ROUGHLY EDITED COPY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

A National Onsite Two-in-One Training Opportunity
CIL‑NET Training
Expanding Housing Options 
   for People with Disabilities  
Renaissance Chicago Downtown Hotel
One West Wacker Drive 
Chicago, Illinois
Friday, August 10, 2012
8:45 a.m. ‑ 2:45 p.m.

**** 
This text is being provided in a rough draft format.  Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.   
			 ****			

ADAM BALLARD:  Hey, everybody, we're going to get started with our last panel of the day here.  We have with us the Commissioner for the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities Karen Tamley and also the Chicago Housing Authority's ADA/504 compliance coordinator ‑‑ manager.
(Applause.)
>> ADAM BALLARD:  Amanda Motyka.  So please welcome them, and they're going to present to us on ADA/504 compliance.
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  Can you hear me?  Okay.  I'm going to start out.  
Good afternoon, everybody.  I'm Karen Tamley and I'm the Commissioner for the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities, and we wanted to ‑‑ Amanda and I are going to talk about a couple of different things.  I want to talk about Fair Housing and accessibility laws and kind of ways to increase housing stock in your communities and what we're doing here locally at the City of Chicago and then Amanda is going to a little bit more about specifically the Chicago Housing Authority as it relates to 504.
So just a really brief introduction, do you want to introduce yourself or ‑‑
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  Sure.  Like the Commissioner said, my name is Amanda Motyka.  I've been with the Chicago Housing Authority for a little under eight years.  I've been doing work in the 504 office for seven of those last eight years.  So we did ‑‑ and I'll get into this more during the presentation, but we are under a voluntary compliance agreement.  I know we said acronyms too.  So that's what VCA will stand for when I start talking about it.  But I also help administer the voluntary compliance agreement that I have with my two staff, who are over there.
(Applause.)
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  And I've been at the City of Chicago for seven years.  I was appointed by Mayor Daley back in 2005 and then by our new Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2011.  But for 13 years prior to coming to the city government, I worked at Centers for Independent Living, both at Denver, Colorado, and here, and also worked on housing policy issues with the folks at Access Living.  I worked at Access Living for nine years and was one of the cofounding members of the disability rights coalition or housing which worked at a national level around housing issues.  To give you a little bit of background around myself.  I've been doing disability rights work for all of my career.
So what I want to talk about is just ensuring accessibility in the City of Chicago, some of the things we have done.  But I am going to touch a little bit on an overview of Section 504 and the Fair Housing Act as it relates to people with disabilities.  I know some of you may have heard this already but I guess it can't hurt to reinforce it.  
So let me give you a little bit overview of MOPD or Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities.  We work in main areas.  And I want to say one of the great things great about our department, I'm appointed by the mayor, which gives us a lot of ability to do disability related issues.  We do more than housing, pretty much anything that the city government touches with the public or services or communications, delivery of services, all has some component related to people with disabilities or accessibility.  So it keeps us busy around a whole variety of areas from infrastructure, streets and sidewalks, emergency management, procurement issues, a whole bunch of different things, but I am going to focus today specifically in the area of housing.
So the four main areas of what we work on is we get a combination of federal CDBG money as well as city dollars and then we have one state and one federal grant.  So we deliver direct independent living services to people with disabilities.  We do a lot of information and referral.  We do in‑home homemaker services through delicate agencies.  We provide home modifications for people with disabilities.  Employment services.  So a lot of direct services that work with the goal of keeping people with disabilities in their own homes.
We do a lot of disability awareness and education, mostly for city departments, because, you know, accessibility is one big issue, but human action can also result in discriminatory actions against people with disabilities.  So a lot of disability awareness, disability etiquette, overviews of disabilities laws, particularly for city government services.  So like the park district summer employees, emergency management personnel, fire and police recruits.  We do a lot of ‑‑ we train about 6,000 people a year.
Disability policy is another area, so we weigh in on local, state, and federal legislation that impacts people with disabilities.  So whether it's positively or negatively, and try to make sure that, you know, the issues of our community is reflected in any policy or legislative bill or action that's being put forth.  And we proactively work on legislative and policy issues, so departments come to us for input on anything that would impact our community.
And then lastly we work on accessibility compliance.  So we have an accessibility compliance unit that's also comprised of licensed architect that's located in our buildings department that does all the permitting and plan review specifically for accessibility.
So those are the four main areas that we work on.
As it relates to housing ‑‑ wait.  Uh‑oh.  Oh, challenges to accessibility.  Okay.  Sorry.  The order got changed.
Some of the challenges ‑‑ so I'm going to focus now specifically on housing, and some of the challenges that we see at local government in terms of accessible housing is one thing, construction not adhering to permanent plans.  So even though our office stamps plans to be accessible, we do a permitting review, we often find that in the field contractors make change orders for they don't follow the plans, the architectural plans that were permitted.  We find this particularly in the area of multifamily housing.  Time and time again, I mean, I can show you numerous locations just around where I live where there is ‑‑ you know, you can just visibly see it from the outside, whether it's narrow patio doors or front entrances that aren't compliant.
So that's one of the biggest challenges.  In the area of permitting, we also find that developers will come in, and they'll decide to change their plans, but they won't come back in for a revised permit.  So we don't ‑‑ we're not checking that for accessibility, and they could do some ‑‑ do changes that render a building or parts of a unit inaccessible.
We also see projects that don't come in for accessibility plan reviews at all.  And some of those, unfortunately, end up getting built that aren't compliant.  So that's ‑‑ those are some of the things that we see in the local government side that are big challenges.
We also had some issues with code conflicts.  We had not only a local accessibility code, but we have also a state code and then obviously federal codes.  And in some instances we find that there's conflicts.  So developers, architects have difficulty, you know, in terms of which to comply with.  We are addressing this issue and I'll talk a little bit about that later.  But that's some of the areas that we see.  Like, for example, the state code and the local code have different requirements about windows and accessible windows, or in public accommodations, we see different interpretations that are different from the local code as they are from the state code.
