All In Dublin

 In this episode of Accessibility in Practice, host Adam Fishbein speaks with Mark Dunham, Tiba Alagah, and Brady Fox about All in Dublin, an inclusive and affordable housing project in central Ohio. The conversation explores how disability-inclusive housing can support accessibility, affordability, social connection, and community resilience, while also unpacking the planning, design, financing, and policy challenges involved in making projects like this possible. Through the lens of a student-led Ohio State studio report, the guests share lessons on universal design, community input, public policy, and the importance of building housing with—and not just for—people with disabilities.

Transcript

Adam: 00:01

Welcome to Accessibility in Practice, where we talk with the people shaping a more accessible world. I'm your host, Adam Fishbein, and today I'm thrilled to be joined by Mark Dunham, Tiba Al-Alagah, and Brady Fox, leading voices in disability and accessible housing. Thanks so much for being here. Okay, let's dive in. This episode will be focused on a promising case study in accessible housing that my guests here have worked tirelessly on. First off, can each of you briefly introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your background and role, starting with Brady?

Brady: 00:49

Hi, I'm Brady Fox, and I'm from Cincinnati, Ohio. I'll be graduating as a city and regional planning major from Ohio State, also with a minor in real estate. On this project, I worked as a project manager with Tiba. Specifically, I focused mainly on the financing section, and I'll touch more on that in a bit. I also worked as an intern and part-time for an affordable housing developer called Spire Development here in Columbus, which helped me understand more about how affordable housing as a whole works, but also in the context of this project as well.

Adam: 01:29

Great. Mark, do you want to go next?

Mark: 01:32

Sure, happy to. I'm the executive director of All Inclusive Living, or All In for short, which is a Columbus, Ohio-based nonprofit that's working to expand disability-inclusive housing options for people with and without disabilities. My work with All In is sort of a cap off of my career, which has been in public policy and advocacy, but for the last 12 to 15 years, working on affordable housing development with a real interest in finding developments that can leverage housing as a platform for increasing social connection between neighbors.

Adam: 02:13

Great. Sounds interesting. Last but not least, Tiba.

Tiba: 02:19

Hi, I'm Tiba Alagah, and I'm originally from Iraq, but I have lived in Columbus for most of my life. I'm also going to be graduating from city and regional planning with a minor in Arabic and studio art. Like Brady said, I'm one of the project managers, but my focus in this report has been the social and economic impact, which I will also be diving into later.

Adam: 02:47

Great. Well, congratulations, Brady and Tiba, on graduating soon. Okay, first, Mark, can you give us some background on your work at All Inclusive Living and what led you to start the All In Dublin project? And how did you connect with the studio class at Ohio State?

Mark: 03:10

Sure thing. I'm really happy to talk about this. It's a great topic. My work with All In grew out of an earlier project that I've been involved in called Patuxent Commons in Columbia, Maryland, which is something of a model for All In Dublin, the project that is the focus of the studio's work this past semester. It's an inclusive, affordable, community-based initiative that opened up last year. Through that work, I got on the radar of this great group, then called Autism Living, ultimately called All Inclusive Living, or All In. They asked me to start consulting with them, which I did around the beginning of the pandemic, actually. We started working on helping them think about a long-term vision. Through that work, the All In Dublin project came into shape as something that could provide much-needed accessibility, affordability, and a strong sense of community for people of different ages and abilities. We're able to bring together great partners and utilize low-income housing tax credits as a primary financing tool for the project that make it financially viable. As for the studio, really all the credit needs to go to Dr. Gayla Kornienko, who led the studio and who's been involved with my organization actually before I was even involved, through some great work that the Knowlton School faculty and students had done several years back to help the early organization think about what makes a community accessible and inclusive of people with autism. Out of that work, our project's been evolving, and our partnership with the Knowlton School has evolved as a result. We really owe her the credit for bringing this incredibly talented group of students together, and their work has added a lot of creativity and momentum to the All In Dublin project.

Adam: 05:08

Awesome. Thanks so much for that. Tiba and Brady, can you tell us how studio reports tend to work?

