1 Comparison of Housing Access Standards: Fair Housing, Universal Design and Visitability. Presenter: Barbara Chandler. >> JACQUIE: Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to today's webcast: Comparison of Housing Access Standards: Fair Housing, Universal Design and Visitability. Our speaker today is one of my favorites, Barbara Chandler. She is the fair housing manager for the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership and she is the lead staff person for policy, technical assistance and training on fair housing for the agency. She was formerly the director for housing projects at Adaptive Environments where she managed the Fair Housing Accessibility First Design and Resource Center which is a nationwide service that provides technical assistance on compliance with the federal Fair Housing Act requirements in addition to consulting and training. This webcast is sponsored today by the National Institute on Disability Rehabilitation and Research, NIDRR, who funds your host for today's program, the DBTAC Southwest ADA Center. I'm Jacquie Brennan with the ILRU project, Southwest ADA Center. I'll be assisting with today's presentation. For those of you who are listening to the webcast today, to submit questions, click on the E-mail button on your screen or you can E-mail them directly to us. If you have any technical difficulties today, please feel 2 free to call us at (713)520-0232. Thanks again for joining us today and now I'm going to turn it over to our presenter. Good afternoon, Barbara. >> BARBARA: Good afternoon and thank you for having me once again to participate in these webcasts. They are always a lot of fun for me. Today I'm going to do something a little different than I've formally done in the past. I usually do the webcast and just speak about fair housing, but today I want to take on a task that may be larger than I'm capable of, but I'm going to give it my best shot. I want to be able to in this presentation help people distinguish between three very important concepts in providing housing for people with disabilities. The mandated code for accessibility that comes under the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1988, I want to talk about the opportunities that are presented by using visitability and I'm going to wrap it up by talking about what universal design is and what it has to offer. So if you go to the first slide of the presentation, which is the one following the cover page. It gives you a brief definition of what the Fair Housing Amendment Act of 1988 is. It's important to remember that one of the major differences between the Fair Housing Act and visitability and universal design is that it is the only one that is a civil rights law. It has advantages being a civil rights law because it can offer protections to persons with disabilities that go beyond just making sure that something was built according to a code mandate or according to a design principle. The whole purpose of the Fair Housing Act was to prohibit housing discrimination that was based on race, color, national origin, religion, gender, familial status. Persons with disabilities were added to the act 3 in 1988 as a class. The next slide goes into three of the four main provisions of the act that protect persons with disabilities. The one we're going to speak about today in detail is that of design and construction requirements. Those are the specifications under the act of how the Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, and the Department of Justice, DOJ, deemed accessibility to be compliant with the act. I'll go through that later. There are two other major provisions that I'm not going to discuss in detail today, but it's important that everyone know that they are there. One is reasonable accommodation and the second one is reasonable modification. There is a fourth one here that's not listed on this slide, but its a very important concept because it not only applies to persons with disabilities, but it would apply to all protected class members, so race, gender, familial status, color, national origin, religion, et cetera. That's called terms and conditions, and that generally refers to how housing interactions happen and they would cover discriminatory actions that go from the point of searching for housing, applying for it, being approved, actually living in it, access to amenities, for instance, and how things are handled when someone vacates the premises. On the next slide, this is where things get really fun. It's very important for people to understand that not everything is going to be covered by the Fair Housing Act. The act is extremely specific about the type of housing that will be covered. The first thing when you're trying to determine coverage is whether it's a multifamily building that has four or more units in the building, not on the development, but in the building 4 itself. Fair housing coverage always goes on a building by building manner. The second part is if it has four or more units, you have to know what the date of first occupancy was, and that must be after 3/13/91. Anything that was first occupied prior to that would not be covered. Anything that was occupied for use other than housing and then after that date becomes residential such as a former elementary school that was converted to housing units, it was built as an elementary school in the 1950's and in 2001 it was converted to residential units, that would not be covered because the actual occupancy date would have been that of the 1950's. Once you get past the number of units and the date of first occupancy, if a building has a common use elevator in it then every single unit in that building must be designed and built to be accessible according to the act's specifications. Let me stress that again: Every single unit. When I was at Fair Housing First, we used to run into a great deal of problems because people thought accessibility under the act was done by percentage and it isn't. It's done by whether there is an elevator. So if you have a building that doesn't have an elevator, then the only units that would be covered or mandated to be accessible would be the ground floor units. HUD is very specific about what a ground floor unit is. A ground floor unit is the first level of residential units that are above grade level. So if you had at grade level commercial space, a garage and the residential units were on the level above that, that second level would actually be considered the ground level and would have to be covered by the act. One of the trickier things under scoping and coverage under the act is 5 multilevel units. Most people refer to these as townhouses, but the regulations refer to them as multilevel. If a townhouse does not use a common elevator or a private internal elevator in a unit, then those units are not covered by the act. So that means there would not be any requirements for them to be