Housing is Health Care

Protecting Your Investment talks about maintenance and preventing issues like Legionella in the water system.

Water Shut Off Valves, Construction Costs and Housing Affordability says in part:

I would like to design a building with TWO shut off valves and shared bathroom facilities such that even if the water were off for 24 hours, life could go on because the shared bathrooms in the other half would still have water and still be accessible to the residents impacted by the repair work and in units with no running water while the repairs were made.

If you read the entire post, making sure all residents have access to toilets, sinks and showers even if you need to shut off the water for a day or more for repairs is a serious health issue.

I would like the building to have a trash chute. When I lived in a hundred year old SRO, a lot of residents took trash out like once a week because it was a walk up. We took trash out after every meal. 

If you have elderly, disabled, single parents or most people, making it easy to take out the trash will improve the health of residents -- which will help them pay their rent in full and on time -- reduce the risk of vermin and help protect your investment.

This is intended to be Passive Solar Design. If you don't need air conditioning in the summer because it's designed to stay tolerably cool and you have radiant heat rather than forced air like I prefer, you reduce dust and maintenance costs and spread of germs from dirty vents.

I will further recommend you do a little research into materials that are less problematic for human health. If this gets traction, hopefully over time there will be more readily available information. I'm not suggesting you spend a LOT of time or excess money on it, but start reading and incorporate what you reasonably can.

The recommended kitchenette should be easier to keep clean than a full service kitchen. Kitchenette plus vending machine lunches on site and other recommendations for making sure residents can readily feed themselves is also intended to make it easy for people to stay healthy and well fed.

If you follow the existing recommendations closely already, the only thing this post really adds is two things:

1. A recommendation that you consider health and maintenance impacts when choosing materials.

2. An explicit statement that most of my recommendations are designed with an eye towards fostering good health for all residents.