SPEAKER_02 0:00

Do you have your tickets to Wicked for good yet? No! No!

SPEAKER_00 0:05

No, I do not. I don't buy them ahead of time. I know I should. We have planned to go. So I think I told you in one of the emails that Wicked actually is an interesting issue in the disability community.

SPEAKER_02 0:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Because in spoiler alerts, in case it makes it.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Spoiler alert. When's this gonna go live? I hope people have seen the movie.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

In case it makes it in. In the second act, if we've seen the original Broadway show, her sister.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Nesserose.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Nesserose. She put on the shoes. Yeah. And she gets up and walks.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Which is a really big no-no. Extremely ableist.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

So the director of the movie has changed that point. Because actually the actor playing this road in the movie, unlike on the stage, had a disability. She used the wheelchair that she did. So having her get up and walk is another thing that's gonna happen. Yeah. So they've they've reworked that part of the movie, which is very much appreciated in the digability community.

SPEAKER_02 1:31

By the time this episode goes live, probably folks who are like you and me, who love the good and see it, will probably have seen it. But yes, in act two of the musical, Nessa Rose, who is in a wheelchair, uses a wheelchair, she gets those ruby slippers that we are so familiar with from Wizard of Oz, which puts them on, and now she's able to walk. And that being incredibly ableist. And so we'll see what they do in the movie. It's pretty exciting that they are taking that feedback and learning how to best demonstrate what it means for an actress and for this character who uses a wheelchair, what that would look like for for her.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

Right. Because having acted without disabilities portray characters with disabilities is really frowned upon in the disability community. It's been really long in the disability community. When Queen is recognized, please don't do that.

SPEAKER_02 2:38

Yeah, right. And it has been so prevalent in film and television of folks who do not have the disability that they are portraying, and how problematic that is to do that. Exactly. So yay! So we can do that. Good job, John too. Good job, director.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Good job, Fred.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

So we'll see, we'll see what happens and we'll see if we how we how we feel about it, the change. Exactly. Exactly. Dare I say, for good. Oh you're listening to New Hampshire Has Issues, and I am your host, Liz Canada. I was so honored and excited when Pat reached out to me about a podcast that she works on called That's Inclusive, which is the podcast from the New Hampshire Council on Developmental Disabilities. And she emailed me and, you know, referenced that I like musicals and she likes musicals, you know, a little this and that. I was like, Pat, why don't you come on my podcast and talk about disability rights? And so here she is. And we spend a lot of this episode talking about housing. And I feel like housing, might I say, is the talk of the town right now. And I really feel like we're just barely scratching the surface of the issue of housing. So I'm so appreciative of Pat coming on and talking with me. If you would like to support the show, you can visit patreon.com slash NH has issues. If you, like Pat, might have an idea for an episode, send me an email. Newhampshire has issues at gmail.com. Uh it is December, it is cold, it is snowy, it is dark at 2 p.m. Please take care of yourself. Listen to the podcast, laugh at some jokes here or there, and I'm gonna do my best to get you an episode, one more episode, before 2026, and then we'll be back with our regularly scheduled programming. All right, I will pass it over to me. Welcome to New Hampshire Has Issues, the podcast that dares to ask what learnings are we gonna do today on this podcast from the issues we've already talked about? What can I learn and what are we gonna learn together? My guest today is Patricia Vincent Piet. Very good. Very good, are you sure? So, my guest today is Patricia Vincent Piet, who is a disability rights advocate and a listener of the show, knows enough about the show to know that I love musicals, and when we connected on email, promised me we would talk about musicals on this episode, which is great. I'm so glad that you are here, Patricia. Thank you. Do you go by Patricia or Pat? I feel like I've seen Pat. You can call me Pat. Okay. Do you have a tagline for me for our episode together? New Hampshire has issues, the podcast that dares to ask.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Why does New Hampshire seem to hate me? And uh and people and all interventions would dispel us. Hmm. Oh why? Why do they why did it seem like they're out to get us? Hmm.

SPEAKER_02 5:44

Hard-hitting tagline on the podcast today. That is for sure. That's great. But the question is, why are the policies and the practices and the laws in our state, why are they in such a way that cause harm to folks with disabilities? Why is this how New Hampshire is behaving?

SPEAKER_00 6:05

And why have recently it felt like feels like they're going out out of their way to disenfranchise people?

SPEAKER_02 6:13

Let's get into it, Pat, because that is the question that I have as well. So why don't we start with a little bit of background about yourself?

