Paul Linet is the founder and president of 3iHoME (3i Housing of Maine), a nonprofit organization advancing accessible, affordable and supportive housing for adults with physical disabilities. He is based in Topsham.

For more than 25 years, I navigated health care systems, conducted exhaustive searches for accessible housing and a built environment that was not designed for families like mine. Caring for a family member with complex needs is a lived experience like none other.

That experience is what led me to establish 3iHoME, a Maine-based nonprofit whose mission is to develop accessible, affordable and supportive housing so that people with mobility impairments and physical disabilities can live independently, in their communities, with dignity. I am writing to commend the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for addressing the gaping hole that affects thousands of families in the Bay State and to seize the moment.

The Massachusetts Special Commission on Accessible Housing recently released its Building for Access Report, a formal accounting of what many of us have known for years. Massachusetts has more than 800,000 people living with a disability, and 335,000 households that include an adult with a physical disability who struggles to navigate a home not built for their needs.

The Commonwealth has approximately 10,000 accessible, affordable housing units available to serve them. That gap, more than 30-1, is not a footnote. It is the daily reality of people who cannot find housing that works, and who pay for that failure in lost independence, diminished health and isolation from community life.

I have been part of this policy conversation for a long time. I testified before Massachusetts state regulators on the implications of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1999 landmark Olmstead decision, which established the right of people with disabilities to receive care and support in community settings rather than institutions. I served on the government relations committee of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Northern New England Chapter, working on a task force that produced recommendations on supportive housing in Massachusetts.

In 2005, the Commonwealth’s Office of Elder Affairs presented me with the Outstanding Caregiver Award, recognition I accepted on behalf of the countless family caregivers doing invisible, essential work every day. I know this terrain. And what I know is that naming the gap, as this new report does well, is only the first step.

The harder question is: who builds the answer?

At 3iHoME, our model is organized around three words that are also a design philosophy: Independent, Integrated, Innovative. We build housing that starts with the person, with what someone with a disability or a desire to age in place actually needs to live a full life, and works outward from there. Not ramps bolted onto an existing design. Not accessible units as a compliance afterthought. Housing that begins with accessible design as the intention and builds community integration as a core feature, not a bonus.

3iHoME has two active proof points of what that looks like in practice. Sturgeon Place, our 51-unit affordable housing project co-developed with Boston-based Preservation of Affordable Housing at The Downs in Scarborough, Maine, is a totally accessible community designed around our Mobility and Assistive Technology Hub, a model that integrates smart home technology, assistive devices and on-site support into the housing itself.

3iHoME is also pursuing a six-acre development opportunity in Worcester County that could become a model for exactly the kind of accessible, affordable, integrated housing the Building for Access Commission is calling for, at scale, in a real community, designed for the people most often left out of the housing conversation.

The Special Commission’s recommendation to require 10% accessible units in new state-funded housing is a step in the right direction. But 10% is a floor, not a ceiling, and it still leaves the design philosophy unchanged.

Our proposed project in Worcester County, if it moves forward as we envision, will not be 10% accessible. It will be designed entirely around the people who need it most, integrated into a community, built to last, and structured as a model that other developers, municipalities and states can learn from and replicate.

Massachusetts now has something that families, advocates and disability leaders have lacked for too long: official acknowledgment of the scale of this failure. The Commonwealth has named the gap clearly. That matters. But naming a crisis is not the same as solving it.

The real challenge is what happens next. If accessible housing continues to be treated as a niche issue, a compliance box or a secondary priority in planning and development, this report will amount to little more than a record of what everyone already knew. Progress that is impactful will depend on whether public leaders, developers, funders and communities decide that housing for people with disabilities, whether from an accident, a disease progression, genetics or aging, is essential infrastructure and act accordingly.

Spring, renewal and the start of the baseball season are now top of mind. So is the call for creating accessible housing. The question is no longer whether the gap exists. The question is whether we are prepared to close it. 3iHoME is developing replicable models that work. We urge all stakeholders to join us in this effort because everyone deserves to be safe at home.