“Visitability” becoming more visible nationwide

Note to readers: links to news articles may not work after a few weeks, as news media remove current stories to their archives. The link may take you to the archives section, where, for a fee, you can view the article.

Dec. 4, 2001 — “In what would be the first such rules in the nation, Santa Monica officials are considering a proposal to require that all privately built new homes and those undergoing major remodeling have a wheelchair ramp entry, wide interior hallways and at least one handicapped-accessible bathroom,” says a story in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times. The story, “Wheelchair Access as a Must for Residences,” by Bob Pool, is online at http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-000095931dec02.story

Although Bill Maher poked fun at the concept awhile back on “Politically Incorrect,” “visitability,” as it’s called, has been picking up adherents nationwide. Several years ago, a “visitable” gingerbread house made the pages of the Wall Street Journal. The house, a creation of the Rochester-based Center for Disability Rights, can be seen online athttp://concretechange.home.mindspring.com/ginger.htm

The idea is not a new concept. Since the early 1990s, the grassroots group Concrete Change has promoted the concept through its website at http://concretechange.home.mindspring.com. A number of cities, including Austin, TX and Urbana, IL, now have ordinances that mandate visitability features in single-family housing paid for with public money. Atlanta, the home of Concrete Change and the first city to pass a visitability ordinance, now has over 500 single family homes with vistability features (photo online athttp://concretechange.home.mindspring.com/laws.htm). Santa Monica’s law, though, would be the first to extend to all new housing. Farther north in California, San Mateo County also encourages visitability (see http://www.smco-cod.org/GraphicPages/ResidentialVisitability.htm).

L. A. Times reporter Bob Poole notes that before Santa Monica’s ordinance will become reality, “a major obstacle must be overcome: negative public opinion from those who may fear that liberal Santa Monica is once again taking on a social crusade.” Concrete Change members, who are familiar with the arguments, have posted a page of responses athttp://concretechange.home.mindspring.com/responses.htm

Athough there’s no legal requirement, the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development “encourages” visitability features in single-family housing built with federal dollars (http://www.huduser.org/publications/pubasst/strategies.html).

Temple University’s Institute on Disabilities has information on visitability athttp://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/iod_nofrm/publications/Accessibility/WhatIsVisitAbility.htm

SUNY/Buffalo maintains a listserv on visitability (with a searchable archive) athttp://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/archives/visitability-list.html

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Nation’s first “visitability” law withstands court challenge

Dec. 23, 2003 — In a unanimous decision, the Arizona Court of Appeals Friday put to rest efforts by Tucson builders to void Pima County’s nearly 2-year-old law requiring minimal access in new homes, the Inclusive Home Design Ordinance. The ordinance was one of the first in the nation to require“visitability” for new single-family homes.

The Southern Arizona Home Builders Association had sued over the law, saying county officials had no right to pass such a law; that it was “unconstitutional.” The state appeals court, however, ruled that county does have the authority to adopt wheelchair access requirements for buildings.

The ordinance requires all new houses in the unincorporated areas of the county around Tucson be built with at least one entrance with no step, and doors at least 32 inches wide. It also requires

• lever door handles
• reinforced walls in ground-floor bathrooms so it’s easy for an occupant to install grab bars
• switches no higher than 48 inches
• hallways 36 inches wide throughout the main floor.

The Pima County ordinance, the first in the nation to require a zero-step entry in a single-family home, passed in February 2002. When a local building firm, applied for a permit to build a single-family home, and their proposed design failed to comply with the ordinance and the county denied the application, the company sued the county, saying it “lacked statutory authority to adopt the ordinance and that it violated both the Equal Protection and Privacy Clauses of the Arizona Constitution.”

Writing the opinion for the Arizona Supreme Court, Judge Eckerstrom wrote that “the uncontested evidence established that approximately one percent of the population is confined [sic] to wheelchairs, but the county points out that a much larger percentage will suffer [sic] a disability at some point in their lives. Although all age groups are affected by disability, the county introduced evidence that approximately forty-one percent of people over the age of sixty-five have some form of disability. Disability is a growing problem both nationally and locally, and the county also introduced evidence that Arizona’s population of people over the age of sixty is expected to triple by 2025. Although many of these disabled people will not be confined [sic] to wheelchairs, the county concluded from these figures that the number of people confined [sic] to wheelchairs is rising. For these reasons, the county addressed a legitimate governmental interest when it adopted a building code designed to increase the number of homes accessible to those in wheelchairs.”

