My name is Bruce Darling, and I am the President and CEO of the Center for Disability Rights. CDR is a not-for-profit, community-based organization providing advocacy, services, and systems change work on behalf of Disabled people across the Rochester region. I write today in strong support of Hinge Neighbors’ proposal to develop eleven affordable homeownership townhouses at 125 Charlotte Street.

The need for this housing is real, and it is urgent.

Rochester is in a housing crisis, and the specific kind of housing Hinge Neighbors is proposing — affordable, ownership-based, missing-middle housing at 60% AMI — is exactly what our community needs and almost never gets built. Rental stock alone does not build neighborhood stability. Homeownership does. This project delivers it on terms working families can actually reach.

This project begins to address a quiet crisis in our housing stock: accessibility.

We are particularly grateful that nine of the eleven units will include a ground-floor, accessible accessory dwelling unit designed to support aging in place and provide real options for Disabled residents. This matters more than people realize.

Rochester’s housing stock is overwhelmingly inaccessible. The vast majority of our homes have steps at every entrance, narrow doorways, and bathrooms on a second floor. For longtime City residents, this means that the simple fact of aging — or the onset of a disability, which happens to most of us if we live long enough — quietly forces them out of the homes and neighborhoods they love. We are needlessly driving longtime Rochesterians into the suburbs, into nursing facilities, or into isolation, not because they want to leave, but because their own front steps have become a barrier. Every accessible unit built in the City is a person who gets to stay.

On the neighborhood opposition, we speak from experience.

We understand that some neighbors would prefer this parcel be used for another purpose or remain vacant. As a disability rights organization, we know intimately what it means when people say “Not In My Back Yard.” Years ago, when CDR was developing a project in the Fernwood neighborhood, we were told plainly that Disabled people belonged “somewhere out in the country” — anywhere but next door. We have heard this argument, in many forms, for decades. It is almost never about the specifics of a project. It is about the discomfort of change.

Change is hard. We understand that. But we urge the neighbors of Charlotte Street to recognize what this project actually is: affordable homes, for neighbors who will invest in the block, including Disabled and aging Rochesterians who deserve a place in this neighborhood too. The concern about green space is sincere, but MLK Park is four-tenths of a mile away, and the Inner Loop North fill-in and the improvements planned around School 58 will bring substantially more public green space to this part of the City. The need for affordable, accessible homeownership here outweighs the case for leaving this lot empty.

Finally, we want to recognize the people behind this project.

Hinge Neighbors is doing the work the way it is supposed to be done — place-led, resident-grounded, and rooted in the mission of reconnecting neighborhoods the Inner Loop once divided. This development is not just eleven homes. It is a prototype for how the Inner Loop North land should be developed over the coming years, and a model of what community-led, non-profit housing development can look like in Rochester. The team working on this project is an example of what we should all aspire to be as neighbors and as Rochesterians. They are making this City a better place, and the lives of the people who live here better. We are grateful for their work, and we are proud to stand with them.

We respectfully urge Council to support the Hinge Neighbors proposal at 125 Charlotte Street.