For Disabled, Accessible Housing Is Inaccessible
Richard Smith has been living in the same Encino apartment for more than 14 years. He says it’s not the greatest place for him, but he’s lucky to have it and has adapted it to suit his needs.
He has tried looking for other quarters, but they’re never quite right--maybe there are stairs he can’t climb, or hallways he can’t negotiate, or a bathroom too small to accommodate a wheelchair.
For a disabled person, the choice of accessible, affordable housing in the San Fernando Valley is exceedingly limited.
“It is nearly impossible to find a truly accessible apartment,” said Smith, an activist for the disabled and past president of Los Angeles’ Advisory Council on Disability.
Ironically, those whose handicaps are most severe have better chances of finding suitable housing. On one hand, there are special facilities for the severely disabled. On the other, “The more severely disabled you are, the less you need special housing, because you will have an attendant,” said Janet A. Neal, current president of the city’s disability council and member of a new mayoral commission formed to deal with problems of the disabled.
But for those who basically can take care of themselves, it is hard to find apartments with extra-wide hallways and doors, bathtub grab bars, sinks that a person in a wheelchair can reach, or for the hearing-impaired, smoke alarms that flash instead of buzz.
And when a place to live finally is found or adapted to accommodate special needs, a disabled person can be virtually a social prisoner there, because chances are friends and neighbors live in houses that pose architectural barriers.
“Accessible housing for the disabled is very slim in the Valley,” said Linda Slack, a housing coordinator with United Cerebral Palsy. “If you can find suitable housing, it is generally in a low-income neighborhood, where a lot of disabled people don’t want to live because it is not as safe.”
According to the state Department of Rehabilitation, roughly 10% of the population in Los Angeles County is disabled.
Statistics compiled by the department in 1981--the most current available--show there were about 530,120 disabled persons between the ages of 16 and 64 in Los Angeles County.
Their disabilities run the gamut from physical problems--such as paralysis, blindness, deafness and heart problems--to mental retardation, drug and alcohol abuse, and emotional problems.
Of those roughly half-million people, 387,240 of them were considered severely disabled.
Although there are no figures for the San Fernando Valley, Department of Rehabilitation statistical researcher Dennis Bryan estimates that 10% of the Valley population is disabled. Urban areas, he said, tend to have the highest concentration.
No statistics were available on how much disabled-accessible housing exists.
“There has been a housing shortage for some time,” Neal said. “There just isn’t any new construction of accessible housing for the disabled. Older units are not accessible either.”
Although state and federal laws mandate that public buildings be accessible to the disabled, there is surprisingly little legislation to require that builders provide for special needs in dwellings, said Smith.
And what regulations exist are weak and difficult to enforce, he said.
Los Angeles has no building codes that specifically govern accessibility for dwellings. It relies on inadequate state regulations from the Department of Housing and Community Development.
These regulations only cover apartment buildings of five or more units--which leaves out condominiums and single-family residences--and are difficult to enforce.
“The city has been doing more to make sure there are more accessible units,” says Dave Lara of the Department of Building and Safety, Disabled Access Division.
New state codes have tightened requirements for privately funded apartments with five or more units built after Jan. 1. A cost limit that required builders to spend up to $774 per adaptable unit to make an apartment accessible was repealed in favor of stronger standards requiring that one unit for each 20 units be fully accessible in a building of five or more units. Other units that are considered wheelchair-accessible because they have ramps or elevators leading to them must be partially accessible inside, meaning doorways and at least one bathroom must be wide enough for wheelchairs.
Adaptable units must have 13 specified features, such as proper wall backing to support a grab bar in the bathroom or levers instead of knobs on inside doors. Builders must also make sure that if there is an elevator, the entrance to it is accessible, and that there is an adequate “path of travel” to adaptable units.
However, there are still exemptions and because the regulations are still new, they are still being interpreted, according to Ron Skarin, principal building inspector in the city’s Disabled Access Division. For example, if the first story of a building is 6 feet above or 4 feet below ground level and there is no elevator or ramp, the entire building is exempt because the apartments are considered inaccessible. The rules also do not apply to townhouse-type dwellings, where there is more than one floor and no elevator, ramp or lift, or to condominiums.
Lara said that although the number of housing complaints has risen--mostly because the disabled know there is a special section to deal with access problems--the housing situation in Los Angeles is improving.
“Builders are becoming more aware,” Lara said. “The city is not unsympathetic to the plight of the builder who puts a lot of money into construction only to find out at the site from an inspector that he didn’t meet some requirement or another. For the builders, this is just another of many city regulations they have to deal with.”
The federal government is trying to help as well. The Housing Act of 1988 prohibits discrimination against the disabled and strengthens enforcement of housing laws at the federal level. The Americans with Disabilities Act, which has passed the Senate and is awaiting action in the House, does not deal directly with housing, but does ensure handicapped access on public transportation and at other public places, such as businesses and movie theaters.
