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Homes to be wheelchair-friendly

'Visitable' development one of few in Canada

By: Bartley Kives

Posted: 06/16/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

The home on the left with no front steps is a ‘visitable’ model, designed to welcome the disabled.

A new neighbourhood planned for Waverley West will be the first in Winnipeg -- and one of just a handful in Canada -- where a majority of the homes will be built to accommodate people in wheelchairs.

About 670 of the 1,225 homes planned for the northwest quadrant of Waverley West will be "visitable housing," which are homes that don't require modifications to let people with disabilities enter and move around.

Visitable homes have washrooms on the main floor, doorways wide enough to accommodate wheelchairs and no steps out in front.

As North America's population ages, advocates for people with disabilities have been urging cities across the continent to build more of these homes.

The plans for the as-yet-unnamed Waverley West northwest neighbourhood -- which came before city council's Riel community committee on Tuesday -- call for one of the largest collections of visitable homes in Canada, if not the largest, said Allen Mankewich, spokesman for the Canadian Centre on Disability Studies.

"This is obviously a great step for the City of Winnipeg," said Mankewich, explaining visitable homes are not just for people with disabilities.

"We try to promote it as something for everyone. Even if you or somebody in your immediate family doesn't utilize it, they may in the future.

"It allows people to stay longer in their homes and possibly be less reliant on public health services.

"It may cost a little more up front, but pays off in the long run."

The cost of building a visitable home is only slightly higher than building a conventional home, said Paul McNeill, regional vice-president of the MMM Group, the consulting firm that created the Waverley West northwest plan on behalf of the developer, Manitoba Housing.

The real challenge involves land drainage, as any home with a front entrance at ground level must have a slope at the rear of the property to allow rain and snowmelt to drain off. Conventional homes are sloped in front.

This forced the developer and city planners to come up with creative ways to design the new neighbourhood. As a result, all of the visitable homes in the area will back onto lanes, parks or public pathways that will also function as drainage corridors, said John Wintrup, a principal planner with the city.

"We had to really take a look at this, because this is something new for the City of Winnipeg," he said of the drainage and the pathways, which must be safe as well as esthetically pleasing. We didn't want to design a concrete drainage ditch.

This is not the L.A. River here."

Many of the visitable homes in the neighbourhood will have two storeys, McNeill added.

"The idea was not to make the whole house handicap-accessible," he said. "The idea is the homes in this community would have no barriers to visitors."

When the creation of Waverley West was first announced, what was then the Manitoba Housing and Renewal Corp. promised there would be a visitable housing component.

Following through on the pledge will be a victory for the provincial agency, which has not been able to follow through on a separate pledge to ensure much of the new suburb has geothermal heating.

It will also place Winnipeg at the forefront of visitable housing, planner Wintrup said.

"This is very innovative. There are not too many examples across Canada, especially on this scale," he said.

The Waverley West northwest plan is expected to come before city council in July.

bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 16, 2010 B1

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