accessible. If you do have a townhouse unit which has a private internal elevator, which means that elevator is inside the unit itself and connects the levels of that unit, then that will trigger full compliance with the design codes and construction requirements 1 to 7. Again, on multilevel units or a townhouse, if that unit appears in a common use elevator building, then that elevator must serve the primary entrance level of that unit, that primary entrance level must meet the design and construction requirements 3 to 7 and you are allowed to substitute an accessible half bath for a full bath on that level. And the act does not cover rehabilitation or conversions. That's an important thing to remember. The next slide gets into something you've heard me say a few times already is the design and construction standards. It has been determined under the act that there are seven standards that must be met in order for a unit to be considered accessible if it's covered under the act. The first one is that there must be an accessible route that connects all pedestrian and vehicle arrival points to an accessible primary entrance. It doesn't mandate that all the entrances have to be accessible, but there has to be at least one. All the public and common use areas must be designed and constructed to be accessible and usable by persons with disabilities. 6 They have requirements around doors. They have two types of doors. I'm going to go through this quickly. Doors have to be constructed in a manner that they can be usable if a person is using wheelchairs or other types of mobility aids such as walkers or canes. There are primary doors, they are the primary entrance into the building. They are the entrances into common use areas and it is actually the outside of the door that enters into the unit itself. Those are required to meet a higher accessibility standard. It focuses in more on an absolute minimum clear opening of 32-inches and then there are requirements around clear floor space on the pole side. The secondary doors which would be the doors inside the unit itself don't have to meet that high of a standard. They only have to be concerned about a nominal 32-inch opening. The next one is that once you're in the unit itself, there has to be a route that connects up the major living areas that would be accessible, which means a minimum of 36-inches wide. The light switch, outlets and environmental controls must be mounted at heights that would be usable by persons with disabilities. In the bathroom, you don't have to install grab bars, but you must have the wall reinforcements put in so that grab bars could be installed if the resident chose to do so. And the last one is that kitchens and bathrooms need to be designed and constructed to be usable by persons in wheelchairs. These sound vague and I'm not going to go into specific detail about how they are actually done when are you designing and constructing that. You can find that information by calling Fair Housing 7 First or going on the Fair Housing First website for the real specifications. And that contact information I believe is somewhere in this packet. All right, the next slide gets into what type of housing is best served by the requirements of the Fair Housing Act. Part of it is obvious. Those units that are mandated by the Fair Housing Act to be accessible of course would be the best served by doing that. There is also a very good standard when you're looking for a voluntary access standard. Before I talked about multifamily housing that was four units or more, people often wonder what happens when you are doing a duplex or triplex. Because they are not covered by the Fair Housing Act, they are not going to be required to be designed and constructed to be accessible. There is nothing to say that someone couldn't voluntarily incorporate those concepts into that type of housing because to a certain extent they are multi-units, similar to a unit that is four or more, that the standards would hold well. Now, when you really get into the act, you realize that there is specific types of accessibility that really only serves people who have mobility issues. When I was going through the design and construction requirements, I said several times that things must be designed to be usable by people who were wheelchair users. So the true accessibility of the act is limited mainly to people who are wheelchair users or have similar mobility types of issues. It doesn't give you much accessibility for people who have other types of disabilities. The next people that get served by this are the neighbors of persons with disabilities. When I talked about additional coverage and used the 8 example of a building that had four or more units, first occupied after March 13, 1991 and had an elevator, I said all the units had to be accessible. The nice thing about that scoping and coverage is that it automatically means if a person with a disability moves into a covered building like that, that they would be able to visit all the neighbors. They would be able to use the facilities in all the neighboring units in that building. So while it's not portrayed as a visitability standard, depending on how the scoping and coverage plays out for whatever type of building, it does sort of lend itself to increasing some visitability. Now, the next couple of slides actually go into reasonable accommodation and reasonable modification. And again, I said I wasn't going to go into detail on this, but it's important that you know what these provisions are and how they actually relate to some of the design concepts. On reasonable accommodations, that is generally a request by a person with a disability or someone associated with a person with a disability to have a policy, practice, procedure or service waived or changed to allow the person to have equal access to the housing. Now, in the design sense of it, when a reasonable accommodation sometimes comes into play most often is when people are in need of accessible parking spaces. Because parking is considered to be a service, that if there is an insufficient number of accessible parking spaces, a person with a disability can ask that one be created as a reasonable accommodation for them. The nice thing about that provision is that it is the housing provider who assumes the cost for creating that accessible parking space, not the person with the disability. 