My name is Allen Hines, and I am the Housing Access Director at Community Vision. My program supports people with disabilities to find community-based housing in the Portland area. I was born with a developmental disability called cerebral palsy, which impacts coordination in all of my extremities and gives me a noticeable accent.

As a queer person and full-time wheelchair user, Portland’s social environment and excellent transit system have been critical for my personal and professional growth. Portland is an amazing place, making it one of the fastest growing cities in the last decade–-and stretching the limits of its affordable housing stock. Since coming here in 2010, I have had nine different addresses, and each move was an attempt to find a place that was more affordable or more accessible than the last.

When I moved to Portland, I was 24. Like most young people in my generation, I was rich in ideals and living by a thread. At the time, the maximum benefit for Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, was $674 per month. SSI is an anti-poverty program to support people with disabilities and older adults. I received assistance for more than a decade, including my first several years in Portland. 

I remember that, in order to make the $700 rent for my first apartment, each month I would dip into my cash benefits from the state that were intended for food. I would go to food banks, take advantage of perks from banks for setting up accounts, and generally hustle to make it month to month. 

I tried to work. But typically, once an employer heard my speech, they became a lot less interested in my resume. So while poverty was unavoidable and I had doubts I would ever escape it, I had lots of time to indulge in trying to change the world, particularly how people with disabilities are treated within it. I helped organize trips to send medical supplies to people injured in wars in Central America and supported Colombian auto workers injured on the job. I also started talking with other people with disabilities in Oregon about how hard it was to find housing that met our accessibility needs. 

It had been easier when I first moved to Portland. In those early years, I was spry and able to make do. I could crawl to get into the bathroom with a narrow doorway. I could stretch to reach the controls on appliances. I could muscle myself into a standard bathtub. Until I couldn’t. Until making do left me exhausted and sore. 

Navigating an inaccessible home was limiting my ability to participate in other activities at home and in the community. Several years after moving to Portland, I had finally landed a steady job, but I often felt worn out and struggled to get to work. I had fewer interactions with friends. After a while, I felt lonely, even though—or maybe because—I knew many other people with disabilities who were in my situation. Few policymakers understood the housing crisis as it relates to people with disabilities, and we were on our own. 

Through my work within the disability community, I learned the unique ways that the housing crisis impacts how we live and interact within our neighborhoods. First, I learned that housing providers have routinely failed to build accessible housing and that no agency tracks where accessible dwelling units exist. As a result, people with disabilities often struggle to locate units that meet their needs. Then, I met a number of people with disabilities who had been denied accommodations and modifications that would allow them to fully enjoy their homes, despite requirements under the Fair Housing Act. Finally, I started examining data and found that all national studies of disability status indicated that the prevalence of disability far exceeds the requirements to build accessible dwelling units. These issues compounded the well-known need, generally, for affordable housing in the Portland area. 

All of these barriers, combined, severely limited housing choices for people with disabilities.

So again, today, I feel the urgency to change how people with disabilities are treated. My struggle to find affordable and accessible housing is clearly a piece of a systemic problem created by misguided policies and disregard for the needs of our community. People with disabilities deserve homes we can afford that grant us the greatest independence possible, free from discrimination.