SPEAKER_00 6:21

I have a relatively mild version of simple party. So growing up, I could m what they call mask pretty well. I I mean the emphasis away with therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy was let's normalize this person so they can have a typical typical life. And I discovered at some point yeah, that just wasn't gonna happen. Like you can only disguise this voice so much. You can only disguise my wobble so much. And so I lived most of my life outside the disability community, just trying to fit in and be quote unquote normal. When I went to school, I was in a typical classroom, they called it mainstreaming at the time, and never interacted with disabled kids. I would do it everything completely inclusive classrooms. I never knew anyone with a disability. Wow. Until really until my late twenties. I mean I had some interaction. I had some interaction in college, but I went to college about the time the ADA passed. And I went to a small private college. There weren't many people with disabilities in my college. So I ended up actually dating someone who was really interested in my identity as a person with a disability. And I and to me I had never identified that way. And so when he was very interested in that, I started getting interested in it too. And I discovered something called the disability culture and the disability rights movement. I went on to to marry someone who was completely outside of that and spent time in a sort of weird place for a few years. But then when I b came after I got divorced and came back to New Hampshire, I was trying to create a life for myself. And someone suggested, why don't you get in touch with disability organizations maybe they can help you find your niche employment-wise. And when I did it opened up a whole new world, including the how I met my current husband, who has stable bodied well, he'll need support for most of his what we call ADL's activity to daily living. So even though Jim has a master degree and worked for the state for twenty to mod years, he still needs help with getting out of bed, eating, using the bathroom. We're both part of this disability culture, and yet we experienced it very differently. He went to a second school, he went to Quadrick Mountain. He grew up entirely around other kids with disabilities. I grew up not knowing any kid with disabilities with disabilities. And so we realized sort of early on that our experiences really brought a lot to the discussion about disability and disability rates here in New Hampshire. So I got involved with the New Hampshire Council on Developmental Disabilities. I worked for Grancy Independent Living for a while. Um, and just got to know a lot of people in the disability community here in New Hampshire. I was working under real estate agent at the time. I started uh to dig into why is it so hard for people with disabilities to find accessible afford and affordable housing? What are the funding strengths? How do they work? How do they add to the problem? How do they help the problem? And different theories on inclusion from the leaders of the disability rates movement. People like Ed Roberts, who was a guy who lived in an iron rung and started the Indi independent living movement. And Justin Dort, he's often called the father of the ADA. Yeah, polio.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

Can I ask you about that actually? ADA? Because you mentioned this earlier. You said that you went to college, I believe, and when they were passing the ADA. Yes. So maybe a simple question, as simple as this can be, what is the ADA? What does it stand for and what does it mean?

SPEAKER_00 11:27

American with Displays Act. So with an act that passed in 1990, it was signed into law by George H.W. Bush. And basically it's it was a civil rights law for people with displays, by ensuring that we had access to spaces and programs, employment, housing, transportation, uh everything that most people took for granted that you just did. You just got on the bus. You just went out and got a job. You just you just got into the store or the theater. And until then, a lot of people with dispos didn't do any of those things.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Right. That's the that's the early nineties you just said that it was passed in the early nineties.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

1990.

SPEAKER_02 12:26

Yeah, that late. That is not that long ago. That is so recent.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

It is and and the final version the past was lacking. Extremely lacking as far as the disability community was concerned, right? A lot of things got taken out that people with disabilities really needed. There have been attempts after attempt to roll it back. Right. But the minimal exitability just is too much for so many people. And so they're constantly trying to roll it back.

SPEAKER_02 13:07

I sort of introduced you as being a disability rights advocate. When we talk about that phrase disability rights, because it it seems like, you know, the ADA passed in 1990. Not that long ago. Wild how recent that was. What does disability rights actually mean, maybe in daily life for folks with disabilities?

SPEAKER_00 13:27

It means people with disabilities get to do what everyone else takes for granted. Like I went to college, uh, four years of college. Not great grades, but pretty good grades, uh.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

A classic college student, which I did the grades, I got 'em.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

I got out and was unable to find employment because no one trusted me to do the things I had just spent four years and thousands of dollars learning how to do. Because they heard the speech impediments and they saw the wall when I walk, and they thought, yeah, we're not we're not going there. The ADA empowered my husband to work for twenty twenty-five years for the university and and then for the state. But also simple things. Like prior to the ADA, a lot of streets did not have code cuts. Yeah. But most public buildings had steps at every entrance. And there was no accessible bathroom. There was no way for vi blind and visually impaired people to understand what was going on around them. But now if you go to crosswalk, you press the little button and it's wait. And then it and then it beeps and when it's coming close so that you're not cross. Well, that's because of the idea that people who are blind are visually impaired, don't get one over by a cross.