The builders also complained to the court that the ordinance “places the financial design burdens on homeowners who will probably never be confined [sic] to wheelchairs.” Dismissing this argument, the court noted that the county had “submitted to the trial court the results of a study suggesting that complying with the ordinance would cost only about $100….Indeed, the Board of Supervisors found that the cost of including the ordinance’s designs into a new home was substantially less than the cost of renovating a home to accommodate a person confined [sic] to a wheelchair. On this record, the Board of Supervisors could have rationally concluded that the benefit to the community in providing for the disabled justified the comparatively minimal cost of implementing the required design features.”

The case is Washburn v. Pima County, #2 CA-CV 2003-0107. To download a copy of the Court’s opinion in WordPerfect, go tohttp://www.apltwo.ct.state.az.us/ODSPlus/recentDecisions.cfm, click on “civil” and Submit.

Read more about the ordinance at the Solar Institute website.

Read article from the Dec. 20 Arizona Daily Star

“Visitability” Updates

Note to readers: links to news articles may not work after a few weeks, as news media remove current stories to their archives. The link may take you to the archives section, where, for a fee, you can view the article.

Dec. 18, 2001 — In response to our 12/4/2001 E-Letter, subscriber Carol Boyer of the RESNA Technical Assistance Project writes to tell us about more visitability projects:

“In 1999, the Vermont Assistive Technology Project (VATP) initiated a ‘rental unit study bill’ (S. 174) with the Vermont legislature to mandate minimal accessibility standards in all new 1-, 2-, and 3-family housing units built on speculation in the state. Known as the “Visitability” standard bill, VATP negotiated with their legislature to add language to the rental study that would include aspects of disability access. A 1999 task force was established to work on this study. The task force consisted of representatives from the Department of Labor and Industry, the Department of Housing and Community Affairs, the Council of Vermont Elders, the Vermont Coalition for Disability Rights, the Vermont Center for Independent Living, the Disability Law Project, the Vermont Contractors Association, and low-income housing advocates.

“The agreements reached by this task force resulted in the passage of H. 612 on April 27, 2000. H. 612 mandates accessibility requirements for all new residential housing (including townhouses, condominiums, etc.) constructed in Vermont. Besides basic visitability features, the law directs VATP to work with the Department of Labor and Industry, Department of Housing and Community Affairs, and representatives from the homebuilding industry to create educational materials that explain the new construction standards and the advantages of “visitable” homes. VATP will be the lead agency in the production and dissemination of the educational materials. A Visitability brochure will be coming out soon from VATP.” (Visit the VATP website at http://www.dad.state.vt.us/atp/).

“Philadelphia is in the midst of getting legislation for a Visitability Ordinance for all new construction with public funds,” says Boyer. The bill “should be introduced in January after it gets tweaked. This comes after many months of visiting the city council, talking about visitability and giving them materials such as brochures and the video that Eleanor Smith made. (Eleanor Smith is the president and founder of Concrete Change and the most persistent advocator of visitability. See:http://concretechange.home.mindspring.com)

“Several of the Assistive Technology (AT) Act Projects have been very active in pursuing visitability in their states,” Boyer adds. To read more about their housing initiatives, which include tax credits and other activities to help individuals with disabilities stay in their homes, seehttp://www.resna.org/taproject/policy/community/HMRG.htm#target1b

Boyer invites anyone who would like more information on visitability to contact her at cboyer@resna.org

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Overview

“Visitability” bill introduced in Congress

June 10, 2003 — Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D.-Ill.) has introduced H.R. 2353 to require all single family homes receiving federal funds be built with a no-step entrance, “32” clearance doorways on the main level, and one wheelchair-accessible bathroom. “It defies logic to build new homes that block people out when it’s so easy and cheap to build new homes that let people in,” says Schakowsky. To see a copy of the bill, go to http://thomas.loc.gov and type in HR2353.

