06-06-2021, 09:39 AM
(06-06-2021, 12:01 AM)nms Wrote: The question is whether new builds should be required to provide homes that are accessible or easily retrofitted from the start. My answer is still yes. In your duplex scenario with one up, one down, the ground floor unit can be made accessible through proper grading. That project is now 50% accessible.
Exactly. This is entirely reasonable. I’m sure some builders would protest “but local topography!” or whatever but given how much earth moving happens it’s hard to believe it’s really insurmountable to arrange for one floor to be accessible.
Even triplexes would be 1/3 accessible under this approach.
Another example: I once helped someone move into a 3-story apartment building with no elevator. Fortunately, they were moving into the ground floor; and in fact we lifted most of the stuff over the balcony railing and didn’t even take it through the corridors at all. OK, so it has no elevator. But the main floor is accessible, right? Wrong! 2 steps from the sidewalk to the door, another 3 I think inside. Completely stupid, and obviously built by people who weren’t even pretending to think about accessibility. This particular apartment building is big enough that I find it hard to believe an elevator would add that much to the overall cost, but I feel absolutely confident saying the main floor, and therefore 1/3 of the units, should have been built accessible; even a retrofit would not be a big deal.
I would say that if 1/3 of rental apartments in small buildings are accessible and all of them in larger buildings, that should be a big enough base that people with mobility issues should be able to find suitable accommodation. They wouldn’t be relegated to the small fraction of apartments that just happen to be accessible; but at the same time the vast bulk of lower-income people who do not need elevators would not be forced to pay for them.
Right now I think the biggest barrier is zoning rules and, in Waterloo, the rental housing licensing regime. Even to rent out a basement in an otherwise owner-occupied building, there is a bunch of pointless paperwork required.