ADA Best Practices Tool Kit for State and Local Governments

H. Transitions Back to the Community

• Provide people with disabilities a reasonable amount of time and assistance to locate appropriate housing.Shelters provide temporary refuge during and after an emergency until people can return home or arrange an alternative place to live. In some instances, shelter operators have required individuals with disabilities to move to hospitals, nursing homes, or other institutions when these individuals could not locate accessible housing or the supportive services they needed to live in their own home as quickly as other individuals. As a result, some people with disabilities who once lived independently in their own homes found themselves institutionalized soon after a disaster occurred. 
  
  The ADA generally requires people with disabilities to receive services in the most integrated setting appropriate to their needs unless doing so would result in a fundamental alteration in the nature of services or impose undue financial and administrative burdens.¹⁵ To comply with this requirement and assist people with disabilities in avoiding unnecessary institutionalization, emergency managers and shelter operators may need to modify policies to give some people with disabilities the time and assistance they need to locate new homes.