9 Reasonable accommodations are not automatic blank checks for anyone. You make the request and they can actually be denied, but only under some very specific circumstances. If the request changes the basic nature of the housing program, so, for instance, if someone asked that they wanted PCA services to be provided as part of the housing, that could be denied because that's not the nature of the housing. The second one is that if the request is going to cause an undue financial and administrative burden, then the housing provider can reject it. And it has to be both. It can't be just financial or just administrative, it has to be financial and administrative burden. There is no regulatory definition of what an undue burden means, but in day to day practices, what you're really talking about is that it has to be substantial financial and administrative burden. A housing provider saying I cannot provide an accessible parking space because if I give it to one tenant, three other tenants are going to want it, too. That's not an undue burden. And once it's agreed upon, then the reasonable accommodation has to be implemented in a good-faith effort. Now, the other thing, too, is there has to be a connection between the person's disability and the request they are making. So if I'm a person who uses a wheelchair and I ask for an accessible parking space, there is a direct connection there. If there is no connection at all, then the reasonable accommodation can be denied. The next slide gets into reasonable modification, which is something that probably will figure more into this discussion than the accommodation. Reasonable modification is when a person with a disability asks for a 10 physical alteration to the unit or to the common use areas to allow greater accessibility and use by that person. The more typical requests are people oftentimes ask for grab bars to be installed. The act requires that the wall blocking be there, but it doesn't require that the grab bars be there. Reasonable modifications do not meet the same test as reasonable accommodation, so there is not that undue administrative and financial burden, however, when presented to the housing provider, the housing provider is allowed to require that the reasonable modification be done in a professional and code compliant manner. That means that they can say that if somebody is going to build a ramp, that the ramp has to be built the way the local state codes mandate that it be built. They can ask that the person doing the modification be licensed and insured. Those are considered to be fair requests in the process of doing this. There is also this confusion about whether a reasonable modification has to be restored when the person vacates the premises. That only has to happen if the modification was done internally in the unit itself. If the modification was done externally or in a common use area, it doesn't have to be restored. Different than the reasonable accommodation, under the reasonable modification provision, the person who made the request, which would be the person with the disability, assumes all the cost for that. I want to go to the next slide which is the first one on visitability. Visitability takes a different focus on how housing is provided, and it takes a focus by looking at a broader community perspective. It doesn't focus just on the person with the disability. It focuses on the community. It's a very strongly held belief under visitability that to really be 11 involved in your housing, it means you must be able to be involved with your neighbors. So you're not really in an integrated setting, you're not part of your community if you can't interact with your neighbors. So the original concept was not to get into the discussions of what is completely accessible units, how do you define accessible units, but to really talk about increasing inclusiveness in housing by having some very minimal, basic access features built in to the neighborhood itself. That was the original concept. It has expanded over the last few years and it really is looking more into now creating some housing construction standards that would in a more organized way take the visitability standards and incorporate it into housing production. The interesting thing about visitability is that strictly is focusing on housing. It's kind of an interesting connection between community, sociology and design of housing, so it's got some advantages. Most of what it looks like -- I want to go to the next page -- I want to start off with scoping and coverage. I talked about that there was certain house -- certain units that were going to be mandated to meet certain standards. It's not as clear-cut as visitability. Visitability first of all is not a suddenly mandated standard, so you don't have a federal act that says you must do this, although in some of the housing funding programs on the federal level they may offer incentives to include visitability. There is no mandate for it. However, the visitability movement over the last several years has been very successful in getting local municipalities, counties, and in some cases some states to actually mandate that visitability has to be built 12 into new construction. So they've been successful in codifying visitability. So I don't have a straight answer of saying this is covered and this isn't except to recommend that you really should be looking at what your state code and whoever your local code authority is to find out whether visitability has been codified at that level and it's a mandatory standard. I think it's fairly safe to say at this point that in most parts of the country visitability is still a voluntary standard, but always check with your code officials because you never know. They have a series of standards. They are far less accessible standards than the Fair Housing Act, but they provide some valuable services. They talk about having at least one grade level entrance. And it's interesting to note that they are talking about a grade level entrance, not a ramp, because they believe that by doing the grade level entrance that you are increasing accessibility at a level that will be welcoming to all people. Some people who do not have disabilities, they won't cross a ramp because they believe it's restricted to only people who have disabilities. When you have a grade level entrance, it is clear that this is meant as the same entrance for everyone. In addition to that, they talk about that the main floor of the unit, that the interior doors should have a clear width of 32-inches. That 32-inches -- similar to the Fair Housing Act -- allows a person with a wheelchair or anyone using any kind of mobility aids to very easily and safely make it through hallways. The last provision that they have is that on the main housing level, there needs to be either a full or half bath that is accessible. They 13 don't define what would be the mandates on what would constitute an accessible bathroom under this provision, but it does allow you some leeway on it. Now, visitability works very well for certain types of housing, and I'll have to say this is mainly my opinion, and I'm open to other opinions on this because I think it's been a good but lively discussion on when visitability should be applied. Single-family detached units, single-family homes, developments that are comprised of those, visitability is a very good standard to use. It really does increase that sense of community, of