SPEAKER_02 15:21

Just that we're we're asking for the basic things. I would like to be able to cross the street without getting hit by a car. Yeah. Basic things here.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Just don't make me take my life in my hand.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

To do so. And now when you go to the movies, you can get forget what it's called, but a device that will put captions for you. Yeah. That will capture in the movies. I mean, bef before the ADA, people who wouldn't go to the movies. Right. Because nothing was captioned. All sorts of big and little things that make it possible. Well, Jim and I go out to restaurants a lot. Most of those restaurants 30, 40 years ago, he would not have been able to get into. There i it would not have been accessible to him. There would have been steps at every entrance. Right. And still, I I mean I have all sorts of choice of older buildings where people think they are meeting the minimum requirements or etc. I've been to too many places where they have like a ramp. But at the top of the ramp, there's like a three-inch lip. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:49

Whoops. Whoopsie Daisy on that one. Wow. Yeah. You mentioned the curb cuts, and it's like, you know, I've seen some projects around the state, like playgrounds that have become more accessible, where instead of using like the wood chips uh on the ground, there's the different um material so that young people who use wheelchairs or have mobility um that wood chips would not be helpful to be able to move on, they're able to do that. And it's like, I think some people think that if you're making changes in your town or community for folks with disabilities, that it only benefits folks with disabilities. It's like everybody benefits. You got mom walking with a stroller. That's helpful with the curb. Yes. That helps every that helps lots of people. Our boys have talked about like the playgrounds that have changed, and they're like, it's so great. You know, be more kids get to be here. That's pretty cool. Like, that's really great for everybody.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

And and it's safer for the the kids who can walk, the kids who don't need the debility. Yeah. Just a safer playground.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

Imagine. Imagine having safer playgrounds for the kids.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

I mean but but I mean you need someone who really knows what they're doing to do it. Yeah. Because I think too, that we're gonna talk about housing.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

There and I don't mean to call out the uh housing housing authority here in Concord, but and this was so remember this was like over twenty years ago that I had gone to one of their developments. Fund of actually had the accessible units in their developments. She didn't need the the unit, but um it was available. So she was like, Oh, great, I finally live somewhere accessible, you guys can come visit me. Well, we didn't think about. So there was no cope cut to get from the parking lot. The unit was perfectly wheelchair accessible. There was no cope cut between the parking lot and the unit. Jim had to go all the way down to the end, like a block away to the end of the street. Oh my god. And go out into traffic to get up on the sidewalk. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

And so it's really funny with what people I love that you say funny, dude. As if that's that's the word to describe that. I don't know, horrifying, terrifying, ridiculous. Whatever, whatever the words are.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

I mean, that happens a lot. We made this accessible.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

Well, no, you didn't know, you missed something. So housing is your wheelhouse. That's how that's how you've described it is like this is the thing that you know you're most most expert in. I don't know how to say it, but like this is your thing, right? So I heard you talk about independent living and housing, and the a question that you sort of prompted as well is why is it so difficult to find housing in New Hampshire for folks with disabilities? What's what's going on, Pat? Tell me what's going on here. So that's a complicated story.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

