State Law for Disabled Housing Takes Effect

“Just some more crazy regulation ideas that could never take effect.”

That’s how many builders perceived handicapped accessibility standards proposed, discussed and considered in Sacramento for years, says Bob Raymer of the California Building Industry Assn.

Short of some improbable last-minute action taken by the Legislature in its final hours of the 1984-85 session last week, the requirements for new apartment construction take effect today.

Starting on Sept. 15, 1984, local jurisdictions were given one year to adopt the regulations by ordinance or resolution.

“A community could have implemented them a year ago, but nobody did,” Raymer said. “They let the regulations become law by default,” so uncertain were communities about ramifications of the regulations.

And if the communities were uncertain, builders and architects are even more in the dark now that they must comply with the new standards, Raymer said.

Oh, his organization has alerted its 5,500 members about the regulations, he noted, but not all members read the monthly bulletins. Not all builders and architects in the state are association members. And the regulations are so complicated that even after seven years of negotiations, they still need to be refined.

As Raymer explained it, “We’ve delayed this as long as we can, but we’re still working to change the language to cut the costs of design.”

As Walter Park, an architect who participated in the negotiations as a representative of Independent Housing Services in San Francisco, put it, “There is nothing in these regulations for the deaf or blind. For instance, we could require visual warning systems, but we didn’t, and that’s a shame.”

He and Raymer also acknowledged that there are many “loopholes” in the regulations.

“Loopholes?” Julie Stewart of the state Department of Housing and Community Development, which led the negotiations and adopted the regulations in 1982, repeated. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘loopholes,’ but there are specific requirements.”

The requirement that alarms builders the most is the one that expects 100% of the units in a privately funded, new apartment house to be made adaptable for the physically handicapped.

That is, every unit in an apartment building that has five or more dwelling units.

Enter the loopholes.

“We got the three- and four-unit apartment houses exempted,” Raymer said.

Just this summer, Raymer also asked for a change to make condominiums exempt. “That’s very important,” he added. Whether the condos are rented or owner-occupied, they are still exempt.

The new regulations also replace rather than overlap existing handicapped accessibility standards. So, as of today, the 1% handicapped accessibility state requirement in condo construction has become a design option.

The new requirements also apply only to units that are wheelchair accessible. “Usually, two-story apartment buildings have no elevator, so the second-story units would be exempt,” Raymer explained. Three-story buildings without elevators aren’t as common here as in Europe, but some observers fear that this provision could result in a profusion of three-story walk-ups.

If an elevator is installed in a two- or three-story at a later date, however, the second- and third-floor units would remain exempt, because the regulations do not apply to existing structures. “The regulations have nothing to do with retrofit. They only have to do with new construction,” Raymer emphasized.

In a new building, even first-floor units may be exempt. The regulations do not apply to apartment houses having a public sidewalk, easement or other path of travel to the primary entrance, which has a slope exceeding 15%. A “primary entrance” is defined as “any entrance that has substantial pedestrian traffic to any specific major function of the facility.”

So consider this illustration, given in a California Building Industry Assn. bulletin:

Suppose the builder is planning to construct a five-story apartment building that has parking facilities on the first floor, which is a story below grade. Access to the upper floors is provided from the underground parking lot by stairs and elevators. Exterior access to the second floor, which is six feet above grade, is provided by stairs.

As the bulletin explains it, “Chances are, the slope of the drive into the parking area exceeds 15%. In such a case, the path of travel to the elevator is not considered accessible. Since the exterior access to the second floor is not provided by a ramp, the combination of these two provisions effectively exempts this project from the standards.” In such a case, the builder could conceivably build 60 floors of apartment units, all of them exempt.

An exception to this case, the bulletin notes, would be where local ordinance requires accessible underground parking. This prompts the criticism that cities can make their own rules.

Actually, even with non-exempt units, builders can pretty much make up their own rules about what they do as long as a certain amount is spent on the project to make it adaptable to housing the physically disabled.

This amount is called the “cost cap.” It increases annually according to an inflation index and, as of January, 1985, sets a limit of $740 per applicable apartment. “We got it cut about in half,” Raymer said. “It was $1,000 and with increases, it would be $1,300 by now.”

