Responses to Possible Misunderstandings
or Objections to Proposed Visitability
(Basic Access to Every New House)
"Architectural access" involves a long list of expensive burdensome detail such as types of cabinets, lowered mirrors, special handles, larger rooms, etc.
1. Visitability involves only two features of essential basic access: getting in and out through one exterior door of the home without any steps, and being able to pass through all main floor interior doors, including the bathroom (with at least a half-bath on the main floor). If the basics of Visitability are incorporated, advocates will not be pushing for further access features to be mandated in the future because other features can be put in a home as needed once the basics are in place. Furthermore, other features (e.g., lowered kitchen cabinets) might be needed by a certain disabled person but actually unhelpful to another disabled person. Unlike those features, a zero-step entrance and wider doors are essential for many people, and harmful to no one.
Few people need basic access to homes.
2. The numbers are large when one considers all the children, middle-aged and elderly people who use wheelchairs, walkers, crutches, chains or are otherwise mobility-impaired (such as having heart conditions or balance problems). Also heavily impacted are the family members of these persons, because one individual's lack of access limits the housing options and visiting opportunities of the whole family. These people need access to their own homes--and they also need for other homes to be 'visitable.' Otherwise, they are limited from contact with friends and extended family members.
Further, the ability to get into one's home and pass through doors is so basic and essential that often people who lose mobility through illness or accident cannot return from the hospital to their homes. Then the family must disrupt their lives by moving, renovating extensively in those cases where it is possible, or the individual must live in an institution rather than returning to their own home.
Lastly, a house is occupied not only by the original persons who buy, but the series of future persons who may buy, rent or visit it for many decades into the future.
The cost of access is high.
3. Visitability in most legislation covers only new construction of homes and does not apply to renovations. In new construction, total added cost is typically less than $300. No added square footage is needed. Wider doors can be obtained at the same cost as narrower doors, or at most only a few dollars more per door, depending on where the builder shops. Only interior passage doors on the main floor level are covered (not closets, nor second floor doors). Only one of the entrances need be without a step, and that can be accomplished at little or no cost on the great majority of the lots.
While the architectural features covered by Visitability are inexpensive during the building process, removing barriers after they are constructed can be extremely expensive: widening one interior door can easily cost $1,500, and addinng a ramp to an existing home is typically costly. The public expense of putting people into institutions as opposed to their remaining in their homes is also very high.A zero-step entrance can be easily achieved only on a flat lot, or when building the home on a concrete slab.
4. When siting a home and grading the lot with access in mind, a sloping lot is often even easier than on a flat lot. Visitability does not require that a lot or driveway be graded to a gentle slope, only that a usable slope or level plane be constructed from the end of driveway to the home. Constructing the zero-step entrance from an attached garage to the home is also an acceptable solution. (2/3 of all new houses have attached garages or carports.)
As a Universal Design architect once said, when a lot is steep "let the car do the climbing."Enforcement of Visitability laws or codes would be difficult and expensive.
5. Checking for compliance is simple, because the presence of the zero-step entrance and the width of an interior door are readily apparent. These items would simply be added to the checklist used during the inspections currently required throughout the construction process. Few lots have terrain requiring exemption from the zero-step entrance, and the criteria for exemption should be clearly delineated in the legislation.
"My home is my castle. Don't tell me how to build it."
6. Home construction is already of necessity regulated for safety and for the public good. Among the hundreds of items regulated are how steep steps may be, how far the home must be set back from the street, etc.. --including a minimum width for interior passage doors. Visitability adds inexpensive basic safety for occupants and visitors who have mobility impairment, while adding convenience for all persons and without detracting from the aesthetics or adding significant cost.
There's no precedent for Visitability legislation.
7. "No precedent" was once the case for every piece of existing legislation. However, significant precedents do exist. Florida passed a law in 1989 requiring bathroom door widths on the main floor of all new homes to be wide enough for standard wheelchairs to pass through. Since then, Atlanta GA, Austin TX, Urbana IL, Pima County AZ, and Naperville IL have passed legislation involving all of the Visitability features in private, single-family homes.
"People don't like the look of access. Access is unaesthetic."
8. First, people affected by barriers and their loved ones like the look of access very much. Second, people with no mobility impairments are becoming more and more accustomed to the look and usefulness of universal access as they roll their bicycles down curb cuts, choose to walk up the ramp rather than the steps to a movie theater, and take for granted the access features in new restaurants, schools, offices, churches, etc. Third, the wider interior doors required by this legislation do not distract visually. Fourth, when picturing unattractive exterior access, people are picturing the often long and awkward ramps that often must be added to existing houses that were built unfortunately without a zero-step entrance. In new construction the exterior solutions to a zero-step entrance involve simply a sidewalk sloping gently upward to replace a step, a garage floor poured level to one entrance, or a short ramp replacing steps at the entrance most feasible for access.
Let the market take care of access. When people ask for it, builders will build it. Or, let builders incorporate access on a voluntary basis.
9. Builders have had a many years to voluntarily make the changes needed. For example, in 1978 the Georgia Legislature passed a resolution encouraging basic access to all new homes. Yet in 2002, the vast majority of the homes are still being built with narrow bathroom doors and steps at every entrance. The people who most urgently need these features often have their need emerge suddenly, after an illness or injury, and are in no position to advocate for their needs "on the market." On the other hand, when home buyers who want basic access for themselves or their visitors do request such features while a development is being constructed, the builder sometimes tells them this cannot be done, or that the home owner will be charged substantial sums for change orders if they request basic access.
Clearly legislation is needed to successfully affect the status quo. Once the changes are required, they will become routine for builders to carry out because of their simplicity and inexpensiveness. The access features will not be a detriment to any resident or visitor--and at the same time they will be a great help to many.
These changes should be made through the code, not through the Legislature.
10. In the past, the lobbying arm of the home-building industry has fought this type of change when approached through the code by using its considerable resources to disseminate seriously misleading information. (As just one example, a 1989 memo from the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association, disseminated in a successful effort to stop a code change for wider interior doors, estimated the cost of constructing wider doors in a new home to be $2,500 to $4,700. This absurdly high estimate involved widening the whole house rather than the ready solutions of simply cutting a wider hole for the door, using a more amenable house plan, or when necessary slightly modifying a plan to remove a few inches from an adjacent room ) Working through the Legislature rather than the code allows the public to be a part of the process and discussion.
The lobbyists officially representing the Home Builder Association, and sometimes the National Association of Realtors and other industry organizations, have consistently opposed this legislation.
11. They have in the past and may continue to do so. On the other hand, Visitability makes so much sense that to most citizens, these industries will not look good opposing the legislation unless they are successful at twisting the facts regarding need, costs and difficulty.
Once members of the general public understand the need for the Visitability and how easy and inexpensive it is to construct, they often ask,
"Why would the industry oppose it?" 12. Good question. One answer is that the above-mentioned trade groups tend to vigorously oppose any regulation on principal (unless it directly benefits their own industry). Another is that builders often like to keep repeating the construction processes they are familiar with, and do not like to train sub-contractors to do things differently. Another is that ableism--extreme fear of disability-- is a factor, on the part of some builders and as a perception of what the buyer will feel. Another is untested assumptions about the cost, difficulty, or appearance of access and unwillingness to seek or accept information that contradicts these assumptions.Because it is common knowledge that our population includes a constantly growing proportion of older people, perhaps the industry trade groups will oppose Visitability legislation with less vigor than they have in the past and show a more open attitude to co-operation.
