Wheelchair Access as a Must for Residences

Santa Monica homeowners soon may be asked to take a big step for those who can’t walk.

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.

Advocates say wheelchair users and elderly residents would benefit from the elimination of such barriers in the city’s single-family homes.

Before any ordinance is approved, though, officials acknowledge that 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.

“There are two things that are in conflict in America: ‘united we stand’ and ‘by God, I’ll stand on my own property by myself and you won’t tell me what to do with it,’ ” said Alan Toy, a 51-year-old researcher at UCLA’s Advanced Policy Institute who proposed the ordinance. He uses crutches and a wheelchair as the result of a childhood bout with polio.

Toy, who has lived in Santa Monica for 22 years, is an appointee to the state Independent Living Council and an elected member of the city’s Rent Control Board, where he first floated the idea of a citywide accessibility requirement 1 1/2 years ago. In September, the City Council agreed to spend $75,000 for help in crafting a wheelchair ordinance from accessibility experts at the State University of New York at Buffalo’s Center for Inclusive Design & Environmental Access.

Cities such as Visalia, Calif., have drawn up voluntary accessibility guidelines, and Atlanta, Chicago and Oregon require that new homes built with governmental assistance meet standards set by the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act. But accessibility experts say no current laws require handicapped access in privately financed single-family homes.

Santa Monica officials have suggested that the proposed ordinance include such requirements as a no-step entrance at either the front or rear of the house, hallways that are at least 36 inches wide, doorways at least 32 inches wide, “accessible routes” for wheelchairs through the main floor of the house and light switches and thermostats positioned so they can be operated from a chair.

Timothy McCormick, Santa Monica’s building officer, said the Buffalo university experts will look at a wide range of accessibility ideas and hold two public hearings before submitting their ideas to the City Council, possibly as soon as March.

“I don’t think this will be anything done quickly or easily,” he said. “There was a little hysteria at first, when I think some people thought we’d actually already passed an ordinance.”

McCormick said ramps, wider doorways and lowered light switches can be inexpensively installed when included as part of new construction. “It can make a huge difference in people’s lives for very little investment,” he said.

Edward Steinfeld, director of the Buffalo university’s center, said many accessibility ideas will be considered for Santa Monica, even such things as space for the future installation of elevators in two-story homes. Those spaces could be used as closets in the interim, he said.

A no-step entryway requirement can be met by designing a home’s floor close to ground level or by slightly raising the ground outside, Steinfeld said.

“It doesn’t have to be a ramp and it doesn’t have to be in the front of the home,” he said. “Most of the time people object to ramps because they’re add-ons, maybe prefab metal. But integration into the house is easy.”

Convincing property owners of that may not be easy, however.

Although professional builders recognize the value of wheelchair accessibility, they have concerns that ramps and wide hallways mean sacrifices in the layout of smaller homes, said Donna Reichle, a spokeswoman for the National Assn. of Home Builders, a 205,000-member Washington-based trade group.

And “we really don’t think the consumer should have to pay for the changes if they don’t want them in the first place,” she said.

In Santa Monica, the only new single-family houses being built are custom homes on lots where older houses have been torn down. Because of the high price of land in the beachfront city, property owners often are inclined to squeeze as much house as possible onto tiny parcels subdivided in the 1920s and earlier.

Special setback requirements in pricey neighborhoods north of Montana Avenue make it even harder to fit in everything that property owners want, said architect Ken Unger.

“On a 50- or 60-foot-wide lot, people won’t like taking away footage for something they won’t need,” he said. “Every square inch of those houses in Santa Monica is valuable space. To have to try to fit in another piece of the puzzle is pretty difficult.”

Extra Cost Is Called a Concern

Unger has designed a Spanish-style home on Santa Monica’s 22nd Street. It is one of five houses under construction on a half-block portion of the street.

Workers at one of the other nearby construction sites shook their heads at the thought of a mandatory wheelchair accessibility requirement.

“It’s a huge issue. People who are building here are not poor. But like everybody else, they watch how their money is spent,” said painter Doug MacGregor.

The Santa Monica resident had harsh words for what he characterized as “a liberal City Council that looks out for the homeless and those who beg, but set restrictions on those paying taxes.”

Advocates for those with disabilities have high praise for Santa Monica leaders, however.

“It’s great that Santa Monica is taking the lead. This is an issue that doesn’t just affect a few people, it’s something that will eventually affect the entire population,” said June Isaacson Kailes, a disability policy consultant from Playa del Rey who has worked with the California Commission on Aging, the California Coalition for Independent Living and the U.S. Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board.

“People want to age in place and stay where they are,” she said. “They want to have other people, young and old, with differing abilities, visit them. It’s about time that construction people and architects in this country attend to the needs of a variety of people and not just those who stay within the general curve. This is long overdue.”

Toy, whose apartment is reached by five steps he manages with his crutches and whose doorways are too narrow for a wheelchair, scoffed at the suggestion that Santa Monica’s residential lots are “so small that you can’t have hallways a couple of inches wider.”

He points to the 9th Street home of John Duganne III as proof that ramps can easily blend into a residential setting. Duganne, a 3-D computer animator who uses a wheelchair because of cerebral palsy, easily glides into his house from a curving sidewalk built atop a gentle berm that is part of the landscaping around his Craftsman-style bungalow.

“Santa Monica is a good place to start something like this,” Toy said of the accessibility campaign. “It prides itself as being a sustainable city. And most houses survive longer than most people who build them, changing hands many times.”

Future Santa Monica property owners may not think they will ever need a ramp or wider hallways, but they could be wrong, Toy said.

People age and develop arthritis or bad knees that make it impossible to climb steps. Or they “trip on a root while jogging on San Vicente [Boulevard] and break their hip” and find themselves unable to use stairways, he said. “The sad part is most of us will encounter a disability in our lifetime.”