And then, lastly, one of the things that we're trying to do is to incorporate disability ‑‑ accessibility into the building inspection process.  We believe that if building inspectors were checking for accessibility on the front end we wouldn't have to file all these Fair Housing complaints on the back end.  And, unfortunately, when you file the complaints, oftentimes the units are already sold, particularly in multifamily housing, and it's very difficult, if impossible, to get that unit restored to how it was supposed to originally be constructed.
So one of the things that we are working on is to do inspections, get our building inspectors to do accessibility checks on the front end and prevent the building from getting the certificate of occupancy until they make all the corrections needed.  And every day that you hold up a certificate of occupancy, it can be big money for the developer.  So that's some of the leverage that we're trying to look at doing in a really formal way, and we've developed a pretty simple ten point checklist for you are a building inspectors, because they're in and out of these buildings really quickly and they have a lot of things to look at.  But I think that this would be one thing that could really try to catch some of these problems before they get sold, before they get occupied.
Do you want to ‑‑ are we okay with asking questions in the middle, or do you want ‑‑ who is our moderator?  If you want to ask a question, that's fine. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I was just wondering if you could make that checklist available on the Wiki, if that's a possibility.
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  Yeah, I think so.  Yeah.  Our checklist is consistent with our local code, but yeah, that would be something that we could make available.  We're also looking at doing this also for public accommodations too, because we're seeing new construction or alterations in the area of like restaurants is a good example, where they're not quite compliant, and again we think that if we could stop this before it gets occupied and before they're able to open for business, we can do a lot to address some of these problems.
So I want to talk really quickly about ‑‑ excuse me ‑‑ Section 504 of the Rehab Act and the Fair Housing Amendments Act, two very, very critical federal housing laws that are very, very relevant to our community, and then I'm going to talk about local codes and what we're doing here at the local level.
So quickly Section 504, I know that you may have covered this a bit.  But again really prohibits discrimination under any program, service or activity receiving federal funding.  So any federal dollars that are flowing to your local government or state government directly from the Feds, they can't discriminate against people with disabilities.  In what way?  So you can't refuse to rent or sell to someone with a disability.  You can't impose special terms and conditions that would impact someone with a disability.  For example, you know, charging additional fees for someone that might have a service animal or putting certain conditions on a person with a disability that wouldn't be put on other residents.
You can't require residency on one floor or in separate sections of the building.  So all people with disabilities are living on the first floor.
You cannot deny benefits, programs, or privileges made to all residents.  And again, you can't charge additional or higher fees to people with disabilities. 
In terms of the housing construction requirements, so 5% of the units in federally funded building must follow UFAS, which is the Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards.  And so 5% of those units have to be accessible for people with mobility disability.  So wheelchair accessible.
2% of the units have to be accessible to individuals with sensory impairments.  So individuals who are deaf, flashing alarms, that type of thing.  The units have to be scattered geographically throughout the building and be available in range of bedroom sizes.  It's what can he call a proportional to overall mix or horizontal or vertical distribution.  So you can't say all of the accessible units are on the first floor.
The units that are accessible to people with disabilities, you have to have the same range of bedroom sizes, you have to have the same opportunity to have the same views on upper floors that those nonaccessible units or people without disabilities would be able to access.
Section 504 also applies to rehabilitation.  So if you're ‑‑ and there's kind of a complicated formula, but basically in a nutshell, that if you're putting a large percent, 75% of the total cost of replacing the entire building, if that's the money that's being spent on altering the building, then this 5 and 2 would also apply.
So if you're out there in the community, you should also be aware of any federal buildings that is correct altered and these requirements that might need to be put into place. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I don't want to lose track of this.  You say you must have access to the same views as anybody else in the complex.  So I come from a very small state, and we have very small developments.  So 5% of the number of units may be 1.
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  Correct. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  And I'm thinking of a case in particular where they built this new ‑‑ there's actually ten units.  The second floor over ‑‑ you can see the lake.  The ground floor you can't.  So is that telling me that the unit needs to be on the second floor and therefore they need to have vertical access?
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  This is really meant for large multifamily units, where you're having a range of units.  I think it's more difficult when you have one or two units that have to comply.  But really the intent of this is that ‑‑ is not segregating the accessible units and giving people the same range of options.  So if your only accessible unit is one, it is going to be hard to decide, you know, I don't know that it speaks specifically to where that has ‑‑ where that unit has to go.  But really if we're talking about an 80 unit building, you can't have all the accessible units on the first or second floor, that's really what it goes to. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  So then you have the same issue is what I'm saying, is if there's ten units, five above and five below, then there has to be an accessible unit with the same view, and if you say a hundred units, say, right, and then the number is higher, there's a total of four or five units, some of them would have been on the second floor.
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  I mean, you might want to contact HUD to see how they would interpret that, but I think the point here is the inclusion, is you're having one ‑‑ if you're offering one, two, and three bedrooms and you have a big multifamily unit, and this comes up a lot in CHA buildings, and I think Amanda can probably also speak to this from a real life example do you want to say more about that.
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  We have, especially what we were talking about our mixed income communities and things like that, where we still have a lot of high rises in our senior buildings, and what we did when we actually went back and renovated the units for compliance, unfortunately we weren't able to space them out, you know, a unit in 503 or a unit in 510, we had to tier them, just because it was actually, you know, more feasible, because you had to move entire plumbing stacks and things like that to make them accessible.  So the Commissioner's point is that's not ideal because you don't ‑‑ when you say, you know, I live in 608 and someone says, oh, yeah, the 08 tier is all ‑‑ you know, that's where all the people with disabilities live, that's ‑‑ you're kind of striving to get away from that.  So if you only have one unit, it is ‑‑ it's not applicable there.  But if you had two units, and the developer chose to put them both on the second floor when we know that the fifth floor has the lake view and things like that, then I could see that there's more of an issue there. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  What about when developers in the smaller developments, similar to Harold's question, where they put the accessible for people with sensory impairments in the same unit as the mobility impairments?  Could you speak to that?
