Recap: Housing webinar

An overview of the April 2025 Understanding Ableism Webinar: “The Disability Community’s Housing Struggles” 

By Colin WilfriBy Colin Wilfrid, AmeriCorps KCDC Coordinator

(Watch the webinar here on our YouTube channel.)

The most recent webinar in the Understanding Ableism series focused on the disability community's housing experiences, and was attended by 21 live attendees, a drop compared to the previous month’s webinar, which had 48 attendees. This webinar had four panelists, each with experience in systemic ableism’s ties to housing. 
Luna Fera is a third-year student at the University of Oregon (UO), and she is the Director of AccessAbility Student Union, a student-led disability rights advocacy group at UO. Fera is paraplegic and has faced housing discrimination both when she lived in the dorms at UO and in looking for a nearby apartment in Eugene for next year. In the UO dorms, the elevators were sometimes broken, and the school took awhile to fix them, making commuting from her dorm to her classes challenging. At one of the multi-story apartment complexes in Eugene that she is seeking to move into next year, Fera's wheelchair could not fit through the bathroom door, and she asked the complex to make the doorway two inches wider. However, the complex denied this accommodation, claiming that the widening of the door would ruin the integrity of the building. The building was actually twelve stories high, so little to no compromise would have been made if the tweak to the bathroom door happened. 

Brenda Zacapu is the Parent to Parent Coordinator for Spanish-Speaking Families at the Arc of King County. Her older brother has Cerebral Palsy and Autism, and Zacapu serves as his legal guardian. Zacapu recalls many instances where she did not like how the caregivers at the group homes her brother lived at treated him, so Zacapu moved her brother out of the previous home and into a new one. Many of Zacapu’s brother’s caregivers were not good at maintaining his hygiene, and even when Zacapu successfully convinced them to take better care of her brother’s hygiene, the caregivers usually relapsed. This often resulted in Zacapu moving her brother out because she does not believe her brother thrives in living situations with poor hygiene. 

Carol Salter is the Executive Director of Banchero Disability Partners, a Seattle-based supportive living services program. Throughout the webinar, Salter highlighted some of the key issues that her clients at Banchero have faced in their housing journeys over the years. For instance, Banchero moved a lot because they kept setting up shop in neighborhoods where the residents had ableist attitudes. This eventually led Banchero to raise money to buy their own apartment complex for the first time in 2010 because Banchero management could not take ableist neighbors and landlords anymore. In addition to the two apartment complexes Banchero owns in North Seattle and Shoreline, the organization also work with clients who do not live at either Banchero complex but still need help in acquiring or maintaining housing. 

Kristina Sawyckyj is a quadriplegic unhoused veteran from Seattle. While she was not able to participate in the full webinar, she gave good insight into what she experienced as an unhoused person with a disability in a busy city like Seattle. Since she can barely afford to pay her caregivers as well as for her graduate school classes, she does not qualify for any of the federal, state or municipal low-income housing services. In addition to not being able to afford a house, Sawyckyj also cannot stay at shelters because they all refused to accommodate her disability. Sawyckyj also pointed out that being unhoused and getting denied housing is a common theme among people with disabilities, and she knows a lot of fellow unhoused people who were in similar situations to hers. Sawyckyj’s consensus is that there is no support for unhoused people with disabilities in Seattle, as housing authorities just assume whether or not they want to be housed or which kind of housing they would like. 

There were a few instances of ableism in housing that multiple panelists said they experienced. For instance, Fera, Zacapu and Salter all brought up how imperative it is for residential bathrooms to be accessible. In addition to the incident where her wheelchair could not fit through the bathroom door, Fera talked about how one of her disability rights advocate peers at UO decided to move out of the dorms because of changes to his dorm’s bathroom. UO changed the shower curtains at Fera’s friend’s dorm complex from curtains that accommodated his balance issues just fine to curtains that do not accommodate balance issues. Fera’s friend got injured as a result of UO changing the shower curtains without notifying him in advance. Zacapu talked about how her brother needs wide doors and stuff to grab onto in the bathrooms, but some of her brother’s homes did not have those accommodations. Salter recalled how a resident at one of Banchero’s complexes needed to have the shower in her apartment reconstructed, but as a state-funded nonprofit, they could not fund the renovation alone. Luckily, DDA was willing to work with Banchero to find a construction company that would redo the client’s shower to accommodate her disability. Without DDA’s help, this Banchero client would not have been able to maintain possession of her apartment. 

Another common issue that Fera, Zacapu and Salter all pointed out pertains to a lack of air conditioning, especially in buildings built before the ADA existed. As a student seeking an apartment in a college town known for sports, Fera noticed that the non-disabled landlords she talked with saw air conditioning as a “luxury” instead of a necessity since a lot of people with disabilities have sensory sensitivity to excessive heat. Zacapu once had to buy an air conditioner for her brother because the building he lived in did not have built-in air conditioning, and Zacapu’s brother is sensitive to heat. Salter mentioned that since Banchero’s complexes were built before the ADA, there was no air conditioning, but Banchero provided every unit in their complex with a portable air conditioner. 

There are also ways in which the points the four panelists brought up were different. Particularly, each panelist spoke based on their varying experiences. As the student leader for a disability affinity group at the University of Oregon, Fera spoke not only for herself but also for the members of her organization. As the legal guardian of a family member with a disability, Zacapu spoke based on how she fought to give her brother the best living situation possible. As the executive director of a nonprofit focused on providing housing services to low-income people with disabilities, Salter’s remarks featured statistics highlighting some of the inequalities Banchero is aiming to address, as well as how crucial outside funding is for Banchero as a nonprofit providing essential services. As the one currently unhoused person on the webinar, Sawyckyj reflected on why she has never been able to afford a house that met her needs as well as the other unhoused people with disabilities she had observed. Sawyckyj’s commentary shows that even though there are federal, state and local laws meant to make housing affordable and accessible, many people with disabilities still end up living on the streets. 

One final point that all four panelists made about their housing experiences pertains to how important it is for their living situation to give them access to community. In talking about her friends’ inaccessibility in housing stories as well as her own, Fera shows that she is not only part of a community of UO students with disabilities, but she also has solidarity with her friends in their housing struggles. In evaluating what her brother’s group homes lacked, Zacapu observed that her brother never had enough opportunities to do some fun activities. Zacapu’s brother’s group homes never took him on an outing, brought fun activities to his home or even simply take him out on a walk. As a result, Zacapu’s brother became convinced that he cannot do the same thing as people without disabilities. Salter points out one of the strategies Banchero uses to integrate their clients out into the community, such as writing grants to fund for outings and educating people without disabilities about disability experience so people without disabilities could have empathy with Banchero’s clients. Sawyckyj, just like Fera, already has a community thanks to having solidarity with other unhoused people with disabilities. Sawyckyj knew that if she just told her own story about how she ended up living on the streets, it would not help paint the bigger picture in what people with disabilities are experiencing. In including the stories of the other unhoused people with disabilities she knows, Sawyckyj teaches us that while those stories are different, they all pertain to how houselessness can hit particularly hard on people with disabilities.  

The housing experiences that Luna Fera, Brenda Zacapu, Carol Salter and Kristina Sawyckyj talked about on this webinar show just how little society thinks about our needs when we look for housing to live in. Architects, landlords and HOA members often ignore the fact that enough space for mobility aids, beds and baths that are easy for wheelchair users to transfer to, something sturdy to hang onto in case they lose their balance, adding air conditioning and lowering the rent to an affordable price are all reasonable accommodations that they can grant potential tenants with disabilities looking for their own place to call their home sweet home.