De Blasio Administration Issues Report to Improve Quality of Life for People with Disabilities

In conjunction with the 29th anniversary of the signing of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Mayor de Blasio and the Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities (MOPD) Commissioner Victor Calise recently released the 2019 AccessibleNYC report. The fourth annual report provides a comprehensive roadmap to improve quality of life for New Yorkers with disabilities in the areas of: transportation, employment, financial empowerment, housing, health, technology, access to city services, and education.

The housing section of the report provides a review of the initiatives taken to increase opportunities for people with disabilities to gain accessible housing, increase accessibility to their current housing, increase availability of resources used to obtain housing, and ensure more housing opportunities are created. The report highlights MOPD’s Project Open House initiative, which uses Community Development Block Grant funds to remove architectural barriers from the homes of New York City residents who have disabilities at no cost to the applicant. The report also notes that in Fiscal 2018 the number initial and renewed applications for Disability Rent Increase Exemptions (DRIE) and Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemptions (SCRIE) increased. Renewals for DRIE grew by 11.6 percent and 15 percent for SCRIE.

The 2019 Edition of AccessibleNYC is available here.