if this ‘major renoviction’, where the owner is currently appealing a series of $35,000.00 fines, can show any evidence of conforming to Province of Ontario law regarding accessible housing.

Accessible bathrooms in new construction and major renovations: The next time we get a mass renoviction in this town, hit them with this: major renovations must include accessible bathrooms, accessible kitchens, storage, laundry and all other amenities in equal measure.

While pricing shall be commensurate, within affordable guidelines, it will not be predatory or discriminatory.

How to design an accessible bathroom:

Accessible appliances as per the Americans with Disabilities Act:

Accessible housing, Wikipedia entry:

How much to put an elevator in a (new) three-story building:

Nowhere to Go: The Brenchley St. Renoviction, (Sarnia Journal).

Groundbreaking Fines for Locking Out Tenants, (Sarnia Observer).

Here is the free audiobook of The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue.

Planes, Trains and Automobiles. (Wiki)

Thank you for reading.