THAT DELIVERS FREEDOM,
INDEPENDENCE, MOBILITY AND DIGNITY?
“I’d rather die than use a
wheelchair,” says the bigoted woefully ignorant ableist.
The same person ironically jumps into
a sedan to drive 10 miles — because that wheeled machine covers more ground
more quickly than his body.
Assistive mobility devices are
liberating.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
These relief cottages are currently in
the process of getting funding and being placed.
Matthew Allen, J.D., is director of
Professional Development and Government Affairs for the Land of the Sky
Association of REALTORS® said LOTSAR, along with other stakeholders, was
involved in discussions with the city of Asheville on updating their flood
regulations and will similarly weigh in when Buncombe County’s regulations are
updated.
He said local officials know some
people will have difficulty rebuilding in flood prone areas and the community
is working together on a good solution for all.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
LOTSAR sprung into action for disaster
recovery.
LOTSAR provided resources for
rebuilding and applying for state and federal disaster assistance.
Allen noted that the National
Association of REALTORS® and NC REALTORS® combined to contribute more than $1
million in recovery grant funding.
LOTSAR provided resources for
rebuilding and applying for state and federal disaster assistance.
It also got heavily involved in
presenting information on water testing—because for weeks after the disaster,
city water was mostly undrinkable.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
The Category 4 hurricane caused more
than $50 billion in damage in the city of about 95,000. Asheville’s River Arts
District was largely ruined.
Asheville is the county seat of
Buncombe County—the hardest hit county in North Carolina, where 42
storm-related deaths were confirmed.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
Payton said it is difficult and cost
prohibitive for individual property owners to seek rezoning, so more sweeping
changes to the existing zoning is necessary for walkable and mixed-use
neighborhood centers to emerge.
He said California has a somewhat
unique tool to achieve this, called a Specific Plan, which allows a rezoning
across multiple properties under disparate ownership.
This approach, used in California or
exported to other disaster-struck parts of the country, could prevent bland,
uniform, mega developments created by master developers brought in to spur
rebuilding.
Payton said a revised Specific Plan
can help restitch a community by allowing individual parcel owners to rebuild
at slightly higher densities.
“By allowing such rebuilding, the city
would provide these small-parcel owners the incentive to hold onto their land
and rebuild, thus ensuring the kind of village texture that is such an
important part of these neighborhoods, to remain,” he said.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
Payton said disaster rebuilding is an
opportunity to create a pedestrian-friendly, mixed-use environment that can be
served by transit.
This would better serve the 30 percent
of people who do not drive.
“While land-ownership patterns and
infrastructure tend to be fixed, zoning itself is mutable.
Because of the small increment of
property ownership characterizing both Palisades Village and Altadena, rezoning
would allow for a delightfully more robust mix of uses and a finer grain of
development than might be found in large lot efforts that are more the norm in
redevelopment,” he said.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
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Payton said more resilient and
equitable communities can rise from the ashes.
“As charming and beloved as the
historic centers of Pacific Palisades and Altadena were, the opportunity to
reconsider the single-use land-use pattern of both locales stares us in the
face.
In the Palisades, some of the
commercial space was organized in a car-centric pattern, with parking
dominating the streetscape.
So, in the case of the Palisades, we
might ask, why can’t the new construction be built to frame and embrace
generously sized sidewalks and relegate parking to a less visible location?” he
said.
DEHUMANIZING WORDS HURT PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
Caretaker = person who cares for a thing.
Dear ableist journalists.
Stop referring to those who care for people
with disabilities as caretakers.
First, it is inaccurate.
Journalism depends on accuracy.
Second, labeling a person as a thing dehumanizes
PWDs when they deserve dignity and identity.
Words Matter.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
Payton said while fires destroy
buildings and leave the ground beneath them fallow, they do not erase property
lines, or municipally owned rights-of-way, which he refers to as “facts on the
ground.”
He said reconciling a diffuse land
ownership pattern is key to any successful and transformative redevelopment.
