Presence on Pacifica Board of lobby that works against ...civil rights of many -- iS AN OUTRAGE.
Sat Jun 9 11:12:39 2001

If you are a person with a mobioity disability, who can'tclimb steps -- it becomes doubly hard to find affordable housing.

There are over 55 million people with (various) disabilites in the US; and 80 percent of all Americans will experience disability of some kind, sooner or later in the course of their life. Disability cuts across every other category in society. About half of those with a disability, have disabilities classified as "severe".

The ONLY Supreme Court decision in the last term, that was "PRO"-disabled rights, was the Olmstead case, a LANDMARK HOUSING DE-SEGREGATION CASE FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITES. The decision said that a State can't imprison us in residential institutions if there is no need for that kind of "care", just for the convenience of the institution's beurocracy which wants to hog the funding. (The defendant, the State of Geoergia had actually admited in Court that this was why they were imprisoning many people with disabilites who could live better in their commmunities.)

Due to this Superme Court decision, each State is now supposed to now be developing a "Plan" to let out of these institutions, people who could live better, outside. THIS MEANS THAT the demend for accessible housing, will rise in coming years.

See the great May 1998 article on the anti-civil-rights / State's Rights-type lobbying of the N.A H.B., which is available in the on-line archive of Ragged Edge magazine. www,ragged-edge-mag.com Since that great article came out, the NAHB has politically bullied BOTH parties to get the federal H.U.D department to sign an unholy deal with NAHB, to even further back off on enforcing the accessibility parts of the FAIR HOUSING ACT. And to "harmonize downwards" the FHA's provisions, with a privately-sponsored "model code" organisation called the "international building code". NAHB has in recent years, planted one of it's own former employees in a key position in that IBC "model code" group, to keep accessibility requirements down. N.A.H.B. has some of the best corporate "spin doctoring" that money can buy, but bottom line is that it is ANTI-CONSUMER, in every way.

It is utterly outrageous that this evil corporate real-estate developer's lobby should have power on Pacifica's Board.