Tiba: 05:18

Yeah, studio reports can be a bit difficult because you're trying to get all 12 of us, all 12 of the students, involved. You're trying to make sure they're all on the same page. You are all going to be writing this one report, so you're trying to coordinate basically 12 voices and make them into one. We, of course, start off by creating a list of interviews, the people who are going to be important and the people we need information from, just different people who are relevant to our research and who we really want to involve in this report. Once we have that list created, we go ahead and merge it with our calendar to make sure who we're interviewing and when they're being interviewed is not overlapping with each other, and we're making sure everything is organized. Organization is a really important thing when trying to do this studio report. Once we have that created and we know who we're going to interview and we have our calendar organized, we want to go ahead and start creating the outline. This is something Brady and I worked on together. We created an outline, and we tried to focus on what we want to highlight in this report. It was a bit difficult because we had so much information that we wanted to talk about, but then we had to compress it and make sure we're not going overboard. Especially a report like this, it contained so much information and so much that we want to share. Once we have that outline created, we go ahead and assign roles to everyone. We make sure that whatever role we're assigning to people, this is something that they want to write and talk about. It's not just like, okay, you're getting this role. No, we're making sure that people really want the role they're getting. Then we go ahead and create teams, so it's not just one person in charge of one chapter. We have two or more people involved in each chapter so that they can work together. Once those teams are created, they go ahead and do their own research. They interview the people they need to interview, and they just start working alone for part of the semester. Then, towards the end, once we have each chapter written out and we have a draft for each chapter, we come together and start creating editing and design teams. The editing team is the people who are going to read over the report and make sure everything looks good. Grammar is good, what is being said is good, all of that. Make sure it looks like it flows together smoothly. We have a team doing that, and then another team creating the design part of it. The report was created by our design team. For studio reports, everything is made from scratch. It's not like there is a template or anything; we're creating everything from scratch. That's what makes this even more impactful and really important for us. Once we have all of that done, we start putting everything together. Once we have the report designed, we put the final product in, then we present our final product and print it. That's basically how a studio report tends to work.

Adam: 09:01

Wow. That sounds like a lot of work, but sounds really cool. Brady, do you have anything to add?

Brady: 09:12

Not necessarily on the structure and how we tend to break this down, but I will say that one of the cool things about these studios that we have is the topics can really range in a variety of fields. This one was housing, for instance, but throughout our time here, we've really gotten to a lot of other topics, more city-planning related, working with cities and other zoning stuff. It is fun to be a part of, and you get to learn, I think, in one of the best ways possible, just with how we break it down and diversify what it is we're working with.

Adam: 09:53

Oh, so you guys have done other studios before?

Brady: 10:00

Correct, yeah. It's one per semester here for us. Yeah. At least in our later years, yeah.

Adam: 10:10

Cool. Now can you give us a little bit of an overview of the report?

Brady: 10:17

Yeah, absolutely. What Tiba highlighted earlier was this was a lot that we had gotten thrown into here, and it was really hard to break this down and define what we wanted to make this report represent and the impact we wanted it to make. I'll start with the name here. The name of our report is called A Roadmap to Inclusive Living: The All In Dublin Case Study. Essentially, what we really wanted it to achieve was to represent a feasibility and planning roadmap for how we can make the All In Dublin project more feasible and how we can replicate projects like this all over, because we really did see the benefits to it. What we did here was go ahead and divide it into chapters because we wanted to focus on quite a few elements, such as Tiba's chapter highlighting the social and economic impacts, really just highlighting the benefits of this type of development and how it compares to the status quo of affordable housing for disabled persons today, including older persons and just able-bodied people in affordable housing developments as well. That was a start with defining how we can represent how this project is really beneficial to these certain populations. Then it was moving into the design standards and the next chapter, highlighting how certain universal design principles and building standards can make or break what a room means and how it can impact your social life and even your mental well-being. That was a cool chapter.

Adam: 12:10

Real quick, can you tell our listeners what you mean by universal design?