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  Sure, and we got dinged on that actually because that's a lie, because people make the assumption that because you're a person with a mobility impairment, you must also have a sensory impairment.  So this is directly from HUD, that you can only count a unit as one type of unit.  So it's either going to be your mobility accessible or your sensory accessible. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Thank you. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  So you would need two.
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  So you would need two to achieve that mix.  So the five ‑‑ even if the 2.1 ‑‑ I'm sorry ‑‑ the 2%, even if that's just one unit, it has to be separate and apart from that mobility unit. 
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  And then if ‑‑ kind of this goes to the next point is that under 504, you as a tent have a right to reasonable accommodation and reasonable modification.  So, for example, if you did use a wheelchair and you needed knows features that were in the sensory unit, you could also request that.
So reasonable accommodation would be a change in a policy, and a modification would be a structural change, so something changing the bathroom, adding a grab bar, you know, making a physical change to your unit.  Under 504 the landlord would be required to pay for that structural modification.  That's not the case under the Fair Housing Act.
But, again, these are your rights to also request that in addition to the structural requirements, the 5 and 2% as we call them.
The only thing that would really prevent is if ‑‑ is if the accommodation or the modification was an undue financial burden and administrative burden or it was just plainly technically infeasible.
Okay.  So the Fair Housing Amendments Act.  In 1988 the Fair Housing Act was amended to include protections for people with disabilities and families with children.  People with disabilities were not protected up until 1988, and again the Fair Housing Act took some of what was also required under 504, that it's discriminatory to refuse to rent or sell to someone with a disability, to impose different terms and conditions, and to steer to or from away certain neighborhoods.  Again, keep in mind 504 applies only to federally funded projects.  So the Fair Housing Act covers everything else.  So what is required under ‑‑ for housing units.
>> Karen.
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  Yes.
>> BETO BARRERA:  Sorry to interrupt.  I want to go back about undue burden there has been some reference to define that, and I've been saying that we have to look at the whole tomorrow.  And not just one particular building.  Do you want to add a little bit more on that?
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  Yeah, I would agree with that.  I think it really has to ‑‑ you can't give a blanket this is an undue burden.  I have to say we see this issue all the time.  This will be an undue burden or this is technically infeasible.  Well prove it us to.  Show it us to.  You may need to get the opinion of HUD for that.  But you can't really blanketly just assume that something is an undue burden.  And I don't know if you, Amanda, have run into this issue when you are doing your units at CHA?
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  Yeah, we run into it a lot.  People try to make the argument that it's financially burdensome.  What we've been told is when you look at our budget overall, especially since we're receiving probably around a billion dollars for the plan for transformation, it's very difficult to make that argument.
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  It's a high threshold.
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  It's a really high threshold to meet.  More often than that, it just leads to ‑‑ they'll start that way and it will lead into technically something infeasible to do.  A big thing with us is people want their unit made accessible, but to do that we would have to install an exterior ramp or a lift, and, you know, you guys are here in summer and it's been kind of nice.  But normally our winters are very bad and our summers are really bad, so it's not the best atmosphere for something mechanical that's outside.  So somebody might falsely try to say it's too expensive it's going to cost $10,000 to do that, but more often than not, it's the other ‑‑ you know, it's that it's not feasible to do something like that.  But, yeah, that argument is very hard to prove.
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  And I haven't seen really any pieces in my experience where something has financially been an undue burden.  They might try to say that.  But I'm just putting it up there as one of the defenses. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Just to add to that really quick, can you speak to the responsibility of a 504 landlord for an interactive process if they are saying this will be undue burden?
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  Yeah, like in ‑‑ just that they need to meet with their tenant, talk about what needs to be done and an accommodation can be ‑‑ it has to be effective.  It may not have to be the Cadillac, but it has to be effective. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  And I think if they are saying it's going to be an undue burden or administratively burdensome that they have to suggest an alternative, that they have to ‑‑ they can't just say no, that's it, we're done.
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  Exactly, and there might be one ‑‑ more than one way to achieve it.  Absolutely.  That's a good point. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Amanda, can you let us know how many reasonable accommodations were done by the CHA last year or in one year? 
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  So ‑‑ and we actually just were asked for this number.  As an authority, we kind of take care of both the voucher program and then the public housing units, and so just in a year, we have processed and made decisions on 1300 reasonable accommodation requests.  So ‑‑ 
(Applause.)
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  I think that that just proves that a lot of people understand that they can ask for accommodations, they can ask for modifications and that's kind of what we're striving for. 
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  Okay.  And then the requirements for housing:  The new construction requirements apply to any building that was four or more units built after March 13th, 1991.  These are the seven requirements up here.  I'll just read them out.  One accessible entrance on an accessible route.  Accessible common areas, accessible route through the unit, reinforcement in the bathroom for later installation of grab bars if you need it, light switches and environmental controls at reachable heights, kitchens and bathrooms with maneuvering space, and then there was one other that didn't get included, which was usable doors, so the doors must be wide enough for passage.
So I'm going to talk a little bit more about that, how that applies the at the city.  But that's the federal Fair Housing requirements for new construction.
Okay.  Accessibility at the local level.  That's kind of an overview of the federal laws.  Here in Chicago, we do have an accessibility code that was put into effect 2003.  And it's Chapter 18‑11 of the Chicago building code, and there are a number of advocates here that were involved in that process.  But basically we're one of the few ‑‑ and I don't know if many cities around here, if you have a local accessibility code.  Does anyone here ‑‑ like not a state code, but a local code for your city, accessibility?  Does anyone have that?  No?
