A new partnership is providing critical rentals in Brampton for those living with disabilities

Across Ontario, more than 52,000 people living with a development disability are languishing on wait lists for critical services. Like millions of Ontarians, what many of them are looking for is safe, affordable housing. 

For those waiting in Peel, a new partnership could provide a pathway for public and private partners to do something the PC government continually refuses to do—help those living with disabilities build a comfortable life in the province they call home. 

Daniels Corporation Inc. and Choice properties, have partnered with Mary Centre and Kerry’s Place—non-for-profit organizations that address the needs of individuals living with autism and developmental disorders—to provide six below-market, purpose-built housing units with space for 10 adults at Uniti rental residence in Brampton. 

Heela Omarkhail, Vice President of Social Impact at Daniels says the Uniti project was intentionally designed at its current location to ensure residents have all the required amenities nearby.

"This was a site that was developed in a partnership between Choice Properties and the Daniels Corporation, and part of it was to bring more of an urban style of living in a unique offering, being a sort of high-rise purpose-built rental building to the Mount Pleasant village area of Brampton (in the northwest quadrant of the city),” she says. “That was selected as sort of a very good area for a new purpose-built rental building because of the access to the amenities…transit, with the GO station nearby, nearby access to grocery stores, healthcare facilities, a library, and a community center just on the north side of the neighborhood."

The units adhere to the Ontario Building Code and are designed under the Daniels Accessibility Designed Program (ADP).

Under the ADP, the standard layout includes accessible features like roll-in showers and roll-out balconies, common spaces and building entrances with lowered concierge desks, accessible kitchens in the party rooms, larger turning radii and waste chutes with automatic door openers.

Since the launch of the ADP program in 2017, the builder delivered a total of 38 accessible units, with an additional 160 ADP homes under construction.

"From the onset, our vision at Uniti was to create a community where everyone feels a true sense of belonging," Adam Molson, the Vice President of Daniels said in a press release. "By prioritizing accessibility and working closely with dedicated partners like Choice, we’re providing more than just housing opportunities. We’re creating real impact and demonstrating the value of building communities where inclusion is the standard, not the exception.”

Omarkhail said the Uniti project was designed to foster both inclusion and long-term sustainability by reducing environmental impact and offering multiple affordability options within the building.

“We look at how our developments create both inclusion and long-term sustainability. So from a sustainable aspect, the building is on a geoexchange system, which is intended to have lower carbon emissions and a smaller carbon footprint for the building, and then from a sort of social integration, long-term livability perspective, one of the key focuses here was, how do we offer different levels of affordability within the building? So we do that with the three partnership programs. We do that by having residents come together in amenity activation programs."

Heela Omarkhail, Vice President of Social Impact at The Daniels Corporation, spoke to The Pointer about the Uniti project’s focus on community living, accessibility and long-term sustainability.

(Supplied)

The Uniti building, which began construction in 2020, is one of the few purpose-built rental buildings being brought online in Brampton which has a shortage of such properties. 

Developers have consistently prioritized luxury condos and market-rate rentals, creating a growing gap for those who need accessible and more affordable units.

According to Statistics Canada, 45 percent of the country’s population is worried about the ability to afford housing due to increased prices and skyrocketing rents. About one-third (35 percent) of Canadian households reported difficulty meeting their financial needs (food, transportation and housing) in the 12 months prior to publishing the report in 2024.

For experts, the accessible homes project by the Daniels Corporation and Choice Properties is a significant partnership, but more needs to be done. 

"Good, but it is too little, too late," said Kate Chung, a co-founder of Accessible Housing Network. “It is not enough.” 

While acknowledging Daniels and the other agencies involved, she criticized developers for ignoring the profit potential of accessible homes which are just as cost-effective to build. She supports the idea of universal design as a standard in all future housing.

"Daniels means well; their heart is in the right place. But I think there's something they really just don't get. They just somehow, like other developers, don't want to hear that it doesn't cost any more," she said.

"It's very strange, because they've actually built some units that are accessible down at Regent Park in Toronto, and they're very good for anybody of any age or ability. The only people that can't live there are people who need a very large electric wheelchair and maybe need two PSW people to help them get in and out of bed and have a shower or whatever, but that's a small number of people."

Chung said a change in design philosophy would not be difficult. 

"For most people, if you just rearrange the way the apartment is laid out so that you can get in and get around, you know, for people in a wheelchair, but also for people who are blind, they need to have the counters, the corners of the counters, to be rounded rather than sharp points, so they don't bump into them and hurt themselves. That kind of thing—there are a few things that you need to take into account for people with other disabilities. But in general, universal design takes that into account."

Omarkhail noted that universal design has a broad definition with no single standard across the industry or among stakeholder groups.

"What we're finding is there isn't a single definition of universal design. So it's not a standard that exists that you can go access and say, 'Okay, I am building to this one standard.' We found that universal design could mean different things to different groups and organizations we are looking at," she stated. "What does it mean to have the same standard? Whatever that standard is, it is applied to all units in a building. What are the impacts of that in terms of unit sizes? What are the impacts of that in terms of costs, in terms of, you know, approvals, and in terms of getting the same density for developments? So we are in the early stages. These are stages of exploring that, and we don't have sort of a definitive approach just yet.”

The PC government under Premier Doug Ford has consistently shown advocates and experts that eliminating barriers for those living with disabilities is not a priority. He has repeatedly refused to meet with advocates and attempted to bury an independent audit commissioned by the Province. It concluded that the entire regime in Ontario for enforcing and applying the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act is “an unequivocal failure”. The report was eventually made public and built on the interim report’s findings that achieving a fully accessible province by 2025—which the provincial government pledged to do in 2005 when the AODA was passed—would be impossible due to the lack of effort by government and the private sector. 

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