In Colorado, there’s a yearly charity event called “The Parade of Homes”. Basically, builders (and homebuyers) open up a few of their custom-built homes to the public who get to tour them. The proceeds benefit Children’s Hospital.
Several radical disability activists are suing because the homes aren’t designed for them. The homes don’t have ramps. The homes don’t have handicapped bathrooms. Some of the doors aren’t wide enough for wheelchairs and one of these professional whiners was sniveling that, to get in, he had to use a patio door. :rolleyes: I heard one of the people involved on in this lawsuit on the radio and he complained that the kitchen counters weren’t “wheelchair friendly” (i.e., non-disabled people didn’t choose to have their kitchen counters 2 1/2 feet tall).
Keep in mind, these homes are custom built for individuals. We’re not talking about an office building or a government office or even an apartment building. We’re talking about a custom-built private home.
Bad news for you, disabled folks: there are some things you just won’t be able to do! That’s unfortunate, but society can’t cure every problem you might have. I believe society should…no MUST do it’s best to see that you are given access wherever possible, but your part of the deal is to understand that “wherever possible” means that it can’t happen everywhere. A representative of this same group (ADAPT) was on the radio a few years back, complaining that The Cave of the Winds (a low-grade Carlsbad Caverns in Colorado Springs) wasn’t accessible to people in motorized wheelchairs.
If I were spending a million-plus to have a home custom-built for me (I wish…< sigh > ), the last thing I’d think about is how to make it comfortable to anyone outside of myself or my family/circle of friends. I’m not gonna have kitchen counters that are waist high or doors that are as wide as they are tall or install an elevator on the off chance that someday someone with a powered wheelchair might come in.
The annoying thing about this is that this is one of Colorado’s truly good charity events. They take in (quick guess) something like $1,500,000 a year for The Children’s Hospital. The only thing these whiners might accomplish is to convince the home-builders and home-buyers that it’s a bad idea to do this next year. They’re not going to make the homebuyers/builders change the design of the homes. All the disabled activists will accomplish is stopping an event that does nothing but good.
IANAL, but IAAATB (I am an Architect-to-Be). The issue here is one of “public accommodation”. To paraphrase the ADA, specifically ADA Title III, places of public accommodation must be built to allow people of all disabilities to use the facilities.
A private house is not a public accommodation, but whether a house opened up for a public tour is is an issue for, sigh, the lawyers. The ADA allows for “reasonable” attempts at accessibility, and for a house that is temporarily public, bringing people in through the patio door sounds reasonable to me. Its better than where some handicapped entrances are in existing buildings (Coming into a restaurant through the loading dock and kitchen isn’t so great) [rant]Unless you’re a litigious butthead.[/rant]
As to the doors and counters, there is no way that they can be made compliant (nor should they) unless the main event was being held in a room that wheelchairs could not enter. Then a reasonable solution would be to hire big strong guys to carry wheelchair users into the rooms and put them in their seats. A little embarrassing, maybe, but a temporary solution to a temporary problem.
They didn’t mention the bathrooms, but I’ll bet they weren’t compliant either. :rolleyes:
As a sidenote, recently in Philadelphia, Georges Perrier, a famous chef and restaurantier (Le Bec Fin) had a foot injury that required him to be in a wheelchair, whereupon he got quite a lesson in accessibility issues. Many restaurants and businesses don’t have to comply with ADA unless they have renovated recently. And he found that he couldn’t go to some of his favorite places now. Made him a strong supporter for accessibility. Of course the mail after that article was on the order of “Hey, we’ve been dealing with this for years, and Mr. Famous Guy gets an article written about him and now that’s big news?” I would think that the disabled community would welcome a famous and influential ally. But that’s me.
The weenie…er…person I heard on the radio used the above arguement. I think it’s nuts, myself. Something that is temporarily public for a matter of weeks is different than something open to the public forever. He also compared coming in via a side door to “blacks being forced to sit in the back of the bus”. :rolleyes:
**
Actually the guy did comment on the lack of handicapped accessible bathrooms, but I left it out of my post. And he was claiming that all houses should require doors to be…umm…some huge number of inches wide…46"? 52"? Aren’t normal doors about 28" wide? I wouldn’t want 4 foot wide doors in my house.
these are homes that are already built for private, individual families to live in, and they are simply showing them off? They are not MODEL homes? Or homes for sale?