What? So there are two laws that cover that cover acceptable housing. The both federal laws is Section 504 of the Rehabilitator Act. Most people know that have heard of that connected to education. So I had a 504 plan. Yep. But section 504 of the rehabilitator, it actually one paragraph at the very end of the rebuilt data act, and all it said was all federally funded programs and buildings have to be made basically accessible to people with disabilities. The Act passed in 1973. 1977 rolled around and it still has not been implemented. The fight to force the federal government to implement Section 504 was one of the most remarkable moments or fight in disability history. When I talk about disability history and I talk about disability culture, one aspect of that is the history of the disability rights movement, then a lot of people don't even s don't even know that this history exists. So when they finally in the early eighties started to put in place um rules around federally funded housing accessibility. All new federally funded housing had to make 10% of the units accessible. The other law that affects accessible housing is the American Ridge Purities Act. After the ADA passed, that 10% requirement was passed to all housing providers. The problem with that was that it was only for multifamily developments over six units and larger, and it didn't cover townhomes. So single-family homes, townhomes, and multifamily buildings with five units or less did not have to have any type of accessibility. Now, two things happened after this. Right around the time it passed, which was shortly after the housing market in New Hampshire crashed. Oh boy. And people and people were building. So, yay, we had this brand new law. No one was building housing. So if you look, a lot of the multifamily housing, the logic of multifamily housing developments, are either built in the 80s or they're brand new. If they're brand new, market rates multifamily housings, they are expensive. So you may have the accessibility, but you don't have the affordability. And so when buildings started to ramp back up in the early 2000s, what were they building? Single families, townhomes, and a lot of deep places. None of those, none of those housing options had to be made accessible. So we end up with far fewer than 10% of our housing units being basically accessible. One thing I often get from housing providers when I talk about this though, is well we build accessible housing, but we don't have anybody with disability to fill the housing. There's a couple of problems with this, right? One is that most people with disability don't drive, which is a big issue. So you if you're gonna put up housing, it needs to be walkable to things like employment and and shopping and uh health care, or they need to have public transportation ability. So you build yes, you build this nice place out in the middle of nowhere, but people with disabilities aren't going to come live there because then they are stuck out in the middle of nowhere.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

New Hampshire, I'm gonna take a controversial stance here. But New Hampshire isn't known for its public transportation in this state. No, it isn't so you're saying that one of the issues here is that when these folks are going to build new housing, they're saying, well, if we build accessible units, people won't move here who have disabilities. And the counterpoint to that is, well, that's because there are all these other services that are missing that make it livable to be in that community in the first place. Like you need to have a way to get to the grocery store, get to the doctor's office to be able to be near the services and and employment as well, a place to to work when you live there.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

And if you need to put to get out of bed in the morning to eat, to do all the things that people do, you need to have other affordable housing in the area so that people providing you the services can live within a reasonable distance of you. Because when you're an hourly worker, if you're having to travel an hour each way to work for someone for a couple of hours and then travel another hour to work for someone else who needs a couple of uh I mean, so i it's the location of this housing too, which so a lot of people think the answer to that then is supported housing. So there's another po there's a program called Section 8 811 housing, which is fairly funded housing, specifically for people with disabilities, and it often provides services as well. The problem with this housing is a it's segregated. And when you tie services and housing together, so if you're receiving your personal care services from the same organization that's providing your housing, you're kind of stuck with both. When Jim and I met, he was living in Section 11 housing. It's not designed for families. But it sometimes it feels like the assumption is that people with disabilities, people who need divisions are going to remain single and alone and alone entire life. So they only need to they only need, you know, one bedroom tiny apartment. We've created this little segregated enclave. So we've done our point, not considering the fact that, well, they might get married and then have children and hot take.

SPEAKER_02 27:52

People with disabilities, they're people. Turns out. Turns out they're they're humans.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

So Jim and I had my condo. Well, I had a detached condo, none of which had to be made accessible because they would detach condos when they were built. We ended up having to w move into this really expensive market weight apartment that was taking up like over half half our income a month.

SPEAKER_02 28:24

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Because we made too much money to qualify for subsidized housing. But most market weight housing that was reasonably put was not accessible.

SPEAKER_02 28:37

Make too much money for the subsidized housing that would be accessible, but having to live somewhere else can afford the place, but it is not accessible. So what does New Hampshire do, Pat? Like how is New Hampshire helping? Do does New Hampshire help? What is New Hampshire? Does New Hampshire help? Is it hurting? Like what should New Hampshire be doing? What are they doing?

SPEAKER_00 29:06

So a big thing that would be really helpful, and it seems like that's happening now, is that communities are allowing larger multifamily projects. So if you have larger multifamily projects, 10% of them are going to be accessible. Again, it's a question of where you're locating them and are you ensuring that either they have public transportation or or are located close enough to supports and services that someone can can access it without transportation. When we talk about the the Section 811 housing, so that segregated housing is just for people. People with disabilities instead of having that program, because people with disabilities are the only minority that it's legal to segregate us, but you you don't have segregated housing programs for any of the minority. So can we take the money that we're spending on Section 811 housing and use that to subsidize units in more inclusive housing? I I think that's being that's being thought of how they can.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

Because that's federal money, right? The Section 811 would be federal. Right.