Okay.  Well, we were updating our code, and the disability community really came together with our office to say, hey, we want to have a local code that, you know, reflects the needs and the issues of our community here locally, so it enabled us to do a couple of things.  One is to do enforcement at the local level, to do plan review and also to do permitting.  So it allows our office to do that.  And it also allowed us to be able to have some stricter requirements than is required in either the state code or the federal code.
So as it relates to housing, we do have what's called Type A and Type B units for all new construction.  So Type A units are, we require 20% Type A units and 80% Type B units.  Type A units have a stricter standard of physical access requirements in the units, and Type B units reflect the Fair Housing requirements.
So we were able to have a higher level.  We're hoping that we could go ‑‑ increase that 20% of Type A unit in the future so we can have more units that are more accessible.  One example of how type As more accessible is the turning radius in a bathroom.  The bads rooms are a lot bigger in Type A than in Type B.
We also require visitability in planned developments.  So a parcel of land that is approved by city council that would have multiple buildings or units or townhouses or single family homes on a parcel of land, we do require 10% of those units to be visitable, that would be on top of any federal, state, or the local accessibility code that would apply.  And again this was an attempt to again capture some of those units, for example, single family homes that might not fall under it.
The other thing we also do is plan review.  So because we have a local code, we do preplan review.  So we schedule appointments with architects and developers two mornings a week, and they come in when they're about 90% completion of their architectural plans, and our architect goes through the plan in detail so that when they go into the permitting process, it's a fast process and we're not flagging major problems when they're trying to get the permit.  It's a good opportunity to talk about strategies or ideas and flag major problems that might exist.
Again, we also do the permitting, which stamping the plans to be accessible.  And if a developer also needs to do a permit revision, they have to come back through us as well.  So we are one of the disciplines along with fire safety, architectural, heating and ventilation, up in our department of buildings.
When we can, we also do site inspections, so we send out staff out.  We have limited capacity to do this, but there are times when we might need to go out and actually look at a site to verify whether it's accessible or to advise on ways to make it accessible.  And then we do a lot of over the phone technical assistance and training for architects, developers, code interpretations, things like that.
And then, lastly, in the area of housing, we also provide home modification grants, so we get federal dollars and a lot of local city dollars to do home modifications for people with disabilities.  So we grant up to $10,000 per person to make porch lifts, ramps, bathroom modifications, kitchen modifications.  While we're in there we do lead abatement as well.
So that again is another way to increase housing stock in the city because like many of you who probably come from old cities where your housing stock is very vertical, that's really the one program that keeps people with disabilities and people who have acquired disabilities in their own homes.  So that's the other piece that we do.
And so just some kind of ideas about next steps in terms of what can you do.  And I added a couple more things from this PowerPoint.  But one, you know, know your rights.  File complaints when you see violations, either with HUD or with your local Fair Housing center.  Raise these issues to federal or city officials.  I mean, I have to say we're a disability office so we get a lot of complaints.  But I have to say I really like complaints because it helps us drive our agenda.  It helps us know what's happening out there in the community and helps us to try to take care of some of the issues and helps us build the case for why we need to do more around Fair Housing compliance, for example, or building inspections, and things likes that.
So I would say that's a really important piece.  You know, build relationships to the extent that you can with your local officials.  Look for opportunities that your city might be taking on where you could insert yourself to, you know, increase housing stock for people with disabilities.
So I talked about how we were ‑‑ the city was redoing and updating its building code.  That's a perfect opportunity ‑‑ that's when we did it ‑‑ to say hey, we want an accessibility chapter.  We also did a rewrite of our zoning code a number of years ago and included things on accessibility under the zoning code.  We were also doing expedited permit process, like to facilitate faster process for buildings to get permit, you know, and if you did a green building, you got a faster, you know, kind of more benefits, but we added accessibility on there as another incentive to expedite the permit process and make it more of an incentive for developers.
So I would say look for opportunities that you can at your local level to increase housing stock.
And then the other thing I would say that we are doing is because of the new federal ADA standards that just came out, we are going through ‑‑ we're going to be amending our local accessibility code.  We found over the years where there's areas where it's not entirely clear or it's confusing.  So we want to do that, but we also need to upgrade it to the 2010 ADA standards and we're also looking at ways to increase and strengthen accessibility requirements at the local level.  So, for example, increasing the Type A housing from 20% to a higher percentage.  So we've engaged the community and have advise sear committees that are working with us on that code amendment in terms of what's best going to meet the needs of people with disabilities in the City of Chicago.
So that is a summary.  And I'll turn it now to my copresenter Amanda.
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  So I just wanted to say thank you for inviting me to speak on the panel.  I was actually very flattered.  So more people are mad at us than they are happy with us.
So I'm going to talk to you guys a little about ensuring accessibility in public housing.  So as we said, I'm from Chicago Housing Authority, so we'll talk about stuff specific to our housing authority.
So a big question is what does it actually mean to make something accessible?  And you have to look at the big picture of your programmatic accessibility.  So it's not enough that you make accessible housing somewhere, you also have the policies and procedures to go along with it.  It should be the goal of every organization.  Sometimes it's on the back burner because there's always these pressing issues that people put before it.  It is a good thing to be proactive with these things instead of reactive.  A big thing you'll probably hear throughout my presentation is money, because as we all know, that's the number one thing driving a lot of things.  So if you're proactive and do things before instead of having to go back and redo it, you save a lot of money.
We look to see if everything is the letter of the law.  So a big thing that I learned basically coming into this work is an inch doesn't seem like a lot to most people, but when you're in bathrooms that we go inspect, an inch could be between, you know, me being able to shower myself or need somebody to do it for me, or to be able to use our bathrooms or not.  So make sure everything is to the letter of the law.  Things are 30 inches for a reason.