“Under current law,” says Schakowsky, “95 percent of federally supported homes do not have to meet any accessibility standard. This creates unnecessary barriers for disabled veterans and other people with mobility impairments. It defies logic to build new homes that block people out when it’s so easy and cheap to build new homes that let people in. Many states and localities have already incorporated visitability standards. This list includes Naperville, Bollingbrook, and Champagne, Illinois, Atlanta, Vermont, Texas, Kansas, Arizona and others.”

Read Schakowsky’s statement to Congress on visitability

Visitability

“Visitability” has been a growing trend nationwide for the past ten years. The term refers to single-family housing designed in such a way that it can be lived in or visited by people with disabilities. A house is visitable when it meets three basic requirements:

• at least one no-step entrance
• doors and hallways wide enough to navigate through
• a bathroom on the first floor big enough to get into in a wheelchair, and close the door.

“When someone builds a home, they’re not just building it for themselves — that home’s going to be around for 100 years,” Concrete Change founder Eleanor Smith told The New York Times. “These things hurt nobody — and they help a lot of other people.”

“The visit-ability movement is based on the conviction that inclusion of basic architectural access features in all new homes is a civil and human right and improves livability for all,” according toVisit-ability: an Approach to Universal Design in Housing, a publication by the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Universal Design at The State University of New York, University at Buffalo.

Visitability first surfaced in the U.S. in 1986 in Atlanta, with the founding of the grassroots group Concrete Change. Founder Eleanor Smith recalls, “One day in 1986 I was driving around in Atlanta, Georgia, my home city, and I passed though a large development of new homes. As always, these homes had steps at every entrance. But very suddenly I looked at the houses differently. I thought, ‘These homes could have all had access.’ “

Concrete Change promotes the concept through its website athttp://concretechange.home.mindspring.com and worked with the city of Atlanta to pass the nation’s first visitability law, which required that all public housing be accessible. Atlanta now has over 500 single family homes with vistability features (photo online athttp://concretechange.home.mindspring.com/laws.htm).

Visitability became more visible throughout the 1990s, as the concept picked up adherents, and the state of Oregon and a number of cities, including Chicago, Austin, TX and Urbana, IL, passed ordinances that mandated visitability features in single-family housing paid for with public money.

But in 2001 and 2002, visitability came to the forefront. In the spring, Naperville, Il., and Pima County, AZ made news by passing “visitability” ordinances (Naperville has since voted to scale back its ordinance). Finally, in the first federal recognition of the concept, the Inclusive Home Design Act, HR 5683, was introduced into Congress by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D.-Ill.) in October.

L. A. Times reporter Bob Pool notes that before Santa Monica’s ordinance will become reality, “a major obstacle must be overcome: negative public opinion from those who may fear that liberal Santa Monica is once again taking on a social crusade.” Concrete Change members, who are familiar with the arguments, have posted a page of responses athttp://concretechange.home.mindspring.com/responses.htm

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Read story from Gary Arnold

More resources on visitability

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More resources on visitabilityNote to readers: links to news articles may not work after a few weeks, as news media remove current stories to their archives. The link may take you to the archives section, where, for a fee, you can view the article.

Athough there’s no legal requirement, the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development “encourages” visitability features in single-family housing built with federal dollars (http://www.huduser.org/publications/pubasst/strategies.html).

Temple University’s Institute on Disabilities has information on visitability athttp://www.temple.edu/inst_disabilities/iod_nofrm/publications/Accessibility/WhatIsVisitAbility.htm

SUNY/Buffalo maintains a listserv on visitability (with a searchable archive) athttp://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/archives/visitability-list.html

Read stories about visitability in
The St. Petersburg Times
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette
The Arizona Star
The Chicago Tribune
The New York Times (registration required)

More about state and local efforts on visitability can be found on the website of the AARP athttp://research.aarp.org/il/inb48_homes.html

Read “On The Outside Looking In: Why Visitability and Universal Design Features Are So Important” by Kim Steele, online at http://www.copower.org/tools/kimhousingtxt.htm Another good article about visitability can be found at the website of the disAbility Resource Center in Everett, Washington. Read disability columnist Mike Ervin’s National Public Radio commentaryabout Concrete Change’s Eleanor Smith and Atlanta’s visitable homes.

Sign up for a listserv on visitability (or read message archives) athttp://listserv.buffalo.edu/archives/visitability-list.html