NC Better Homes Initiative

April 12, 2011

The RL Mace Universal Design Institute’s Better Homes and Neighborhoods Initiative

The Institute has established the Better Homes and Neighborhoods Initiative to promote and produce new and remodeled universal housing. The Initiative will include an ongoing campaign of education, awareness raising, policy changes, and technical assistance to expand the number of new and remodeled homes with key accessible and universal features that allow life long living. The initiative will provide Technical Assistance and Education services to key constituencies in North Carolina. In addition, we are beginning a new program to assess and evaluate the State of Housing for North Carolina.

Technical Assistance
• Reduced cost design assistance to individual households that are otherwise unable to access or afford them: families with children with disabilities, older households, and others.

• Technical assistance to local affordable housing builders to develop and implement universal design strategies. While eager to provide more accommodating homes for their constituents, most affordable housing developers lack the expertise to easily convert those intentions to reality.

• Work with local and county officials so that accessible and universal housing features should be included in most new homes, whether through five – year plans to direct their housing and development activities or through land use management plans.

• Work with state and regional agencies and councils to monitor and implement UD strategies.

Education
• Develop and distribute educational publications and instructional materials –– tools most useful for professionals wishing to practice universal design and to individuals and families needing to learn of options and opportunities

• Conduct training throughout the state to increase knowledge of the application of universal design and capacity to implement accessible and UD intentions. Venues include – NC Housing Coalition, PHRANC (Professional Housing Rehabilitation Association of North Carolina), and the annual Conference on Aging.

• Support post secondary design education around the annual North Carolina Sustainable Building Design Competition (NCSBDC) by providing materials and direct education to students and faculty at twelve programs around North Carolina.

State of Neighborhoods and Housing
Establish an annual scorecard for how well North Carolina (and the businesses here) is doing with respect to promoting and building (or remodeling) better designed housing and neighborhoods. This activity will complement our long involvement with AARP's Livable Communities program, the UD housing standards that UDI is developing, and the activities of several other groups such as Complete Streets.

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