This doesn’t mean that a builder must spend $740 on each non-exempt unit, though. The builder can pool the per-unit cost and make several units fully accessible and spend nothing extra on the rest of the units.

“A developer could even decide not to put in a ramp but do other things to make the units adaptable,” Raymer noted. Without a ramp, the wheelchair disabled might not be able to get into the building, and this could happen, he admitted, “but we have come up with voluntary priorities, and we suggest the ramp first and the expensive items last.”

The expensive items also relate to the wheelchair handicapped, though. The items involve the lowering of cabinets and sinks, raising of toilets and movement of walls to allow more space.

They are among 55 items suggested in the new standards to make a unit accessible, but--as Raymer points out--all 55 cannot be done for under $740.

Even if all of these things could be done feasibly to all units, the question has been raised--ever since the state Department of Rehabilitation started promoting adaptability in 1981: Should all of the units in an apartment building be made accessible?

What about fire? How does a wheelchair-disabled person living on the 15th floor get out when the elevators aren’t functioning?

The California Building Industry Assn. had been working with the disabled community for about four years on drafting some accessibilitystandards when the idea of making all units was suggested. “Then we diverted from developing the regulations,” Raymer said, but the Department of Housing and Community Development adopted them in August, 1982, anyway. After a review, they were approved by the state.

“We just didn’t see a demand for this many accessible units,” Raymer said. Of the physically disabled population in the entire state, only 4% to 5%, or about 100,000, are wheelchair users, he added.

Earlier, his association suggested that 5% of the units in an apartment building be made accessible. Peter Kamnitzer, a professor of the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning at UCLA and a principal of Kamnitzer & Cotton, Architects of Los Angeles, agrees with this idea. Though strongly in favor of excellently designed facilities for the physically disabled for a certain percentage of units in every apartment project, he said, he is “concerned that regulations that appear excessive on grounds of reasonableness invite a search for loopholes on the part of developers.”

As it is, the new standards will only affect about 50% of new apartment construction, Raymer estimated, adding, “It could be 100% in some areas but only 20% in others.”

However, the regulations are expected to become more of an issue because many high-volume builders are only now finding out about them, he said, and apartment building activity is up “2 1/2 to 3 times what it was three years ago. They account for about 50,000 units a year in California right now, and that represents about half of the total housing market.”

Some builders might opt to build condos instead of apartments when they learn about the new regulations, he added.

Even last week there was talk about a moratorium, but Raymer said then, “I think we laid that to rest. A moratorium could hurt us because it would polarize the handicapped community, and we already delayed the regulations three years.”

Instead of repealing them, he said, his organization will try to work with the standards and is planning some workshops and distributing information packets.

For better or worse, the standards could be a first in the nation.

Park, of Independent Housing Services, said, “Some counties in Florida and an area around Boston adopted similar regulations, but California is the first state to do this to my knowledge.”

“Other states have enacted bits and pieces (relating to accessibility),” Robert Sifuentes, state counsel on developmental disabilities who also participated in regulation negotiations, said, “but we are as far out in front as anybody else as far as I know. We’re not talking about doorway sizes but a whole range of design considerations.”

The regulations were a compromise, Park conceded, because the idea behind them was to make every place accessible to everybody.

Sifuentes, a wheelchair-disabled person himself who took three months to find acceptable housing when he moved to Sacramento, contends that this notion is practical.

“If housing is restricted to 5% accessibility, where is the 5%?” he asked. “How do you find the percentage of the 5% that is available?” This will become an increasingly bigger problem with the graying of the population, he said. “People are living longer, and they have more functional disabilities. They should not have to give up their homes because the homes are not accessible for a wheelchair. Anyway, making a home more spacious will not deter from the selling price.”

Of course, the new standards do not make the whole community accessible, but they go a lot further in requiring housing adaptability than many builders guessed.

“The regulations have some problems,” Sifuentes said, “but they can be ironed out. At least we’re headed in the right direction. It’s a start.”