Urban Accessibility: Voices from the front lines of improving quality of life in Detroit
- Detroit Disability Power
- 17 hours ago
- 6 min read
By Faith Ballard | October 24, 2025 | We the People's Journalist
DETROIT– Christopher Samp, director of the City of Detroit’s Office of Disability Affairs said he was born deaf, as the son of a Syrian immigrant in Troy, Mich. during the 1990s, “my parents found out when I was two years old but fortunately … my grandparents are deaf, my aunt is deaf, so there’s sign language in the family,”
Growing up from K to 12, I did not have any support services, I didn’t have a sign language interpreter, I didn’t have captioning or note takers,” said Samp, ”I was struggling until my last year of high school. The Oakland County School teacher consultant stopped by and said ‘hey Christopher, I’m curious why you don’t ask for interpreters or anything like that’ and I said ‘oh, I thought my family had to pay for them’. She’s like ‘no, the school district is supposed to provide it for free’. I got really upset,”
Samp said his mother was unaware the American Disability Act passed in 1990 requiring schools to provide not only accessibility accommodations but also remain compliant with the Individual Disability Education Act.
According to the US Census Bureau and the Office of Disability Affairs there are approximately 117,000-127,000 citizens throughout every zip code in Detroit who live with disabilities. In 2019 the National Disability Institute reported that of the estimated 17.7% of city residents who live with disabilities 38.3% are living in poverty.
Households containing an adult with a work-disability require an average of 28% more income to obtain the same standard of living as a comparable household without a member with a disability, reports the National Disability Institute. Academic research continues to identify the direct links between urban accessibility and quality of life around the world.
“When you run a quality of life index, which is something that groups like the UN do and the World Health Organization … globally, disabled people are always at the bottom of every quality of life index, so globally we’re having this very common experience of divestment and lack of investment in the past,” said Rami Alvarez, communications director of Detroit Disability Power.
Alvarez began working in the field of disability justice with Detroit Disability Power in 2020 after working with other justice fronts such as immigration, LGBTQIA+ rights and marriage equality.
“What I liked about disability justice is that it confronted the sort of everything of it all and it did it in a couple ways. One, by reminding us that the consequence of all forms of oppression, whether it be racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, classism, the consequence of all of these is chronic illness and disablement. These systems of oppression take a physical toll on people,” Alvarez said.
“It brings violence to people and it also prevents preventative care, healthcare access from being out of reach for so many. So preventable disability or premature disability is higher in marginalized communities. So there’s that aspect of disability justice that just feels naturally intersectional,” Alvarez said, “Then there’s also the part of disability justice that reminds us that anyone can be disabled, like of any race group, of any class group, of any gender group,” Alvarez said.
When the city’s Office of Disability Affairs was established in 2020 Samp said he issued a survey among the city’s disability population to identify their priorities. He said the results highlighted concerns such as employment, housing, education, transportation, and disability awareness education among other issues.
The ODA said they work collaboratively with city government entities concerned with disability affairs such as public schools, the health department, emergency services and private entities such as non-profit agencies to tackle these issues, “For the first time in Detroit’s history, we have a braille tactile map at Clark Park. So I’m hoping to do more of that,” Samp said.
“For infrastructure, every resident has their own needs and it’s a very complex problem to solve and we need to be working together with accessibility at the forefront of the design, it can be universal design or making sure that the programs and development projects are ADA compliant,” Samp said.
“So it’s so important for the department or developers to include experts like the ODA, we are happy to provide our expertise on ADA compliance and the disability population,” Samp said, ”When you make everything accessible to everyone, we all win,”
“But, if you focus on the old traditional design a very few people get left out and then you get complaints and then you get struggles. So for a person with a disability, it’s complex because you have to think about jobs,” Samp said.
“I can’t get to work if I don’t have reliable public transportation. I need reliable public transportation to pick me up on time and go to work but also I need to have good employers that understand that I have a disability and provide accommodation in my workplace and be inclusive and not discriminating against me based on my disability,” Samp said.
“And then health, we see the government, it’s not just the city of Detroit, but the larger federal government keeps changing the rules about health care coverage and what’s insurance covered or what’s not and how much your deductible can be and how much you can save and like for me as a deaf person, my insurance will sometimes cover my hearing aids and then in the next few years, they don’t cover it,” Samp said.
“That’s another complex issue, especially for a person who’s struggling with mental health because they’re so stressed out, I have to worry about employment. I have to worry about transportation. I have to worry about my health care. I have to worry about raising my family if I don’t have all these support services,” Samp said.
“Keep speaking up for yourself and for access to resources, because without their voices, the government won’t know what you need, I mean, yes, you have a person with disability on the ODA, but I do need everybody’s input,” Samp said.
“Residents should continue to communicate with the government to say, we love working here, we want to live here. Please make it accessible for us and here are some solutions. Let’s see what other cities have, and we can mirror or copy their model that works for us,” Samp said.
Alvarez said,“When there are these opportunities where the city’s earpieces are popping up in our community and saying ‘please tell us from your mouth what’s wrong’, we really have to show up and tell them from our mouth what is wrong,”
“When we say the city, we know there’s many more players than that and we know that there’s also people that are not city officials who are investors, in this city who are also part of this conversation as to what gets funded,” Alvarez said.
“I would say that our relationship with the broader audience is still that tense relationship of like, there’s no one here … no one is saying get rid of accessible units, but people are still very much attached to this ‘What’s the minimum so we can meet the law and move on?’,” Alvarez said.
“So there’s this lack of excitement for what we think could be an opportunity for Detroit investors, Detroit city officials, Detroit urban designers, urban developers, whoever, to meet a need that is not specific to the city, but that we can solve in a way specific to the city and set the tone that Detroit is, I mean, in many instances, we’ve been cutting edge from Motown and techno to the automotive industry,” Alvarez said.
“We see this as another opportunity to say Detroit is leading the way in reckoning with how we redesign our cities to make sure people can age in place, which is the point that we’re trying to stress. Unfortunately, ignorance is one of the biggest barriers,” Alvarez said.
“As a deaf person experienced in the accessibility environment, now I’m trying to help Detroit become accessible because I don’t want a person with a disability to experience what I went through, silence from the government, no one helping me. I spoke up for myself, I learned to self-advocate,” Samp said.
“I’m trying to encourage people and parents and employees and stuff to speak up for your needs and don’t be shy. You have the ADA to protect you, have community resources and organizations to advocate for you. It takes the village to transform something … it can’t be one person. I need everybody to be involved,” Samp said.
For questions contact: Faith Ballard journalistintraining@proton.me