The Valley is “no better, no worse” than other areas of the city, according to Betty Wilson, director of the mayor’s Office for the Disabled. The Valley may be “a little better in some instances,” she said, “because there are new developments where you are more likely to find more accessibility, but not often affordability.”
“Adaptable, accessible housing--that is the key,” Wilson said. “That means anyone can use it comfortably.”
But having accessible housing oneself is not enough, Smith noted.
“When the law says three or four apartments per 100 have to be accessible, that means I can get in my home, but I can’t always get in yours,” he explained. “If I come to your house to play bridge, maybe I can’t use the bathroom. Or maybe I can’t go from your living room to the den. So I am forced to stay in my own home. That is probably the saddest aspect. Why do you need that front step in front of your door? It’s just been built into our design structure.
“It’s a matter of public awareness and political awareness to require these features, not only for the disabled, but for much of the population,” said Smith. “Buildings should be made to these standards. We’re doing things wrong.”
Recently, model homes were unveiled in Calabasas that were proudly touted as being especially “child-safe” because they had such built-in safety features as electrical outlets with covers and two sets of stair handrails--a big standard one for mom and dad, a lower one for the youngsters.
If houses can be adapted for children, why not for the disabled? Part of the problem is just awareness, experts agreed.
According to Neal, it is lack of education among builders and architects that is the biggest problem. “Legislators are also not sensitized to the issues,” she said.”
Smaller cities, such as Berkeley, Oakland and Glendale, are much better at enforcing state housing laws, Smith said, and move faster and further on this issue than Los Angeles can because “they don’t have the logistical problems that L.A. does.”
In the grand scheme of things, Neal said, Los Angeles ranks in the top percentage of cities working to make life easier for their disabled citizens. “But it’s relative to the whole problem,” she noted. “Los Angeles is in the forefront, but there is still much to be done.”
Part of the problem, she said, is “the size and diversity of disabilities in Los Angeles. You can’t make one rule that fits all of them.”
According to Neal, there are more disabled in Los Angeles than there are in the entire state--and those statistics don’t include senior citizens who have some of the same problems as the handicapped.
Sometimes, specialty organizations build their own housing, such as the 24-unit apartment building constructed by the Crippled Children’s Foundation, or United Cerebral Palsy’s three apartment buildings in Culver City, Torrance and Inglewood. Slack said the turnover rate for these units is very low--maybe one apartment every four years becomes available.
Sometimes, specialty organizations build their own housing, such as Rancho del Valle Apartments, the 24-unit apartment building recently constructed in Canoga Park by the Crippled Children’s Foundation. Rancho del Valle, the newest of these units, is pretty much state of the art. Completed just before Christmas, the two-story security building has no steps to hamper a wheelchair, extra-wide doorways, low sinks and counters, bathrooms designed so that tenants can wheel themselves into the showers, and two emergency buttons in strategic locations.
Built on land donated in 1953 by the Gold Diggers, a charitable women’s group, the complex was built with $1.5 million in federal HUD funds and another $400,000 from the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency and the Community Development Department.
Besides the apartment units, the seven-acre complex has an indoor swimming pool used for recreation and therapy and buildings for vocational training and social events.
The organization owns similar units in Glendale and Pasadena and is planning a 40-unit complex in Long Beach.
The cost of making housing accessible is not really a factor in new construction, most experts agreed. It does not cost that much more when building a dwelling to make doors wider, to use ramps instead of steps or to plan a bathroom with a wheelchair in mind. But it can be expensive to retrofit an existing home.
“It’s cheaper to build them right in the first place,” Smith said. “They are extremely costly to retrofit.”
Norma Vascova of the Independent Living Center in Van Nuys said that if a disabled person wants to rent a unit, “Some builders are adaptive; they will make adjustments.” However, she said there is a catch because the “person can’t get in to see it to see if he wants to rent it.”
“Accessible housing affects more than the disabled,” said Smith. “It also affects senior citizens. What happens to seniors when they can’t live in their homes anymore? There is a huge need for this type of construction. There is a huge part of the population that needs single-story homes, as well as apartments and condos.
“But developers say land value is too high to build single-story homes; that people want so much in a house, you have to build two stories to get it. It takes less imagination to build a two-story house.”
Smith said accessible housing needs to begin in the minds of the architects, who he said “are not sensitized to the problem. They need to be educated.”
“It has been said,” Wilson commented, “that if Frank Lloyd Wright had been disabled, we would have beautiful ramps in buildings.”
Smith said activists have been trying to educate developers through seminars and information sessions and have been working with the attorney general’s office to develop tougher laws and guidelines.
What’s sad, he said, is that “it requires very minor changes to make housing accessible.”
“We’ve made substantial progress,” Smith said. “But the span of issues is so large that every day there is a new frontier of problems to address.”