SPEAKER_00 30:41

So I'm assuming that it would be complicated, but I also have my reservation to segregating people based on income, which is what we're doing right now. Like you either living in in subsidized housing. There's also vouchers. So I know that there's a voucher program that people can can use to section eight? Section eight. Yep. That's why I'm okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:15

I was thinking the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

I was like, I think there's section eight, but now there's section eight eleven. Here I am pretending like I know all this about housing. And I'm no like, no, I don't. So section eight housing. Yep. It had the voucher program so that someone with a disability who qualifies for take section eight housing could take that money. And that was intended to stop segregating people based on income. And so is the way to do that with Section 811 housing.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

Because Section 811, you're saying, is like the housing that is built is segregated from folks who do not have disabilities. So it's specifically for folks with disabilities, those units entirely, like a building that has that or is all just Section 811 versus Section 8 housing is voucher, you would receive funding to help support your rents where you might live. If I'm understanding it correctly.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

So some section eight is project-based, so so developers can get section eight funding to develop affordable housing, and then the section eight funding is tied to the units that are built, and then the section eight voucher program, with the section eight funding is tied to the individual, which allowed for more choice for people with low low incomes.

SPEAKER_02 32:53

So those programs are federal programs, like that's federal funding that goes towards these, so these housing initiatives, let's say. What does the state of New Hampshire do? Like, does the state have programs that are there to help fund new housing development and to ensure that we have public transportation? I'm going to laugh at that own question, but is the state doing things specifically in this in this space?

SPEAKER_00 33:24

No. No, the state did not. Now, in the past, the state has had some grant funding available, but there's no like predictable funding stream that you can tap into.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

What a great phrase. Predictable funding stream. Like imagine if things were predictable for folks. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:48

Wild. Wild, yeah. No, there's there as far as I'm aware, and someone can correct me if I'm wrong, there is no state funding. No state dollars go to houding. I think the only time state dollars have gone to hounding, it's been in the form of like grants or temporary funding.

SPEAKER_02 34:12

Like gap type funding. From what I can tell, if I if I've read the news correctly, housing is a big issue in New Hampshire. Housing is a big issue for everyone in New Hampshire. And so what I'm hearing you say, Pat, is that it is an even bigger issue for folks who need accessible housing. Because that is even more limited than the housing, which is already extremely limited in this state.

SPEAKER_00 34:43

Yes. Yeah. Exigable, affordable, and integrated. So a lot of people have they look back to things like group homes or the section eleven housing. Again, group homes okay, but it is somewhere that you would want to live. If it's a place that you would not want to live. People living in this group home situation, they really don't have a lot of say over their daily routines. They often don't have a lot of say over who is providing their services. And again, we want to avoid housing people in some place that's going to end up being that place. Right. You walk by the house and it's that place. That place.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

Italicized that place. Right.

SPEAKER_00 35:44

When those people live, it's not what you and I would find acceptable housing options. And so the more the more we can create truly inclusive, accessible, and affordable, which affordability is. I'm not even I know.

SPEAKER_02 36:06

I feel like I wrote down something you said. Accessibility. You need accessibility and you need affordability. It can't just be accessible. It also needs to be affordable.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

It does, it needs to be affordable and it needs to be integrated. People with disabilities deserve to live in their with everyone else. With non-dis, right, and not off in their own little enclaves. And sometimes I think we're setting young people up. Young people with disabilities up. Right. We've worked so hard to keep them in their own communities with their own families. And then they graduate and they have to go live in that place over there. Because we have no we have no room for them. Or or they have to stay at home as adults. They have to live with their parents indefinitely. When I think about the ideal situation for housing, I think about universal design.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

Oh, explain that. What's universal design?

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Universal design is creating spaces that are usable to the largest number of people. So it's not it didn't meet entirely accessible standards, but it's usable to most people. So there is uh an entrance that had no step. There were a bathroom facility that you can get to and use safely and comfortably. There's the opportunity for accessible communication for people with who are deaf or heart of hearing or blind or visually impaired. So when we design a space, we don't put a step at the top of the ramp.

SPEAKER_02 38:04

Don't the big finale of the ramp is not a step. That is not the best way to go about that. Right.

