Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Wheelchair Accessibility

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

On Jan 10, 2005, at 9:14 PM, Pacific Gardens Cohousing Community wrote:

> - What percentage of units should be wheelchair friendly, with wide 
> doorways, larger bathrooms ..?
> - What size units should accommodate wheelchairs, 1 bedroom, 2 
> bedroom, 3 bedroom etc.?
> - How often has this been an issue in your cohousing community? Did 
> people have to sell and move away if they became dependent on a 
> wheelchair?
> - Did non wheelchair-bound people buy the specialized units, as a 
> hedge against their possible need later in life?
> - Are units with stairs popular, or do they become a problem for 
> current residents and for resale?

I think what is missed in most discussions of accessibility is that it 
is much bigger than wheelchairs. it also affects people with temporary 
injuries like sprains, broken bones, trick knees, etc. Knee problems 
run in families (like mine) but they also happen to skiers, etc. 
without prior warning. If your knees are fine, you may have friends who 
cannot do stairs. I now limit stairs to 6-8 flights a day which means I 
do not visit a friend who has three flights of stairs to climb. A 
prospective resident could not consider the same apartment because her 
fiends would not be able to visit her. Some of our people put full 
bathrooms in their downstairs so they would be able to stay if they 
were disabled or to have disabled guests.

Parents have to negotiate strollers for years. Can they pick up their 
mail and still be within view of their child? Is a child on a trike 
likely to fall over the edge of a platform? When the ice comes, will 
those outdoor stairs become an ice flow?

I have one of the apartments with the large doors. It was strange at 
first but I've gotten used to it and would choose large doors again, 
everywhere except the broom closet.

Stairs inside apartments take up a huge amount of space. In order to 
reduce the space, stairs are made too steep to be either safe or easy 
to climb. Someone must have done a study of this but I know that some 
stairs I can climb without difficulty and others mean instant pain. It 
has to be the ratio of slant to height of stairs. Even the size of the 
stair tread is important. Some are so narrow you have to put your foot 
down at an angle -- bad for knees. They are also hard to negotiate in 
running shoes which tend to have wide soles.

Going up to make a smaller footprint is good but I would recommend 
elevators rather than two story apartments. Elevators are expensive up 
front but not as expensive to operate as most people think. They are 
weighted in such a way that they use gravity to rise and are only used 
for a minute or less at a time.

Sharon
---
Sharon Villines, Editor and Publisher
Building Community: A Newsletter on Coops, Condos, Cohousing, and Other 
New Neighborhoods