Memphis Downtowner November 2011 : Page 11
Visitable Homes Call them “lifelong homes,” where a person can age in place, remain self-sufficient, and comfortably host friends who are elderly, disabled, or temporarily handicapped. courtesy Design Collective Inc. Cascade Village in Akron, OH, includes 242 visitable homes, with at least one zero-step entrance on an accessible route; 32-inch ground-floor interior and exterior doorways and hallways; and a half or full bath on the ground floor with at least five feet of clear floor space for wheelchair turnaround. Atlanta, Nashville, San Antonio, Aus-tin, Tucson, and the state of Kansas have passed ordinances or set up visitable housing demonstration projects. Similar efforts in Memphis are underway. Judy Bettice had waited for the green traffic arrow before making a left turn on Perkins. Unfortunately, the driver who plowed into her had not heeded the red light governing his lane. It was, for Judy, a lucky-to-be-alive situation. After 11 days in the hospital with multiple fractures — pelvis, foot, collarbone, and hand — she was able to go home. Once home, she discovered she couldn’t access her bathroom. Her wheel-chair wouldn’t fit through the door. Priscilla Biggs has used a wheelchair since December 1999. She moved from a nursing home to her own home after locating acces-sible housing. But visiting her grandchildren in her son’s home is off-limits. The steps to the exterior doors are barriers she can’t nav-igate — and the interior doorways are too narrow for her wheelchair to pass through. At a recent workshop on Visitable Hous-ing at the Memphis Center for Independent Living, Board President Louis Patrick spoke of obstacles he faces in visiting a friend who gives frequent dinner parties. Patrick has solved the problem of how to get up the five steps leading to his friend’s Midtown duplex — his friends have to turn his wheelchair backwards and bounce him up the steps — but after several hours of good conversa-tion, good food, and sampling various wines, Patrick can’t get his wheelchair through the narrow bathroom door. “Once you get into the living room,” he says, “that’s where you have to stay.” Step-free entries. Doors and hallways wide enough for a wheelchair. These things are not what prospective homeowners gen-erally think about. The Fair Housing Act re-quires basic access in new multifamily build-ings, but no current law covers access in single-family houses — the type of housing in which most people live. Anthony Sledge, housing coordinator and home modifications specialist at the Memphis Center for Independent Living, is working to raise awareness about these bar-riers through the Visitable Housing Initiative of Memphis. The goal is a citywide ordinance with three requirements for new single-family homes built with federal, state, county, or city funding: 1. At least one zero-step entrance on an accessible route into the home 2. All interior and exterior ground floor doorways and hallways with a mini-mum opening of 32 inches 3. A half or full bath on the ground floor, preferably with at least five feet of clear floor space for wheelchair turn-around The initiative began with Eleanor Smith, who contracted polio and has used a wheel-chair since she was three years old. One day as she was driving through a new Atlanta subdivision, she noticed that every house had steps to the front doors. “All of a sud-den, a light bulb went off,” she says. “Why are there so few houses designed for dis-abled people when they are people who have lives, too? They want to go places like everyone else.” by Linda raiteri memphisdowntowner.com noVemBer 2011 MEMPHIS DOWNTOWNER 11
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