Personal Assistance Services for Disabled Persons ...



Dear Chairman Naughton and Chairman Moore,My name is [your name]. I am a resident of [your town], and I am submitting testimony in favor of H. 2029, an Act Relative to the Architectural Access Board, filed by Representative Barber, and its corresponding bill, S.1441, filed by Chairman Moore. This bill will address significant discrimination against people with disabilities in the areas of housing and employment. Currently, Massachusetts is 30 years behind the rest of the country when it comes to the rights of people with disabilities to have equal access to employment, and shamefully negligent in upholding the rights of its disabled residents to equal housing access. Massachusetts state law allows employee workplaces to be completely inaccessible, even in newly constructed buildings or buildings that are being significantly renovated. This functions as job discrimination on the architectural level. A business whose offices are inaccessible does not see people with disabilities as part of their workforce, and does not intend to hire anyone with a physical disability. This creates and exacerbates structural barriers to employment, and significantly contributes to only 38% of people with disabilities of working age in Massachusetts participating in the labor force. H.2029 and S.1441 will help address this issue by bringing employee areas under the jurisdiction of the state’s Architectural Access Board, and allowing the board to make and enforce regulations requiring accessible workplaces.People with disabilities are more than twice as likely to be homeless as their non-disabled peers. Part of the reason for this is a lack of accessible and adaptable housing. In Massachusetts, an antiquated loophole allows developers to skirt accessibility requirements if the building in question was originally built before 1991. This loophole allows total gut renovations of old non-residential buildings, including textile mills, factories, and schools into large-scale apartment complexes to completely forgo basic inexpensive accessibility provisions that would allow someone with a mild to moderate physical disability to live there. These design choices function as housing discrimination. Real estate developers and property owners do not see disabled people as desirable tenants or as part of their ideal renter’s community, and exclude them in the blueprints stage. H.2029 and S.1441 close this loophole, requiring that any gut renovation project in a large-scale housing complex at least make a good faith effort to make the majority of its units adaptable to the needs of a person with a disability.This is an important issue for me because [Talk about why access is important to you. Make it personal and specific. How have accessible workplaces or housing impacted your life for the better? How has a lack of those things negatively impacted you? How would your life be different if you had had better access to housing and employment, or if you haven’t? If you don’t personally have a physical disability, how has access or lack thereof impacted your family or your friends?]Thank you very much for your consideration. If you have questions, I can be reached at [your phone number]. Sincerely,[Your Name] ................
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