‘Ableist’ bias left people with disabilities without housing, N.S. inquiry told
HALIFAX — Nova Scotia’s government used “ableist” reasoning when it closed a program that provided supported housing for people with intellectual disabilities, a nationally recognized expert on disability rights testified Monday.
Catherine Frazee, professor emeritus at Ryerson University’s school of disability studies, told a human rights inquiry Monday that a freeze on creating “small options” supported housing in the early 1990s stemmed from a form of discrimination similar to sexism or racism.
Small-options homes are small housing units, usually with three or four residents, where day-to-day support is provided to people with intellectual disabilities to allow them to live in their community.
Frazee argued the freeze on creating the homes meant residents could be condemned to live in their aging parents’ basements, in abusive arrangements, or “far down the corridors of institutional abandonment.”