Hey everybody to call the order first things first.

Uh we have our lovely guest Megan Halen in again from

the

the Fair Housing Partnership.

Yes, um, here to talk about the accessible parking policy.

Um

do you want to give a little more background on this?

I'm

pulling it up, sorry.

Uh not particularly.

So this is we've had a few conversations about this, some preliminary conversations in the a few weeks ago to have again a little bit more in-depth um conversation, and Megan very graciously offered to come and present to the committee, and also we are going to be recording this to make this session available to council.

And I just want to point out we do have council president Gen Zacko

on

Councilmember Sacco.

Um so it's my understanding that we're gonna have about a 30-minute presentation approximately, give or take.

Um,

and then we'll have ample opportunity for QA.

Um so let's just get get rolling.

Did you

have the power?

All right.

Awesome.

Well, thank you everyone for having me back.

I love talking with you all.

Um, and so to pick up from what Jen was saying is that uh as we are wrestling with all sorts of activities happening in government across the country, it's what spaces do we have here in Dormont to take actions regarding fair housing and actions in moving the needle forward about what housing equality and equity looks like in 2025.

Um so you have uh I can also send out uh digital copies of the documents I gave out, uh, but and just to go over and won't belabor the point, uh the only thing we do 24-7 at the Fair Housing Partnership uh is housing and housing discrimination, um, which is fair housing.

And so in that space, uh, even when the Human Relations Commission, such as yourself, such as the city or the state, uh those commissions do housing discrimination and other forms of discrimination in public accommodation and employment and schools, uh, and so we are a de facto expert in the housing discrimination space because it's simply all we do.

I'm a one-trick pony, my one trick is fair housing.

Uh and so as everyone knows, uh, to go next, uh, is that the federal laws uh govern fair housing and says that race, color, national origin, and religion or the first protected classes.

Next slide.

Uh, and then in 1974, we added sex um at the federal level under the administrative complaint process.

It no longer includes gender identity and sexual orientation.

Um, those protections remain in the city of Pittsburgh, um, and they remain legal uh jurisdiction, you know, should people file complaints in court based on the protected classes?

Next slide.

But what we're focusing here today about is the protected classes passed in 1988, um included both familiar status, the presence of children, uh, and disability.

And so under disability, uh, there's something called reasonable accommodations, um, which is a change to a rule, um, and a change to a rule or policy um because of a disability-related need.

So I'm gonna go through a couple intersections of how the law worked in the topic that we're discussing today.

So, what we're gonna go through is we're gonna go through uh Dormont's existing park parking policy for street parking, residential street parking, and the process for when a resident with a disability, that means that they need a parking space in front of their house because of their disability, what they need to do with the borough in order to make that request, and then some considerations and understanding for how we could potentially revise it to make it more equal and equitable.

Now, I've lived in Greenfield in Pittsburgh for 10 years, if not longer.

I understand that parking, uh street parking comes with a lot of emotions around it.

And so what we want to help Beaumont have are the facts and logic behind each aspect of the legislation.

So that way, as we propose and consider revisions, there's other ordinances we can do similar work on.

Um and that way council and the borough staff are well equipped to understand why it functions in a certain way, and that just results in better execution of that type of legislation.

So what I want to cover is next slide, is that there are two things that work.

So at times the Federal Fair Housing Act overlaps or has a jurisdiction as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act.

And so what happens is under the ADA, so the ADA passes in 1990, the Federal Fair Housing Act included disability in 1988.

And so what happens is that public access is governed by the ADA, going to Target, going to your doctor's office.

It also includes government buildings and government services.

And so all sorts of municipalities and townships in the region have gotten different CDBG or other federal funds for accessibility modifications to the municipal building, but we're looking at a reasonable accommodation process, a change to the rule or procedures that exist within ordinances as it pertains to housing, and then that has an overlap with the public having access to the borough process, but also access to my own home.

And so what we've been finding over the past few years is that under the ADA, it said that municipalities with 50 or more employees have to have an ADA coordinator.

So the city of Pittsburgh has an ADA coordinator.

Technically not yet, they're in between coordinators, but that won't belabor that point.

That means that everything is perfect, but it started creating institutional knowledge about how to govern disability and government services.

So we have a tremendous amount of boroughs and townships and local small governments without ADA coordinators who haven't had to have one, who after nearly 40 years just haven't been able to get that institutional knowledge of understanding how to interact with disability from a government services standpoint because of the lack of that investment through no fault of their own through the way that the ADA was written back in 1990.

And so one of the points that I'll point out is that with an ADA coordinator, you also create a grievance procedure.

I'm sure a lot of ordinances have that.

And it's something we would want to consider for an ordinance such as this is there's always an opportunity for a person to present their case to be reassessed if they have a grievance or felt that there was an unfair denial for misstatement of fact or some other facet of their request.

So what happens is, and what we're looking at today in detail is so the rule that we're looking at, so we're

talking

the reasonable accommodation request, we start with the rule ordinance itself.