“Any rebuilding effort must begin by
acknowledging these facts and then by going farther by asking some rather
simple questions:
‘Why can’t we put apartments above the
rebuilt retail spaces?
Why can’t some of the small apartment
buildings provide opportunities for ground floor office, maker spaces, or
retail?’” he posited.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
Neal Payton, FAIA, FCNU, leads the Los
Angeles-based west coast office of Torti Gallas + Partners, an urban and
architectural design firm.
Long before the wildfires the firm was
transforming urban and suburban spaces with pedestrian-friendly environments
with transit-oriented development and public housing renewal.
“The LA fires saw a significant number
of commercial properties destroyed, including 135 small apartment buildings and
145 retail buildings.
About 75 percent of the multifamily
buildings destroyed or damaged contained 20 units or less and averaged 70 years
of age.
Most of them were owned by individuals
or local investors and might rightfully be labeled as missing middle housing,
also known as workforce housing,” Payton said.
“This dispersed and finely grained
ownership pattern poses both a challenge to the redevelopment of these
fire-damaged areas but also provides an opportunity.”
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
Parag Khanna, an author, speaker and
innovator known for his analysis and macroeconomic forecasts, created Climate AlphaGeo—an
AI-powered analytics platform.
AlphaGeo uses data to track trends in
migration, the changing climate and finance to know which locations are most
resilient and profitable as the world faces new weather-related challenges.
The company offers location,
investment and resilience strategies.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
As rebuilding takes place, “we will be
working with our communities to mitigate fire hazards, to avoid tragedy,”said Dawn
M. Bauman is chief strategy officer at Community Associations Institute (CAI)
and executive director of the Foundation for Community Association Research.
“REALTORS® are so valuable, because
they can educate purchasers on what they’re purchasing and what they need to
know about an HOA or condo associations,” she said.
“They can ask the associations if
there is regular maintenance, major repairs outstanding, a reserve fund, a
reserve study?”
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Since 98 people were killed in the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium building in Surfside, Fla., Dawn M. Bauman at Community Associations Institute has led efforts on the local, state and national level to develop policy changes for safer condominium buildings.
“For condominium buildings, owners must make sure that regular maintenance is happening.
Regular, scheduled
maintenance must identify building vulnerability so modifications can be made
to make a safer, stronger building,” she said.
“Environmental sustainably can be as
simple as changing windows so they are more secure and more energy efficient.
That can make a huge change in the
cost of maintaining a building with a relatively small investment.”
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
CAI is the leading international
organization representing the condominium, homeowners association and housing
cooperative sector.
CAI says this is the fastest growing
type of housing in the world and represents at least 30 percent of housing
worldwide.
“Knowing what we know now, we are
encouraging community associations to incorporate mitigation practices when it
comes to wildfire, flood, hurricanes, etc.,” Bauman said.
“[CAI] helps associations to
understand that with a reasonable investment, they’ll be able to experience a
return—whether it’s a more resilient building, lower insurance premiums, less
maintenance cost, or greater sustainability.”
HAS BUILDINGS WITH SUBSTANDARD
ACCESS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES
Locked and blocked.
This is what
happens when lazy/ableist city officials allow a brand new business to gut an old building but NOT make the main entrance accessible to people with
disabilities.
Segregation results in no wheelchair access.
This is on Giralda in the City of Coral Gables.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
Highlights include:
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“Resiliency includes making sure we’re
building back equitably.
There are some very early discussions
of collaborations with community land trusts, one way those families’ assets
can be rebuilt,” she said, noting that the cost of rebuilding is out of reach
for many.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
“There are a lot of conversations
about what we should be rebuilding—to look at resiliency standards,” she said.
“When it comes to protecting homes
that were not built to resist fires, “Fire Safe Marin” [California] is a great
guide for retrofitting with some very simple and cost-effective approaches.”
Orlando said the AIA also is looking
at what it can do for working-class families that lost their homes to fires in
the Altadena area.
