HOUSING COMMISSION: DISABLED TENANTS H.B. 4513:
SUMMARY OF HOUSE-PASSED BILL
IN COMMITTEE
House Bill 4513 (as passed by the House)
Sponsor: Representative Woodrow Stanley
House Committee: Local Government
Senate Committee: Local Government and Elections
CONTENT
The bill would amend Public Act 18 of the Extra Session of 1933 (which authorizes local units to purchase, construct, operate, and maintain housing facilities) to require housing commissions to adopt a policy giving priority to disabled tenants to relocate to a lower floor of a housing project.
The Act allows a city, village, township, or county, by ordinance, to create a commission with the power to acquire, construct, operate, maintain, and improve housing facilities. The Act requires a housing commission to take certain actions in the operation or management of housing projects, including renting or leasing the accommodations only at rates affordable to people of low income.
Under the bill, a commission also would have to adopt and implement a policy to offer current disabled tenants a right of first refusal to relocate to an available dwelling accommodation on a lower floor of the same housing project. The bill would define "disabled tenant" as a tenant who is a disabled person as that term is defined in the Michigan Vehicle Code, other than a tenant who is a disabled person only because of blindness.
(Section 19a of the Vehicle Code defines "disabled person" as a person who is determined by a physician, a physician assistant, or an optometrist to have one or more of the following physical characteristics:
-- Blindness as determined by an optometrist, a physician, or a physician assistant.
-- Inability to walk more than 200 feet without having to stop and rest.
-- Inability to use one or both legs or feet and to walk without the use of a wheelchair, walker, crutch, brace, prosthetic, or other device, or without the assistance of another person.
-- A lung disease from which the person's forced expiratory volume for one second, when measured by spirometry, is less than one liter, or from which the person's arterial oxygen tension is less than 60 mm/hg of room air at rest.
-- A cardiovascular condition that causes the person to measure between three and four on the New York heart classification scale, or that renders the person incapable of meeting a minimum standard for cardiovascular health that is established by the American Heart Association and approved by the Department of Community Health.
-- An arthritic, neurological, or orthopedic condition that severely limits the person's ability to walk.
-- The persistent reliance upon an oxygen source other than ordinary air.)