So we look at our policies and our procedures, our physical housing stock.  We make sure all of our communication is done in an accessible way.  So for the longest time we were still using the old‑fashioned TTY finance with the rotary machine until somebody told us there are easier ways and more modern ways to do that.  You can actually do it on the computer.  So have links in the community as well to kind of keep you up to speed? 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  One thing that you bring up, you talk about the one inch means a big deal for somebody with accessibility.  One thing that seems to be under stressed is the 2010 guidelines that used to be around is absolute minimal accessibility, it is not accessibility friendly.  Universal design is that accessibility friendly factor but it's not enforceable.  The 2010 standards, that's enforceable.  But I guess what I'm really stressing is that it's minimal accessibility.  It's not accessibly friendly.
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  I agree.  And you sound like our architectural consultant who tells everybody we go see, the developers, that is the minimum.  If I'm pouring concrete, don't do it to that exact minimum.  Give yourself some leeway so it is still in compliance.  And I think that's a big issue that we do need to look at.  But, yeah, I definitely agree.
Okay.  So the voluntary compliance agreement that we are under, so basically this stems from ‑‑ why are you guys laughing? 
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  Blowing kisses for Amanda.
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  That is the reason.  Is it really voluntary?  No, not too much.  Because you either do it, or in this situation is HUD.  We either comply with what we're supposed to comply with or they take away our funding, so not exactly voluntary, should be mandatory compliance agreement.  But I'm going to kind of echo what Jessica said to you before.  We definitely see this as an opportunity.  It gave us an opportunity to shift a focus from just housing in general to actually getting accessible housing into our housing stock.
It ensures communication between the disabled community.  So we do sit down with members of Access Living and with the Commissioner and talk about issues that are important to, you know, our applicants and residents with disabilities.  And it gives us a time frame, so we can't just say, yes, we'll do it ten years from now or we'll get around to it.  We actually went under our voluntary compliance agreement in 2006.  Typically they're about seven years long, so ours, hopefully, will end next year, but they give you that time and in that time you have to ensure that you're bringing units into UFAS compliance over those years.  So they give you benchmarks, and so far we've met everything pretty successfully, but it is a struggle.  So that's ‑‑ I think that's a tool you can kind of use for your local housing authorities.  You know, you can talk to HUD or you can ‑‑ you know, we don't like to be threatened with our funding to be taken away.  So, I mean, that is something that you can always say.  We're seeing that there's not accessible housing, and so maybe there needs to be a review of the Public Housing Authority's accessible housing units.
Okay.  So how do we ensure that things get done correctly?  As the Commissioner was saying, it's very hard to ensure that somebody is going to do exactly what they tell you they're going to do.  So developers may go in with a set of plans that have every essential to be, you know, eventually come out to be an accessible unit.  But like you were talking about with the code, maybe somebody does pour the concrete and it's too small, maybe there isn't a work space in my kitchen.  And so what we've kind of come up with is a three‑step process that I'll get into further to ensure that from conception all the way through when we take over the unit, that those ‑‑ that intent for an accessible unit is followed through on.
And another thing we kind of took from the city is developer responsibility.  So when we were talking about our mixed income communities, if a developer wanted to give us a unit that we know is not fully compliant, we won't take ownership of it until it is made completely compliant.  That was a huge stumbling block for us in the beginning is, you know, we have all these beautiful multimillion dollar developments, and we're marketing these accessible units to people that were not accessible.  So when we went back, a lot of the developers were broke and out of business.  Things either were just technically infeasible and you couldn't fix it.  So now we make sure we're not getting any lemons on the other side.  We make sure that it is an accessible unit when they say it is.  And we do, of course, follow the stringency of state, city, and federal codes, which here it's ‑‑ we apply the most stringent code possible. 
So one thing I would ask for you guys to see if your Public Housing Authority has an accessibility consultant or an expert in accessibility that's on staff.  They're basically a great tool.  They're an outside third party.  They'll offer an unbiased opinion if something is compliant or it's not.
Like we said, there's three different competing codes that happen in the City of Chicago.  And if we ever need help with that, we can go to our third party consultant and ask them what exactly we need to do so we don't have to guess on what ‑‑ if there is a construction tolerance in a code or things like that.
And a provision of our compliance agreement is we have to show HUD that, yes, our unit is 100% accessible.  So what our consultant does is provide us a certificate of compliance, and in turn we turn that over to HUD. 
And a great piece, and I think our developers love it because they don't have to pay for it, is our contractor will actually help and give guidance on site.  So, you know, if they walk through and things aren't at ‑‑ there's no 18‑inch pole clearance on something, they will tell you right there.  So before they finish something up and make it permanent, they'll get a chance to fix it, or if they have a challenge with code interpretation, we always make sure we kind of facilitate that relationship so we're not getting things that are noncompliant at the end.
Okay.  Stephanie is featured.  So what we're looking at are two photos of our process.  And so what our process is, when somebody is developing accessible units for CHA, we have them go through a plan review with our architect, and so all those plans are given a stamp of approval by our accessibility consultant to say, yes, the way these drawings look, if you go through with this, you'll have a fully compliant unit.
The first picture on the left‑hand side is the first half of our second step of the process, and that is an onsite inspection at 50% completion.  So what that basically is, is before the drywall goes up, we're wanting to make sure that the studies are in place, you can see from the floors being already poured that if you're going to have a turning radius in your kitchens and bathrooms, if you're going to have outlet boxes at correct height, so we have our consultant go out at 50%.
And then the picture on the right‑hand side of had the screen is going to be our 95% inspection, so we have our consultant go back when the grab bars are in place, fixtures are in place, drywall is up, to make sure that we still are in compliance.
Okay.  And so this is our final step in the process.  The two pictures on the screen now are showing accessible units.  And so what we do is we have our third party go in and look again when it's finished to tell us if we can say, here, HUD this is a unit that we're going to count as a mobility accessible unit.  And actually, interestingly enough, if you can look at these two units, one of them is accessible, and one of them is not.  So I don't know if you guys can tell me which one is not an accessible kitchen.
Because they look pretty good, right?  Both of them.  How many people think the one on the left is the accessible unit?
