Many people across the U.S. and beyond actively work for Visitability. Join in to keep making ‘concrete change’.

Social stigma is a breakdown of social empathy. Instead of seeing the world through the eyes of the other, a person who stigmatizes has imposed their own view onto the social identity…. Social empathy is the cure for social stigma.

Successful design is empathetic design. Click here to read more.

We briefly toured the community to show how simply zero-step entrances were accomplished on a variety of terrains.

Then we visited a home in the community to see how simply a wide bathroom door can be incorporated into small-footprint house plans.  (Most bathrooms are habitually built with narrow doors.  For instance, a new ‘mini-mansion’ a few blocks from East Lake Commons has six bathrooms, all with narrow doors.)  We then met in Eleanor’s living room, to discuss how Visitability can be incorporated more fully in HUD-assisted new housing in Georgia and beyond.  HUD’s Disability Task Force and several task force members from the Paralyzed Veterans of America and the National Council on Independent Living have begun renewed focus on promoting Visitability within HUD-assisted new, single-family houses and townhouses.

Right now, there are hundreds of people in Montana who cannot go home. They cannot go home because there are no available homes in Montana that they can use. [...]

Click here to read more by Justyn Field in a guest column published on Missoulian.com on February 6, 2012.

4.  MYTH:  A zero-step entrance requires a conventional ramp, with 90-degree drop-offs at the edges and hand rails.

Fact:  On new construction, the lot can be graded so that a sidewalk ties directly to a porch.

Click here to see the other eight!

Concrete Change, a pioneering advocacy organization for those with disabilities, has been awarded with the 2011 Martin Luther King Jr. Community Service Award from Emory University, the Rollins School of Public Health and the Goizueta Business School for its work promoting affordable, accessible integrated housing. Additionally, Eleanor Smith has been awarded with the first Advocacy Award from the disability section of the American Public Health Association. The award will be presented at the APHA conference, October 29th-November 2nd.

Eleanor gained traction within CNU after leading discussions and bringing awareness of the three key tenets of visitability to CNU’s leadership. Visitability is defined as: 36” wide doors, reinforced bathroom walls, and one zero-step entrance. For more on this, please visit the definitions authored by Concrete Change.

Eleanor has had spirited debate on how to provide accessible dwelling units as part of New Urbanism. She has also presented at the 2009 Atlanta Regional Commission’s Lifelong Communities Charrette, where she was able to work on specific designs with Andres Duany and other CNU members. She has also been a frequent presenter at CNU, most recently at CNU 18 in Atlanta.

Congratulations to Eleanor and Concrete Change!