Brady: 12:18

Yeah, talking more about the universal design principles. I wish we had one of our design team members here, but that's really just defining what an accessible unit is. This chapter gets into the ADA standards, critiques some of those standards, and discusses how they could be made better. I believe it was the Kelsey design standards, which is another design standard framework that Mark introduced to us that really takes it to the next level. That was a cool chapter because we really got to meet with the architects, hear their insights, and merge our thoughts with their insights. The next chapter was my focus, which was the financial analysis and innovation section, where we break down All In itself, compare it to a couple of other studies, and then look at affordable housing as a whole and accessibility funding in general, looking at how complex it is and maybe what we can do for the future. In that chapter, we get into certain legal frameworks as well and state housing programs, so it gets deeper than just the word finance, I'd say. In our final chapter, we touch on the recommendations for how to make this project happen again, and a quick conclusion at the end. I also forgot to mention that we include a whole chapter on the All In Dublin project itself, looking at the site where it's located, evaluating the physical location, and looking at more than just the building itself and the design within it, but also, from a planning perspective, looking at the surrounding area as a whole, how the public infrastructure fits in, and what suggestions the city or municipality where one of these developments is located can use to improve. That can help not only the residents of this type of housing facility, but also their existing residents and businesses today. That's the gist. There's a lot packed into our 150-page paper.

Adam: 14:44

Yeah, sounds like it. Wow, thanks for that overview. Tiba, you worked on the social and economic impact chapter of the report. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Tiba: 15:01

Yeah, the social and economic chapter aims to see what a project like All In Dublin can socially and economically bring to a city. I cover the social impact first, and through this research and my writing, I discovered that a project like this can positively impact a city socially because it's focused on trying to make the city more accessible. In our report, we also do a site assessment, and through that, we assess the area outside of where the housing is going to be. By doing that, we provided recommendations to the city of Dublin and a few recommendations to the city of Columbus, and tried to recommend how they can improve that area outside of where this housing is going to be placed. Just by doing that, it's going to positively impact a city socially because you're giving them recommendations to improve their city and make it more accessible, not just to people with disabilities and older adults, but to everyone. A project like this can basically make a city more accessible. Bridge Park came to Dublin, and a lot of cities were influenced by that because they saw how Dublin improved so much by having Bridge Park in their city. Now, in central Ohio, a lot of cities are trying to copy the same concept of Bridge Park, or they're trying to make their cities more mixed use. If a project like All In Dublin also comes to Dublin and it impacts the area outside and makes a small part of Dublin more accessible, then that's going to impact the rest of Dublin, and it's going to also impact other cities and influence them to create the same kind of concept. I looked into two other housing projects as well, and I looked into the history of them and how a project like this can socially impact a city and make it better. I also looked into Dublin as a whole and saw what they were already doing before this project. How accessible are they, and how accessible are they trying to be in the future? They have the Dublin Connector, which I talked about, and it's a bus for people with disabilities that can take people around Dublin. You can see that they're slowly trying to better their community. If a project like All In Dublin comes in, it's going to better the community even more. Then I also talk about the economic part of it, which is about how a project like this can bring more jobs into the city, and once the housing is actually built, it can provide even more jobs. Because it's all-inclusive housing, of course, it might offer jobs for people of all abilities. I talk about how housing is not that affordable, especially in central Ohio, and how this creates a small route and allows us to dive deeper into making housing more accessible and affordable. It allows us to focus on these things because I feel like central Ohio is focusing more on beautifying cities and not really trying to make them more affordable and accessible. The more beautiful it will be, the more expensive it will be, and we should focus on beautifying and making more things accessible and affordable. The economic part dives deeper into that. It also talks a bit about the unit itself, and like I said, it talks about two other case studies. One Mark mentioned earlier is Patuxent Commons. I talk about that and how it recently opened up, I believe in October, so I couldn't talk much about it, but it had a positive impact when it was being built. I talk about that and how it came to be economically. That's my chapter.

Adam: 19:41

Wow. Sounds very interesting. Thinking about future projects like this, what advice would you give to advocates trying to make it happen?