Okay.  You guys are good.  It's the one on the left ‑‑ the one on the left is noncompliant.  We don't have a turning radius in there.  We don't have a 30‑inch work space anywhere in the kitchen, and our cabinets are too high.  So while it looks really nice and this is what we encounter in the field it's not compliant.  And then our fancy unit on the other side that is our compliant unit.  You can see the roll under work space.
Okay.  So we've talked a little bit I think about designated plans, our senior designated plans.  In order for CHA to get our first senior designated plan back in 2000, we agreed to a hire standard of accessible units.  Not by much.  So it's ‑‑ as you guys are recalling, it's 5% mobility and 2% sensory is what the federal requirements are.  We provide 5.3% mobility and 2.1%.  In a lot of our buildings and a lot of our developments, that, you know, it could be from one unit to five units more than what the federal guidelines are.
Right now, we have over 1200 units that have been certified to HUD as fully accessible, and we have about 400 units that are sensory accessible.
Oh, sorry.  And this last one.  So while we're concentrating on public housing in these slides, what I did want to say is we have a larger role in Housing Choice Voucher Program as well now.  And one great thing and I think people just kind of ‑‑ we talked about it but didn't really get into it, is we have a modification fund, which is monies that CHA puts aside to buy accessible features.
So to purchase lifts, to purchase grab bars, and to pay for contractors to actually come in and do that labor.  And Access Living administers this fund for us.  So, you know, we're very comfortable.  They know contractors who would be best to do this work.  We get a lot of bang for our buck basically using them, I would say.  And it makes our participants' ability to find accessible units like that much easier.  So the City of Chicago in general is just an old city, and you know, there's obstacles to even getting into a unit.  So now with a modification fund, you know, we can do things like put ramps in and put grab bars in, so it is a great tool to have.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Who funds the modification fund?
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  The CHA.  The CHA puts aside, I think this year we have 200,000 years. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Is that part of the administrative plan then?
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  It is, yes.  And I think that's something ‑‑ you know, we were talking about personnel, and you know, if you have people who are willing to kind of take that on, and it's difficult in housing authorities because, you know, you're at will employees.  So while you're there willingly, you may not be there the next day if somebody is not on board with what your philosophies are.  But I think right now we do have a good mix of people who know that it's important to do these things for people with disabilities.  So we do have support there for the set aside.
Okay.  And so this is kind of a new thing.  We actually have a compliance department, which before if anyone was familiar with CHA was usually like one person that ran around and did stuff.  But under our voluntary compliance agreement what they were saying is, you know, you have the third largest public housing inventory, the second largest Housing Choice Voucher inventory in the country, maybe more than one person should be looking at this stuff.  So now we have three.
But the role of what we call the housing rights and nondiscrimination department, it was elevated after the compliance agreement.  So for the longest time, you know, it was an after thought.  Accessibility was an after thought.  So now because funding and everything depends on it, and it's not like it didn't before, but because it's been brought to our attention that it does, so, you know, the importance of this group was elevated.
We monitor 504 and ADA compliance, so we review all the policies and procedures.  We are administrating the VCA as well so we make sure all of our housing stock is accessible.  We review all the authority wide policies so when we say go look at our admissions plan or our administrative plan we've already reviewed those for compliance with ADA and 504.
Yeah. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I just wanted to say she's being modest.  This group actually reports to the general counsel's office and are the recognized experts for the entire agency and our contractors.  When there are any questions, this is the team that they go to.
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  That's very nice.  But like we were saying, we do review all of the accommodation requests come through our department.  So, you know, generally it's two people that are looking at our accommodation requests, and we want to make sure that we have the same kind of opinion and adherence to policy when we look at all of those things.  So instead of one person saying no, like I don't feel like we're going to do that today, we have the same people look being at all of our requests.  So I thought that was very important, and that's a new thing that we started in 2011.  Yes. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  So maybe you said it, and I just missed it ‑‑ oh, there we go.  Maybe you said it, and I just missed it, but what are the sensory compliant standards that you use in order to make the 2% ‑‑ or the 2.1 that are sensory compliant? 
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  No, you didn't miss it.  I didn't talk about it.  They're actually not very difficult to do.  What the City of Chicago code basically reads is that you need strobes or loud sensory equipment.  So you know, if you are a person with a visual impairment, you have the louder decibel alarm in every living space.  So we did get dinged on that a lot in the beginning because we would only have maybe a strobe in the living area, like the living room, but we had to go back and put it into the bathroom and into each bedroom, and into a kitchen.  So that's a sensory compliant unit. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  So you mentioned visual impairment.  I guess the things that come to my mind when I buy a house anymore or move to a new house are things like digital stoves that are ‑‑ can be used or things like that.  Do you have some standards that deal with or audible thermostats, for example, that you could tell what the temperature of the house was, et cetera.
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  I think that's a great ‑‑ those are great ideas.  There is not regulations on those or code requirements.  So, unfortunately, we don't do that.  One thing I did neglect to say was that, you know, we have the door bells.  Our program through the flashing lights as well.
We do have one development that does have the thermostat, that I did see ‑‑ I don't know if it's in one particular unit but if it's throughout the development.  But it was in one of our Cabrini renovations so in our park side condo building they did have kind much a doorbell who announced who was there basically and a thermostat that would tell you, you know, what the temperature was.  But it's not a code.  And so, unfortunately, we don't make sure everything has it. 
>> BETO BARRERA:  Yes, but can a resident ask for that feature as a reasonable accommodation? 
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  Sure, yes.  I mean, those are definitely things that because they're not code, it's not something we think about every day.  But if somebody said to make this more livable for me, to ensure that there's not a barrier to my housing and I need this, we would definitely do it. 
Then the last bit about the department, we actually have the Fair Housing manager at CHA is under this department as well, and so we just finished Fair Housing testing, so we did test our HCD landlords, and since we are not actively leasing off a wait list in our family properties, what we did is we sent out surveys, and Access Living was a partner on this, to all of our family developments to ask, do you know what your rights are as a person with a disability?  Would you know that you can ask for a modification or an accommodation?  And so we're working on getting that all kind of, you know, analyzed and hopefully we'll make that public so everyone can see how we did, which that may not be the good part.  But ...
