Overview

Abstract (English)

Housing stock remains overwhelmingly inaccessible to disabled people in Ontario. The primary method by which accessibility in the home is improved is through the installation of dwelling adaptations, which modify the layout or structure of parts of the home. Measuring the impact these adaptations have on various measures of a household’s dwelling satisfaction will help inform disability and housing legislation, two policy arenas that have seen renewed interest by both provincial and federal governments in recent years after decades of cutbacks to social supports for disabled people. Using the 2018 Canadian Housing Survey dataset collected by Statistics Canada, Ontario households were split up into three groups; households that need no adaptations, households that need and have adaptations, and households that need but do not have adaptations. Demographic profiles of each group were built and compared. Various measures of dwelling satisfaction were also compared. This was done using descriptive statistics, t-tests, and logistic regression. All households that require a dwelling adaptation had much higher rates of Core Housing Need, rent subsidy, and lived in non-market rental housing compared to non-disabled households. Only half of households requiring adaptations had them. Households that had the adaptations they required had statistically comparable rates of dwelling satisfaction measures to non-disabled households. Households without the adaptations they required were more likely to be women-led, more likely to be led by a young adult, and were more likely to feel unsafe in their home. Adaptations were found to significantly alleviate dissatisfaction with the condition, safety, and accessibility of the home, but adapted households remain in more precarious and substandard housing compared to non-disabled households.

Abstract (French)

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