She said many multigenerational
families were living in housing that was uninsured or under insured.
Those families lost their source of
generational wealth.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
Ladder fuels are combustible
vegetation that lead a fire to a structure.
“What you surround the house with—is
like setting a campfire around the structure.”
“Developers are being proactive.
They have to ensure their developments
are insurable,” Long said.
“This is not just in western states;
it’s a national issue.”
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
UDA creates resilient design that
helps make properties insurable, while mitigating the costs of insurance in
high-risk areas.
After UDA’s work, Paradise adopted its
own wildfire ordinance to require that people maintain their lots to reduce
combustible material.
“Paradise has very strong code
enforcement now.” Long said.
“There is no such thing as a fireproof
home,” Long said. “You can harden by having a fire-resistant roof, closing up
vents to keep embers out and using windows that don’t melt and fall out.
Fireproofing the lot means nothing
combustible within five feet of the structure. Set aside the [aesthetics] of
plants and mulch around the foundation, and don’t build wood fences up to the
side of a home.”
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
“They had to get outside funding to
backfill their tax roll to 2055.
They had naturally occurring
affordable housing in a three-county region—but much of that will be lost
because of the high cost of rebuilding.”
Long said building back affordably is
a higher priority for disaster survivors than building back to be fire
resistant.
He said many cities push back on
building codes that require more than the International Wildland-Urban
Interface (WUI) Code, which sets minimum regulations for safeguarding life and
property from the intrusion of wildfires.
FABULOUS HISTORIC PRESERVATION OF A 1950S LEGEND
The retro palace has been lovingly
preserved and restored to its finest state since opening in 1956 in the heart
of Fort Lauderdale.
Real fire dancers, athletic performers
and live musicians entertain a packed house daily at Mai-Kai Restaurant and
Polynesian Show in Fort Lauderdale.
The retro gem has multiple bars, a
grotto garden and hundreds of South Seas artifacts.
Mai-Kai delivers on a special night out with fun for all Vegas caliber performances, food and drink.
It was restored by same hospitality team that preserved and enlivened the world famous Ball and Chain bar in the heart of Miami’s Calle Ocho.
The Mai Kai is listed on The National Register
of Historic Places.
Closed by water damage, the new team did a multimillion dollar restoration.
Part of the upgrades include a huge
ADA accessible restroom with changing station.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
UDA worked to rebuild Paradise,
Calif., where a 2018 fire destroyed more than 18,000 structures, including over
14,000 homes, and killed 85 people.
Long noted that more than six years
after the fire, Paradise is only about 25 percent built back.
Businesses have been slow to come
back, because there’s not enough population to support them.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
“Even before the fires, a shortage of affordable housing in Los Angeles created a pall on overall economic growth …
Renters in Los Angeles County need to
earn $48.04 per hour—nearly triple the minimum wage—to afford the average
monthly asking rent of about $2,500, according to the California Housing
Partnership.
That average is about 45 percent
higher than national rents …” stated the report by Costar.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
The report notes that The American
Property Casualty Insurance Association has lobbied Congress to pass more laws
to address wildfire risks—such as the Fix Our Forests Act that seeks to
increase the pace and scale of forest management and establishes a program to
better coordinate federal agencies to reduce wildfire damage to properties.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
When communities rebuild after
wildfires and other disasters, the president elect of the American Institute of
Architects and a leading Disability/Aging in Place/Environment advocate, Illya
Azaroff, champions the benefits of Universal Design.
Residential and commercial space that
is designed to accommodate all ages and abilities adds flexibility, durability
and cost efficiency—similar to green building.
AND SUSTAINABILITY DESIGN
Planners, architects, builders,
developers, REALTORS® and even insurance companies are rallying to get a handle
on resilient design.
From protecting individual buildings
to entire communities, the professions that shape our built environment and way
of life are searching for best practices that will prepare us for and protect
us from extreme-weather impacts.