Okay.  And so my last slide, kind of the to‑do's of working with Public Housing Authorities, and maybe this first one is not ‑‑ it's more for us than it is for CILs and for any advocates.  But, you know, go into things ‑‑ we go into stuff thinking, you know, you're not our enemies.  We have a common goal.  At least the people who I value at the authority have common goals.  You know, we're all working with people to find them accessible and affordable housing.  So the same thing as the Commissioner had said, we take housing complaints very seriously but we also take them as a learning tool.  You know, we may not know that the property manager at such and such a site is horrible, and they don't know the first thing about, you know, antidiscrimination laws and things like that, we won't know maybe until we get a housing complaint, but once we do, we can use that as a tool to get the right people working for the organization.  I think a very important one is to realize that attitude adjustments are just as important as structural modifications.  So, you know, we try to train everybody about disability etiquette.  And really I know this is hard to believe, but if you walk into or roll into a Public Housing Authority, you may be the first person that somebody meets with a disability.  You know, they may not have friends or family with a disability, so it's, as I think Lisa Danna said yesterday, it's ignorance.  A lot of people just don't interact with people with disabilities.  And so we have to work on attitudes as well as the physical housing stock.
A big one, just always ‑‑ we always just try to stay humble.  Know that you never know everything.  So I don't know if there really is ‑‑ you can be very knowledgeable on housing.  I don't know if you would ever be a housing expert.  With you there's always new things to learn.  Codes are constantly change.  You know, new ideas are always coming up.  Like we've talked about the partnerships.  You know, what are you able to do, what aren't you able to do?
Listen to ‑‑ we need to listen to our consumers.  So our consumers are very vocal, so they will definitely tell us, you know, what they want and demand in housing.
And another one that I was just thinking when we were going through the other presentations is if you're coming in to ask something of the housing authority, know your stuff.  So we're ruled by the code of federal ‑‑ code of federal regulations part 24.  We're 24 CFR, and that's all our public housing rules are housed under there.  So know what to ask for.  If you're asking us for something that we just can't do, I think it's going to start off badly.  But if you know what kind of parameters we can work in and you ask us for something that we can do, that's exciting, and we would be more than happy to work with somebody.  All of our policies and procedures are on our Web site.  Just so everyone knows they should be ‑‑ I don't know how small the areas are you are living in are, but they should be on Web sites for you, and that should be accessible.
And then if not, just FOIA it.  Get that information.  Know what you're up against when you go in and talk to people in housing authorities.
(Applause.)
(Whistle.) 
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  Do you guys have any questions for us?
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I had a situation where a lady has been waiting eight months to get a doorbell because she's hard of hearing or deaf.  And they put ‑‑ they finally installed it, but they only put it in the living room.  And she's complaining again because she can't tell if anybody is at her door when she's in her bedroom.  So are they in compliance or no?
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  Well, to me what we do since we have them in every livable space, that's based on a city code.  So while they may be in compliance I think the bigger issue there is it doesn't work for her, so she has right to ask for further modification.
And I would just always be cautious of a lot of times people think they're doing something that just by doing it makes them in compliance.  The time factor there is really an issue to me.  So that can be seen as, you know, failing to provide an accommodation.  If she waited eight months for something, there better be a very valid reason that she waited that long to get the modification.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Do you all have a mechanism by which you can prioritize your request for modifications?  Let's say you got someone who is at a hire level of disability ‑‑ higher level of disability and they need that modification, say, quicker than someone else.  I can't think of anything off the top of my head.  But is there a mechanism that you prioritize your modification requests from one to the other person?
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  There isn't.  And I'll tell you why.  And that's mainly because, you know, we're limited into what we can ask people.  So I would never judge that, you know, this person is more disabled than that person, and so I'm going to get to that person first.
We do have policy around it.  So when you ask for and I being a day, we put our time frames in there.  So I want to see something done within 30 days of somebody asking for it.  And if they can't, there better be a reason why, and we have to have it written down.  So a big ‑‑ a big request that we get is removal of carpeting, which why do we still continue to put carpeting in units, I'll never understand, but, I want to know when we're going to have it taken out, when we're going to have somebody installing the tile.  We need time frames for that.  So ‑‑ and your housing authority should have that too.  It's basically to cover themselves.  So, you know, like the same thing I was saying there, there has to be ‑‑ eight months for a doorbell is pretty ridiculous.  So unless there's something that they can show in the budget or, you know, that their procurement process takes that long, that's a real issue.
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  Do you talk to other housing authorities?  Do you have connections with them and share ideas, strategies? 
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  You know, we do.  We talk to a lot of other housing authorities.  What's kind of cool is people call us all the time asking us about what we're doing here, because I think, as we said with the code compliance, there's a minimum for what you have to do, and I feel like a lot of places maybe just do that minimum, and we're in a unique situation where, you know, we do have, like you're saying we have an office of disability that's part of the city.  We have Access Living.  So we're able to get more ideas and do pilot programs.  So while we do talk to a lot of housing authorities, a lot of them, you know, ask us about what we're doing too.
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Are you working with other sort of silos of information, like, for instance, you got the silo of housing information, you got criminal justice.  You got emergency medical care, education, to be able to see how homelessness affects the entire community as opposed to just housing? 
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  Who is that directed to? 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Pardon?
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  Is that directed to both panelists or CHA or the city? 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I guess basically it would be more toward the PHA or what would be the considered the Continuum of Care Chicago. 