Tiba: 19:54

I would say community input and listening to the people is the most important thing. You can't create a project for the people without listening to the people. That's how it goes for this report as well. I feel like if we didn't interview the people that we interviewed, and if we didn't complete the site assessment and work with everyone that we worked with, then this report wouldn't have the information, or half of the information, that it has. It would probably be 20 pages long and not as lengthy as it is right now. That's because, again, we listened to the people. The challenges and the things that we try to avoid are trying to make sure we're not predicting or assuming things, and we're not just listening to what we're researching on websites, but we're listening to the people themselves. If we ever question something we're doing or question our research, we either ask Mark or we ask whoever the information is relevant to because we're doing this for the people, and All In Dublin is for the people. It's not for anyone else.

Adam: 21:11

Yeah.

Tiba: 21:13

Okay.

Adam: 21:14

So Brady, you worked on the finance chapter of the report. Can you tell us a little bit more about that, and maybe what were some of the challenges of financing this kind of project?

Brady: 21:28

Yeah, absolutely. I think part of the reason Mark might have come to us in the beginning was because he had some trouble with the financing side of this, even though he was able to figure it out. It was a lot to take in at first, for sure, and it was hard to really understand where we wanted to go with this chapter. Overall, if I had to sum it up in a sentence, this financial section really highlights just how complex affordable housing is in general, and then it takes it to that next level. Funding accessible affordable housing, or affordable housing for disabled people and older people, brings it to the next level and also makes everything more expensive. This section comes right after our design chapter. They pitch a lot of great ideas in there, and then we get into the idea here of how we're going to pay for all these great ideas that are going to make life's experience so much better, with features such as larger community spaces, resident support services, and more accessible features. To dive into it a little more, I really started this chapter with my group focusing on All In Dublin itself, looking at how it was funded. As Mark mentioned previously, they used the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, which, as many know, is the most widely used affordable housing finance tool in the country. It's been around for a bit. We get into a lot of the challenges that they faced with this project. Yes, they used LIHTC, but it really just wasn't enough to fund as great a percentage of this project as a typical LIHTC project might have. You could really see the struggle here. They had to seek many other gap funding sources from government funding programs, such as HOME funds, housing trusts, donations, and getting creative with the local housing authority. That was all on top of vouchers, Section 811, and also more support from the housing authority. Not to dive into it too much, it was a great effort just to get it done and make it even feasible. Then we break down All In itself, and then we look into two other similar projects, which Mark was also a part of. These other two projects, Bastion Community of Resilience and Patuxent Commons, have the same intentional neighboring concept in mind, putting these different groups of people together for the benefit of themselves. When you take all these projects together, which is what we talk about in this report, you see the complexity of how hard it is to get this done. They all used LIHTC to some degree, some 4%, some 9%, but all of them were just super difficult to achieve. Then where we went next from that was, how could we make this a little more feasible? We dive into, well, LIHTC might be the best option, but how could we maybe make LIHTC a little better? When we really dive into the framework of these government programs and the tax credit program itself, it gets very complex by state, as each state has its own qualified allocation plan, or QAP. That makes the set-asides and everything just a little different state by state. What we really tended to do here was focus more on Ohio itself and the problems we saw with its system. To dive more into that, we found a lot of the Ohio LIHTC policies more tailored toward either separating disabled people into their own living facility, or separating older people into their own facilities, rather than integrating them. One of the things that we highlight in here too is how All In really had to compete in the general set-aside category here in Ohio, which means they had to compete with traditional LIHTC buildings or developments that aren't tailored to this intentional neighborhood. They couldn't compete in the older persons set-aside or supportive housing categories; they had to compete in general. LIHTC is a very complex process and an expensive application process. To highlight the competitiveness, one of our interviewees from the developer said that out of this general funding pool category, three out of 16 developments would get awarded, which they were able to do here. Overall, yes, a majority of this section highlights the problems with our current systems in place. On top of LIHTC, we highlight a couple others, and then we bring in how, outside of LIHTC, you can be smart with your gap financing and fill the gap to make the development happen. That's when we get into more government programs, such as HOME funds and all the basic funding that most affordable developers use quite a lot. Then we tried to get more creative with our suggestions on how to know where to find these, how to use them, how to apply, and also getting into some more creative solutions that aren't as traditional, such as how we can partner with a local housing authority or use partnerships with local nonprofits. Some of the tools that we found came from our case studies, but also some tools that we tried to come up with based on our interviews. Really, as a whole, without complicating it too much here or getting too far into it, we then finally dive into the solutions for what we think. It was tough to find solutions, and I think this is really the struggle today. We struggled to find any solutions outside of these government funding programs. To dive back into them, maybe we can change these funding programs now. We have some ideas for QAP policy reforms for LIHTC as well.