If that’s true, then I’m expecting a lawsuit any day now, as I live on third floor walk up and I’m thinking of having a party.
Correct. These are NOT model homes. These are custom-built to buyer’s spec. private homes. Unique, one-of-a-kind homes that the buyers and builder have opened to the public for a matter of weeks for this charity event. To the best of my knowledge, the homebuyers and builder get nothing (other than some publicity) for this and all the money goes directly to the hospital.
Based on the person I heard, I would suspect that if you put an “open-house party” notice in the newspaper and/or charged people to attend, yeah, he’d be all over you for not building an elevator or widening your doors.
This is yet another example of a lawsuit where I believe the idiots who filed it should be made to pay for all costs of both the government and the people they are suing, plus fines. Then I think there should be a three strikes and you’re out thing where anyone who does this 3 times should no longer be allowed to files ANY lawsuit ever again.
I am not handicapped, but I can’t imagine requiring a private home be made accessible. Sorry, but not everything is going to be perfect for a disabled person. Isn’t the key to the law in “public” accomodation? Even if a private residence is temporarily open to the public, surely the same laws don’t apply.
We have similar tours during the holidays of many spectacular homes in Newport Beach, with the proceeds going to various charities. I can see a situation like this causing other groups to cancel these lucrative events purely as a pre-emptive measure.
Do these people also belong to a fringe PETA group? Sure sounds similar.
Slight hijack- I heard a report on KNX1070 radio in LA that PETA wanted Dreamworks SKG to change their logo of a little boy fishing off a crescent moon, because fishing is cruel to fish. Jesus.
Jeffrey Katzenberg told them to go get stuffed, in the nicest possible way.
I am an architect, and deal with this every day. Epeepunk is exactly right. By making this a public event, the ADA becomes an issue. The private residence is the only building I can think of that is exempt from ADA, and even then it’s tenuous, as this case shows.
Every building which is public (as interpreted by the code, such as restaurant, public housing, apartments, business, hotel, fraternity), or government owned, will need to comply with the state’s interpretation of the ADA eventually. As buildings are remodeled (which means moving a door or adding a light switch, not painting or putting in new carpet)they must be brought into compliance. There are many exceptions to this; for example, if the building is historic, or the renovation costs only total a certain percentage of the value of the building. Mind you, this doesn’t exempt the building from complying, it merely means that the code official has some room to interpret the code and work with the architect to arrive at a solution.
I’ve heard some interesting stories. I can assure you that these are real cases we have seen. A certain church was having remodeling done, and was informed by the architect that the pulpit would have to be made wheel-chair accessible. The church replied that in their religion, anyone with a physical impairment of any kind was a sinner, therefore would not be in a position to adress the congregation. The issue went around for a while; the end result was that the church was required to install the ramp; whether they opt to use it or not is up to them.
Another more outrageous one is where a woman contacted the state code official; apparantly she claimed to be terrified of trees, and was afraid to leave her house. She claimed that the ADA requires public areas to be accessible, so she wanted the city to remove all trees from public spaces in her town (parks, between streets and sidewalks). As crazy as it sounds, this had to be examined and interpretted. Fortunately, the state ruled against her.
Every single complaint about accessibility is examined by state officials. It’s very time consuming and difficult work, and I don’t envy them a bit.
One of my main objections with zealots is that they paint themselves into a corner with absurdity and have, at least potentially, damaged the cause for which they fight.
The kernal of truth in this person’s rant is that if you are sponsoring a public event (to differentiate it from a private paraty), you should have the ‘event’ per se, assessible. Which means some one with disabilities should be able to participate. In this case, being able to get in the homes (yes, even through a side door) would fit. At least ** one ** of the places on the ‘tour’ should have had assessible bathrooms (if one’s opening the place to the public, one cannot demand that only those who do not need a wheelchair can have bodily functions). But the crap about the counters etc, - well, unless as part of the tour, folks were invited to make cookies, well that’s just nonsense.