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  I don't know if I can answer that for you.  Are you asking if homelessness ‑‑ 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Well, I've seen models like over in Hennepin County, Milwaukee, Wisconsin ‑‑ Minnesota, I should say.  They ended up getting some sort of a research grant from a foundation to be able to have an individual that took in the combination of information from those different silos and started finding out that the PHA actually wasn't putting the money into where it could actually affect homelessness to a great degree.  They were basically giving out vouchers to people at about 50% AMI and the people that were coming into the emergency shelters were about 30% AMI and less.  And so they shifted what their definition of success was because at 50% AMI they were getting about 95, 96% success rate.  So needless to say, to be able to address the 30%, it takes a lot more services and time and money.  And then they showed that through the criminal justice system, if they house ‑‑ you know, did the housing first model, they actually dropped the number of the amount of jail time like for vagrancy, you know, and all that sort of stuff in the jails, they dropped the amount of emergency medical care because people were housed, the amount of substance abuse treatment dropped dramatically because they were housed.  And they were able to really focus on the services and really work with the people to get them to be self‑sufficient.
>> AMANDA MOTYKA:  Well, I feel like a dummy, because I don't know how to approach answering your question.  I know that Jessica may have an answer for you.
>> JESSICA PORTER:  So what you're saying is very interesting, and it's a very broad ‑‑ very broad and significant issue of homelessness.  The CHA does work with a variety of partners, including the Veterans Administration, the coalition for supportive housing, the city's plan to end homelessness, as a part of this very, very large issue.  However, our mission is a little bit different than ‑‑ it isn't really to end homelessness.  It is to provide low income housing.
And, again, I think one of the things that we've talked about is the issue of extensive waiting lists.  And we do open up our waiting lists.  We're about to go through and do a program of reviewing our waiting list to find out who is homeless.  However, that's just part of the total issue of homelessness and really our, as public housing agencies, working in collaboration with these other partnerships, our mission really is to provide low income housing rather than a mission to end homelessness.  We work with our waiting list to provide housing to a certain segment of the population.
Now, within our segment, certainly we do have people who fall into the category of near homeless or chronically homeless.  However, that's really in partnership with the other people at the table. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Pretty much the Continuum of Care.
>> JESSICA PORTER:  Yes.
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  She had a question. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  This question probably is more for Karen.
In general, not specifically related to housing, do you know if there are any requirements for how often architects review standards and regulations?  The impetus behind this question is when I hear of a new construction or even our restriping in our community, I'll go to the architects and say, hey, do you have the 2010 ADA regulations?  They just came into effect.  They're really great.  And the architect will generally say something like, oh, I know how to do that stuff.  I've been doing it for 20 years.  We're just going to do it how we just did it.  And I'm like no, that's wrong.  Please don't do that.  And sometimes I've been successful, and sometimes I haven't.  But I'm wondering within their educational or professional sphere, is there any structure for them to continually be updated on what the newer regulations are?
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  Well, the City of Chicago, if they're not compliant with those new standards when they come in for plan review, they're not going to get a permit.  That's the one gate keeping mechanism that we have in the city.  We do outreach when we do the preplan review, which is the spreading the plans out at the table let's review it before you go into permit, we apply those standards, because there have been changes.  And so for us in the City of Chicago, word gets around to the developers because the big developers who are doing a lot of units or a lot of big projects are the repeat ones that keep coming in, so they seem to be a little more updated than perhaps some of the smaller developers.
I can't speak beyond the City of Chicago, but that's our one gatekeeping mechanism is because we do have accessibility plan review, and even though our code isn't yet updated, they're not going to get a permit unless they comply. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Do you have any suggestions for smaller communities that may not have that accessibility review in place as to how to connect with the developers and start developing that relationship?
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  The building ‑‑ the local building department or whatever the term is in your area is.  They should be the area that's looking at this and getting the word out to developers.  If they're coming in for permitting plans, that's a good point of entry for them to be updated.  You know, there's obviously education and outreach that can be done by getting experts in the field to do educational seminars, but I have to say the whole permitting process is probably the best gate keeping mechanism you can have because they're not going to be able to build their building unless they have a plan that's compliant.
So I would say contact your local building department, who would be the point of entry for any new construction that's going out there and see what they can do to help you. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Thank you. 
>> AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I just want to also maybe say that since Karen took over the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities things have improved on accessibility quite a lot in the City of Chicago, but she would be also the first one to acknowledge that a lot more work needs to be done.  We need to increase to 100% the Type A units in our municipal code.  We need to establish on site monitoring and assessment during construction of these dwellings.  So there's quite a bit more to be done.  But in the last year since Karen took it over, it's been amaze the changes and the accomplishment that has been done in that area.  And the same thing goes also to the Chicago Housing Authority, and I had mentioned this in several ‑‑ to several audiences, that Chicago Housing Authority leads the country of other PHAs as the leader of servicing people with disabilities in their housing.  We have submitted testimonies and done hearings before the congressional committees of banking and housing committees under (indiscernible) ‑‑ Barney ‑‑ Barney Frank, and my hero who was in jail one time.  But there still also needs to be a lot more done with the Chicago Housing Authority.  But there are many, many, many people across the country are calling us and call the CHA to see how they have done it.  And it could be done.  Budget, no budget, big budgets, or whatever budget your Public Housing Authority, they will be able to do ‑‑ to do compliance with 504.
>> KAREN TAMLEY:  And I would add to that, thank you for saying that.  Yeah, definitely, even though a lot has been done, we're nowhere near done in my mind.  But I have to say also just to not underestimate the real power of the advocacy community, because it's them that has made a lot of the changes that have happened, you know, at local level and with the PHA.  And you know, I mentioned earlier that I was working at a CIL for 13 years before I came to local government, and just Beto showed me before we came up here the list of things that had been accomplished and achieved as a result of the community.  And it's a really long list.  I mean the whole 504 office, I mean a lot of that I remember way back in the day, you know, 17 years ago, working on those issues, and so I just think that, you know, we can only do so much, but it's the community that really needs to be the voice for change and to really make things happen.  Are there other questions, comments?
(Applause.)
>> AMBER SMOCK:  How many of you guys thought this was a good presentation?  I did, okay.
(Applause.)