Adam: 28:38

QAP. QAP?

Brady: 28:40

Sorry, that's the state plan for affordable housing LIHTC programs. How could we change that policy, maybe implementing more integrated set-aside categories that make it easier for a developer to come in and build a development like this? Then we also hop into some other credits, such as energy efficiency incentives, ways to reduce land costs, and how you can use new technologies to maybe decrease some of these prices. We go into a lot here. It gets complex, but I hope that sums it up well enough. Let me know if you need me to jump into any of those a little more because there get to be a lot of acronyms in here.

Adam: 29:39

Yeah, that's a great summary. Honestly, we could do a whole episode on that. That's a great overview, and I really appreciate that. Okay, question for Mark. Mark, in what ways did you include feedback from the disability community in developing the All In Dublin project?

Mark: 30:08

Well, Tiba's already shared a little bit about a really important opportunity that the studio helped make happen, which was this accessibility audit that they planned and pulled off all on their own. They were very intentional, with All In's help, in engaging individuals with disabilities. We had a number of wheelchair users, and we had other folks with other disabilities involved in that accessibility audit. That's one really neat and unique strategy for engaging input that we wouldn't have been able to pull off without the studio's help, so kudos to them. Stepping back, I think it's everyone's view that the input from the disability community really is central to this project. It's not about designing for people, but designing with them in a meaningful way. One of the key things we did, actually not long before the studio started, was our architects hosted a design workshop that brought together members of the disability community alongside architects, designers, and other stakeholders. That was a really important moment because it created a space to ask fundamental questions. What does accessibility actually look like in daily life for the potential residents of a community like this? What features matter the most? Remember, we want to house folks and, at a very practical daily living level, ensure that they're able to get around in the community and access all that the community has to offer. But we also want a community that really supports independence and connection. There are ways to get at that. The feedback from that session has directly informed all the real critical elements of the design as it's evolved. I think it's also just as important to say this isn't a one-time input. We have board members with lived experience with disability who have been closely involved. Our architects are bringing their own understandings and perspectives to the table. This process is very advanced, almost finished, but not quite yet. We're going to be moving very soon into a bidding stage. Our contractor will be taking the design plans out and getting bids on them. There's still room to refine and improve based on the continued feedback we're getting, and very importantly, budget realities, and also a deeper understanding of the residents' needs. It's a wonderfully iterative process that is still going on. In many ways, the community input hasn't just shaped the project; it's really continuing to shape it, and that's a pretty neat thing.

Adam: 33:12

Yeah, that is really neat. Okay, zooming out a little bit, and we have time for a few more questions. This is for all of you. What policies and best practices do you wish governments and stakeholders in housing policy would enact to make housing more accessible?

Mark: 33:39

So, Brady, you want to start?

Brady: 33:41

Yeah, I can touch on this real quick. Without just repeating ourselves here, as both of you just said, it really is about engaging with these groups that are living here, but also living this life every day, because they're not the ones making the decisions all the time. As Mark had just mentioned, we had that accessibility audit in addition to their meeting before. One thing that really struck our studio along that accessibility audit was just how many small things we overlook in our daily lives that they point out, and it's like, yeah, that's definitely probably an issue. It really is such a simple thing, but you can't emphasize it enough.

