Mr. Roberts is a retired scientist who has spent the last ten years or so working on issues related to those with disabilities. He designed his current home with the goal of making it comply as closely as possible with the AARP "Universal Design" guidelines. He also designed an accessible home for Habitat that fit within their guidelines. His current project is a home that he built to show builders that making a home accessible doesn't need to cost any more money and the result can look totally "normal." This house is currently for sale in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Mr. Roberts and his wife, Leilani, just celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They have three married children and three grandchildren.
D. Allan Roberts
P.O. Box 154, Penrose, NC 28766
alnlani@citcom.net
Housing Double Whammy
Low Income and Disabled
Also read THE COST OF "ACCESSIBLE" Why don’t they do it?
Try an experiment: walk from your front door to the nearest accessible toilet in your house. Easy, huh? Turn right, second door on left, go in, sit down. Now repeat the same experiment, but this time do it while riding in a wheelchair. The odds are better than 9 out of 10 that you can’t get there, even with help. The narrow hallway probably won’t let you turn, the 30-inch bathroom door will be too narrow for the chair, and you can’t get near the boxed-in toilet.
Millions of people face this problem every day. All too often, “disabled” also means “low income,” because the person can either not perform or not get to their job. Their very survival becomes a difficult challenge, especially because the design of their environment does not take their needs into account.
On the other hand, builders simply cannot make a mansion for a song. In order to make housing low-cost, you need to do some combination of four things: (1) make it smaller (the cost per square foot is pretty constant for a given construction method), (2) use cheaper materials (like a doublewide), (3) put it on cheaper (less desirable) land, or (4) put multiple units in one structure (apartments or condos). The net result is generally a smaller residence. But, since people still want all the rooms (three bedrooms, two bathrooms, etc.), we end up with tiny rooms. Try to make a double bed from a wheelchair in a 10 x 10 bedroom. It is really tough to do, because the bed has to be pushed into a corner and there is no access to one side.
The simple solution to this is to have fewer rooms in the home, allowing those that remain to be larger. My one bedroom apartment was very comfortable at 600 square feet, as compared to an 1140 square foot, 3 bedroom, 2 bath Habitat house which is very tight. But if one bedroom and one bathroom are removed, the remaining rooms can be made accessible. One possible floor plan for such a home is shown in Figure 1.
The rules are pretty simple and follow the AARP “Universal Design” guidelines. The results are a home that is easier for everyone to live in. They start with the toilet: leave at least three feet of space beside it, and a five-foot turn circle somewhere in front of it. Make all the doors up to it three feet wide (trim and hinges leave only about 33 inches clear, and a standard 20-inch chair, including knuckles, is about 31 inches wide). Make the hallways at least 42-inches wide to allow for turning the chair. Use bifold doors on all closets to allow roll-in access. Leave knee space under the bathroom sink. There are many other details that can be considered, but these six are the biggies.
If you follow these rules, you will find that there are minimum sizes for the various rooms. The two key ones are bathrooms (9x10 feet minimum) and bedrooms (11x12 feet for a double bed if you want access to three sides of the bed). You will also need ramps (at least two for safety) and low door sills so that you can get in and out of the house. The ramps and wide halls also make life easier for emergency personnel if anyone in the house should require medical care.
Affordable housing is rarely built with these requirements in mind. Therefore, we need to get proactive and demand that builders start making housing for all those people that need it. We are living longer and longer, the boomers are retiring, and the demand for accessible housing is going to skyrocket in the next decade. It takes some time to build a house. If we don’t start immediately, we will end up ten years from now with millions of people who have no viable place to live.
Press Release for a Unique Accessible Home
Figure 1. A Better Floor Plan For An 1100 Square Foot House