I’ve got friends who work at advocacy groups (and I don’t agree with everything they say and do), but some of the accomodations issues are not readily apparent to those of us (even those of us who think they’re compassionate and understanding in general) not using chairs. For example - the bathroom sink thing - it’s not sufficient that the sink be lower to allow for some one in a chair to use it, there’s a special design so that the person in a chair wouldn’t end up having their limbs touching the pipes - specifically the hot water pipe- which can get hot enough to burn, but if you don’t have any sensations in your lower limbs you wouldn’t know you were being burned until substanital damage had occured. I didn’t know about this until I was told.
waterj2: *“The church replied that in their religion, anyone with a physical impairment of any kind was a sinner,…”
What the hell kind of stupid religion is this?*
I have no idea exactly what sect it might be, but certainly there have always been many religions that disallow people with various kinds of physical defects from full participation in their practices. There’s something in the OT about how a man with mutilated genitals may not enter the congregation of the Lord, for example. Sometimes the discrimination is based on the belief that you must have done something bad to merit God’s afflicting you with such a handicap (cf. the NT passage that came up in the recent “reincarnation in the Bible” thread, where people asked Jesus “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”).
I remember vaguely about a case in NYC a few years ago where a charity proposed to take over an old building an make it into a homeless shelter. The problem was they were required to install elevators and make other expensive changes in order to meet the code. They said they did not have the money for that and, in any case, the homeless generally can climb up a flight of stairs. It came down to this: “With the money we have we can build a shelter which would accomodate 99.9% of the homeless who would come. With your requirements we do not have the money so we help no one and the 99.9% who could use us will continue to be homeless. Take your pick.” They were denied the permit and the shelter was not built. Maybe someone can find the details.
If the cost of doing so is mininal, the handicapped should do so themselves. If it is not minimal, then clearly this is not a “reasonable accomadation”. Either way, the people in charge of the tour shouldn’t have to do it.
sailor
I really don’t see why this wasn’t challenged on Fifth Amendment grounds. Looks like a clear case of private property being taken for public use without just compensation to me.
Gee, that astute legal analysis in the face of the myriad of facts presented there is nothing short of astounding! Oliver Wendell Holmes, move over!!
The building was donated to the Missionaries of Chariey by the city of New York. The order had $500,000 in funds for renovation, as well as all the necessary permits. The Missionaries of Charity, as part of their vows, eschew all modern conveniences, and intended to operate their homeless shelter in that manner. NYC building codes require an elevator in a building that size. Renovations had already begun when they were told this. They could not justify spending $100,000 for the elevator, when they intended to live there with the homeless, and perform all the duties, including carrying people up and down stairs if they were unable to walk.
Ultimately, they took their money and went elsewhere, aiding the homeless by spending the $500,000 to feed them. The order wrote a letter to the city expressing their disappointment.
The case is detailed in the book The Death of Common Sense by Philip Howard, which is sitting on my bookshelf at home. You may want to read, unless you are for some reason averse to letting facts get in the way of quick-on-the-trigger judgements that turn out to be, you know, wrong and stuff.
actually, ** The Ryan** in the ADA, the ‘reasonable accomondations’ are specifically NOT the responsability of those with the disabilities. This should make sense, since if so, then those with a disability would be forever paying for renovations at stores, restaurants, governmental buildings and so on.
By the way, “reasonable” also is word with some leeway - so that what is a reasonable accomondation for say GM to make, would be unreasonable to expect from my little agency.
This case illustrates the trouble with the ADA (and many other laws). In the old-fashioned, Constitutional approach, the legislature and Executive enacted laws. If they were unConstitutional, the courts could overrule them. If the citizens didn’t like the laws, they could vote the rascals out.
But, the ADA enacted a series of poorly-defined “rights”. It’s up to the courts to decide what the legislature meant they meant when they wrote the law.
It would be nice if the courts would rule the ADA unConsitutionally vague. Then Congress would have to do their job and decide which disabiliites should be covered and what accomodations should be required.
Of course, this will never happen. Congress likes the current system, because they avoid hard decisions. The courts like the present system because they have more power. They don’t have to worry about making hard decisions, because they have lifetime appointments.
Which is precisely what the legislature decided to do when it wrote the ADA. Congress could have been specific, and in mannn parts of the ADA, Congress was quite specific. But when it came to what kind of accommodations should be required, Congress took a long hard look at the millions and millions of individual circumstances out there and decide they could never possibly cover all the eventualities. Instead, they essentailly said “Let’s let judges and juries decide whether a requested accommodation is reasonable.” What we have today is exactly what Congress intended to happen.
I’ve heard of criminal statutes being unconstitutionally vague, but AFAIK there is no such thing for civil statutes.
Wrong. Judges by and large hate the ADA and its “reasonable accommodation” standard, because it creates tons and tons of new cases.