Carlos Martinez on Building Homes for Everyone

Carlos Martinez leads BRIDGES, a Rockland County nonprofit where more than half the board and staff are people with disabilities, and is now gutting and rebuilding a home in New City around universal design principles: no-step entry, wider doorways and wall blocking that makes grab bars and accessible cabinetry easy to add later. Martinez argues universal design should cost no more than a standard build when it is planned from the start, and he is working with a bipartisan pair of state legislators to turn the approach into policy rather than a one-off feature.

Listen to the full conversation.

“This is a home for everyone and anyone to enjoy, so they choose. In that moment where we’ve become disabled, become sick, natural life things happen, and guess what: the house works for us.” — Carlos Martinez

Full episode wherever you get your podcasts. I’m Jim, and I live here.