SPEAKER_00 38:10

So when we're creating housing, how can we create how can we create as many units in the development that have wired doors, a no-step entrance, a bathroom that's accessible, a bedroom on the lower floor, so that so that anyone can live there. How do we how do we make as much new housing as possible that way? And another issue another issue with housing also is according to the law, if someone with a disability wants to rent a unit that doesn't meet their needs, they can rent that unit and the landlord has to allow them at their own expense, at the at the tenant expense, to make the unit accessible to them. Right? So when Jim and I first moved into that really expensive apartment, it was basically accessible, but it didn't have a rolling shower. So we had we had to take out a loan to put a rolling shower into an apartment that we were renting. Technically, the landlord could have forced us at our own expense to return the bathroom the way it was. Yeah. That's the rule. Is that a state law or is that a No, that's a that's a that's allowable by the ADA. Yeah. No. I had to warn someone who he had put in a stairlift in his unit. And I'm like, you do know that when you move out of here, your landlord can force you to pay to have that ticket out. And he was not aware. Wow. Now, fortunately in my experience, a lot of landlords don't. Right. Because our apartment had two bathrooms. The volume shower, I'm sure, would not a was not a problem if it had a bathroom in the other bathroom. But yeah, they could they could have forced us to put it back.

SPEAKER_02 40:37

Holy smokes. Yeah. I mean it's it's accessible housing, it's affordable housing, it's the impact financially moving in to make your space accessible if it is not already. That's that's a high cost. It is potentially putting it back the way it was, the financial cost there, if it's if the landlord forces that issue. And something that you mentioned before is also like for folks who need in-home care in some way, it's making sure that those individuals have housing nearby and affordable housing nearby, because they are often not paid huge, they don't make huge salaries. And so they need to have housing that they can live in and commute to to be able to support folks in all this housing that we're talking about. Right. It's a lot of layers here, Pat. It's a lot of layers. Just for housing.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

It's like a really guessy cake.

unknown 41:42

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

It's a really cool cake.

SPEAKER_02 41:46

A terrible onion where you just keep peeling it back, and you're like, there's no use there's no usable part of this onion, is it? It's pretty pretty bad. Time to get a new onion entirely.

SPEAKER_00 41:56

So I I mean the one way that we can w to change that law, like, is to make it so that people would disvaluate if they do move in and change it. They don't have to change it back. And I understand, you know, small landlords, if you're putting in an accessibility feature that's gonna make it unusable for another tenant. But there must be some way to fund modifications and the retraction of those modifications without taking it out of the income of people for whom their income is already paying limited.

SPEAKER_02 42:50

Pat, we didn't even cover 90% of the questions that I had for you in advance because this topic alone has so much depth to it. You know, I had a housing episode with Nick Taylor, and I had a homelessness episode with Erica and Lauren from Families in Transition. And housing is such a huge issue in New Hampshire. And, you know, my tagline at the beginning, jokesy, but not, was like, what am I gonna learn? I'm learning about so many of the layers of housing beyond like the quick headlines of we don't have enough housing. Like there's a lot of depth here that kind of terrifies me. What could someone do to make a positive impact here? Like if I live in a town and I'm like, okay, I listen to this podcast. We definitely don't have public transportation. I don't know if we're building any new housing anytime soon, but I don't know how much accessible housing we have. What could a listener do to make a positive impact?

SPEAKER_00 43:51

You could start by, you know, perhaps a town could have a fund that's that supported people who needed to move into an inaccessible unit to make that exit to make that unit accessible and meet their needs. When you're looking at new housing being built, so there's there's a lot of discussion around auxiliary living units. Um so people who have single family homes are adding like a small permit to their homes a lot of times for their kids or family or friends who can't find. Can we look at requiring some accessibility in in those ex auxiliary units or some sort of financial incentive to make these units more accessible? Can we look at the tr the avail availability of transportation in our community and how we can create more public transportation which would benefit not just people with disabilities but would benefit the entire all of the people. Everybody benefits. Right. More more public transportation options. Yeah. And when people are talking about building segregated accessible housing, are we really are we really asking the right questions to make sure that that housing is is still a part of the community. Right? So that the people in that in that unit on that street are feel just as much a part of the community as the family who just bought the expensive house next door. Pat, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. Thank you, Liz. You know, the title of the podcast, New Hampshire had issues. You have an endless supply of issues to talk.

SPEAKER_02 46:10

There are so many issues. If I've learned one major thing today, it's that even when I think I kind of understand an issue, we go eight layers deeper and it's like, oh no, it's way worse than I thought it was. Every issue comes with its acronyms. If I'm gonna publish a book, it's gonna be the New Hampshire has Issues acronym guide. Here is your guide to acronyms for housing, for education, for I'm like there, everybody's got an acronym, so don't you worry. That would be a bestseller.

SPEAKER_00 46:45

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 46:46

That'd be a number one New York Times bestseller. What are the acronyms that you hear in New Hampshire has Issues?