Rehabilitación de viviendas con criterios de accesibilidad en España. Respuestas inclusivas ante la diversidad humana y social

Abstract

The main purpose of Public Housing, that is, to satisfy the needs of citizens with low incomes, is lost when the design and construction standards of public housing projects do not take into consideration accessibility criteria, also known as Design for All. As the population that occupies public housing projects gets older, and their needs become more specific and harder to fulfill, resources stop flowing in, putting them in a double exclusion situation: on the one hand, they depend on others to be able to execute simple day to day chores in a hostile housing environment, and on the other, they don’t have resources to transform that poorly planned environment. Therefore, the main goal of this article is to stress the need of implementing information and action protocols, regarding accessibility, in order to be able to adapt existing public housing to the specific requirements of their dwellers. The research team has performed an in depth critical review of the existing regulations specifically dedicated to accessibility, finding an array of opportunities that have not been used or developed.