Owners: Incentives needed to build more wheelchair accessible homes

Monday, 2 August 2021

A Southland couple who have built two houses specifically for wheelchair users to live in believe the Government and councils should do more to encourage such developments.

Andrew Watkins and his partner Adele McMahon purchased a property near Invercargill’s south city shops in 2019, demolished an old house on the section and have built two two-bedroom accessible homes.

The homes are designed for the comfort and practicality of wheelchair users - a rarity in New Zealand given less than two per cent of homes have features geared for the disabled, CCS Disabilty Action says.

The design of the two Invercargill homes allows for wheelchairs to be manoeuvred around beds, easy wheelchair access to and from vehicles in the single car garage, plus wheelchair friendly carpet, bathroom and vanity units; and widened hallways and doorways.

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Other features include a height adjustable kitchen bench, an oven door that opens sideways and light switches, door handles and fuse box at wheelchair-friendly heights.

It took about 18 months for the accessible homes to be built, much longer than anticipated, and they each cost about $350,000 to build, more than expected for varying reasons, they said.

They have rented out one of the homes and will sell the other.

Adele, who did the joinery work on both homes, said they decided to build them after learning there was a shortage of disabled accommodation in Invercargill and talking to people who said there was a need.

“Now we have done it I feel quite passionate about it,” she said.

There were “no incentives” to build such homes, and she suggested councils could reduce consenting costs on such builds and the Government could offer incentives of its own.

Housing Minister Megan Woods said the Government recognised the importance of improving the accessibility of New Zealand homes.

It was responding to the Disability Action Plan by requiring a minimum of 15 per cent of new public housing builds to incorporate universal design [the design of buildings to make them accessible to all people].

And the Government was working to increase the provision of accessible rentals and make it easier for disabled people to find existing rentals, Woods said.

Also, the Ministry of Building Innovation and Employment issued a guide in 2019 which was aimed at improving the understanding of universal design and promoting accessibility in public buildings.

Invercargill City Council senior staffer Trudie Hurst said the council was not in the best position to identify any shortfall in accessible housing as it was not required to capture such data.

“However, as commentary we would say that residential building is not required to address access and facilities for persons with disabilities so it is probably safe to say that there is a nationwide shortage of this kind of housing and a distinct lack of incentive to address the shortfall through the Building Act.”

Any reduction in building consent fees would need to be mandated by the community through the elected members as it was a user-pays system, she said.

Geoff Penrose, general manager of Lifemark which is a division of CCS Disability Action, said in general the cost of building an accessible home was just one per cent more than building a conventional home of the same size.

However, more accessible homes weren’t built because lots of building companies were reluctant to waver from their existing building plans, he said.

Currently, many disabled people lived in houses where it was difficult to get inside, go to the bathroom and cook meals.

“They just make do,” he said.

Many more accessible homes were needed across the country and there needed to be a rethink on why more couldn’t be built.

Donald Macdonald, who uses a wheelchair and walking frame and has rented one of the two newly-built accessible townhouses off the Southland couple, said it had made a big difference to his life after living in a previous property with steps.

“There’s a lot more space and I can move all around the house … inside and outside.”

Seeing Macdonald happy in the newly-built accessible home made the project worthwhile, the Southland couple who built it said.