Mark: 34:28

Well, I'd add to that as well. When we embed it early in the design process, everyone benefits. We should take that approach because this isn't a niche issue. It benefits everyone in the community, not only folks with disabilities, but older adults, families, and people who may have temporary injuries or disabilities. It's a way to really think about building community resilience into the project. If you think of it that way, it helps shift policy conversations from, okay, how can we comply with this, to how can we create a genuinely valuable asset that has long-term value so that homes work long-term across ages and abilities without needing costly retrofits later? I think if we can shift our thinking in that way, it's going to be to everyone's benefit.

Adam: 35:26

Yeah. Tiba, do you have anything to add?

Tiba: 35:29

No, I think Mark and Brady covered it pretty well.

Mark: 35:35

I would also add, though, from a business perspective, and Brady and his colleagues on that section did good work on this, I do think we need to better align what we want to see in terms of design and accessibility with incentives and outcomes. Developers respond to clear signals. Things like incentives in the QAP, the qualified allocation plan, which Brady mentioned, are really important because there is a cost to accessibility. It's not a great cost, but it's a cost above and beyond. It will save you money later and certainly increase value. But we ought to be thinking about ways to really bring developers along with us on these because these projects don't have big margins. They're not huge moneymakers. Finding ways to bring everyone along so it's worth everyone's while can sometimes involve incentives that need to be innovative and creative. Accessibility is really seen as adding value instead of just cost.

Adam: 36:41

For listeners who want to make a difference, what's one thing they could do to start supporting disability rights and better access to accessible housing?

Brady: 36:53

Yeah, I can go ahead here. Even connecting this question with the first one you asked, it really does start with the listeners here and with me, us, everyone. As many as these policies are that we might want to change, even these government agencies really lack power because they see backlash from both sides. It does start with us, and it begins with getting involved with it and understanding what's going on, but also sharing these ideas, listening to this podcast, and telling your friends. I really do think that over time, it is about spreading the word of what is really working, because a lot of people just aren't aware. It starts with that, in my opinion, telling your friend. That's all I got there.

Tiba: 37:56

I would say, adding on to Brady, that a lot of people in our studio were educated about so many different things that we ourselves didn't know about until we heard people's stories. Getting people from these communities to share what they've been through, share their stories and their experiences, and speak up, I think will make others listen. Also having other people share those stories as well and just get other people to listen. Like Brady said, just share and educate yourself about what's going on and about the specific topic. I think the more community that we have involved, the more the cities will listen and actually try to make a difference. It's really important.

Adam: 38:51

Well, that is great. Mark, Tiba, and Brady, thank you so much for sharing your insight and stories with us today. It's been a pleasure.

Mark: 39:06

Adam, can I ask one more thing? Sure. I just want to add that what's been really exciting to All In about this studio is not only the great product that these students have produced for us, the great ideas they brought to bear, and everything that they've been able to get us to think about. What we're trying to do at All In is something that's innovative. It's not really being done right now, and we take very seriously the opportunity to bring together a group of really thoughtful, talented learners, like these 12 fourth-year students, to generate some really important learning that can benefit far beyond the studio. When you think about the careers that they're going to have and the impact that they will make in the world, we have every confidence that they're going to carry what they've learned and their perspective on inclusion and accessibility into all kinds of places. In that sense, the studio has given us a chance to extend the impact of this project far beyond one housing development or even beyond Ohio. That's been what's really important and very exciting to us. We're just awfully grateful.

Adam: 40:23

Yeah, well, I'm grateful for you guys too. A really great example of doing the real hard work of making our world more accessible. Mark, Tiba, and Brady, thank you so much for sharing your insight and stories with us today. It's been a pleasure.

Brady: 40:47

Thank you. Thanks for inviting us.

Adam: 40:51

Yeah, of course. It was great to talk on this podcast.

Brady: 40:54

Yeah.

Adam: 40:56

Thanks to everyone for listening. If you enjoyed the conversation, please subscribe and share. Until next time, keep pushing for a more accessible world.