Modifying Buildings for Disabilities

As a person ages their housing needs change, including the need to adapt the housing to cope with decreased mobility, lower stability, infirmity or worse. 

That’s always difficult to do and (apart from cost) there are often a variety of options to choose between and little guidance about the options, advantages and disadvantages. 

The population is ageing so it’s a community wide problem.  And whilst people in freestanding homes have to solve the problem themselves, when older and mobility impaired people live in strata buildings it becomes a challenge for the committees and managers to adapt the building to meet their needs.

Leaving aside legal debates about the liability to adapt strata buildings, it’s clear that trends in decisions are increasing responsibility, it’s the morally correct thing to do and as the ownership of strata buildings ages then it’s more likely they will vote in favour of adapting their building.

So, I think we can all expect to see more changes and devices in strata buildings in the future and will need to know more.

One place you can look to find things out is the Home Modification Information Clearing House run by the Home and Community Care Program and the University of New South Wales.  The website contains lots of quality information about adapting buildings for mobility needs.

It’s a great source of good information.

See you on a stair lift soon.

Francesco …