connection between people, the whole idea of being able to drop in on your neighbors next door to borrow a cup of sugar or in my case a six pack, whatever you want. It does allow people to freely socialize with each other without any major problems. So in single-family detached units or single-family homes or single-family developments, this works really well. I think it works very well for duplexes and triplexes for two reasons: One, they are not covered by the Fair Housing Act, so it doesn't really allow people with disabilities to move into them unless somebody does some voluntary accessibility. So I think by applying it to duplexes and triplexes, it opens up housing options for people, maybe not wheelchair users, but maybe people whose disabilities are of a lesser stage than that. I've seen in certain communities -- especially those that have decided to codify visitability, they have used it to cover those types of housing -- units that were falling sort of out of the scoping of whatever building codes they were using. So it does work well. And, you know, in 14 terms of people who are best served by it, again, persons with mobility disabilities, this works well for them in terms of increasing their inclusiveness in their community. And it works well for the neighbors because it allows them to also feel included by being able to interact with their neighbors who have disabilities. I'm going to go to -- switch over to universal design now. And when you get to that slide, this one I plagiarized. I struggled with what is a really good definition of universal design, especially since universal design goes by many names. Some people call it human center design, some call it lifespan design. It all means basically the same concept, and I decided to take it from the man who created this all, Ron Mace. So bear with me while I read the exact quote on how he defines universal design. "Universal design is the design of products and environments to be usable by all people to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design." Being the sociologist that I am, this is the concept of that I love the most because this is the ultimate level of inclusiveness. It's the concept that we don't have separate societies, one for people who are able bodied and another for people who are disabled. It talks about everyone together. The other thing about universal design that works really well, which is why you see things such as the human center label on it or the lifespan label, is it can be done in a way that the housing adapts to the person as the person changes through the various stages of their life as opposed to how we mostly do it now whereas the person ages, becomes disabled, has 15 small children, whatever the feature is, we oftentimes in this country have to force the person to move out of where they are in order to get to another place that would serve them better. A little aside there, I worked a lot in the area of elder services and we always used to talk about the principle of aging in place. And the thing I found most distressing when I was working with elders is that in order for most elders in this country to age in place, we have to force them to move to someplace else to accommodate that need. That the majority of the housing stock we have now doesn't serve them in that purpose. So Ron Mace was right on target when he came up with this concept. The other interesting thing about universal design that's different than both visitability and fair housing is that it doesn't limit itself to talking about just the design of the housing unit, it talks about the idea of designing products, what does the washer and dryer look like? How does the stove function? How do you build in concepts that would make it easier for people who are losing their hearing or vision? So it goes way beyond the very narrow definitions that fair housing accessibility has done and it goes beyond the visitability standards as well. Now, there are seven principles to universal design, and they are listed on this slide. So I'm not really going to go into detail because they are pretty self-explanatory, but they all go into the same concept of how living situations need to adapt to the person, not in the reverse of it. Now, the next slide gets into scoping and coverage. And similar to visitability, there is no federal mandate right now that has universal 16 design principles on it. There are some incentives that HUD, for instance, has done in some of its housing funding programs, but they are incentives, they are not mandates. There are some municipalities and some states that have taken some of the universal design principles and interpreted them into some of their housing programs. So some of them have actually codified them into mandates and some have used it as incentive that if you wanted more points on your housing application for funding, you use universal design. Others have interestingly done it in terms of how much money -- depending on the percentage of the universal design you're using, your funding would or could increase on that. So it's sort of all over the map. The standards that they use -- the slide says will be the same as principles and let me explain what I meant by that. Universal design is very different from visitability and fair housing in that it doesn't get into real precise specifications. It doesn't say that it absolutely must be a specific measurement. It talks more about the concept because what measurement may work for me may not work for another person. So, for instance, I happen to be five foot three. A counter height that works for me is certainly not going to work for someone who is six two. So when you go into the universal design principles, you'll see things such as talking about adjustable counter heights. So it doesn't tell you exactly what that counter height is, but it tells you how to design the counter height so that it could be adjustable depending on what works best for the user. The people that are best served or the type of housing that universal design would best be for -- my opinion is that it would work for almost 17 everything. It gets a little confusing when you're looking at things that have code mandates to it, either federal fair housing or state codes, but universal design is flexible enough that you could incorporate whatever your building code mandates are and still be able to do the universal design. I think it serves everybody. It's not a restrictive philosophy where they are just thinking about persons with disabilities or elders. I love the concept of universal design around families. A family that has toddlers needs a very different type of housing structure than a family that has adolescents and the concept of universal design can be done so that you don't have to move when the children grow up. That you can be able to adjust what is going on based on what their needs are at that time. The last page on this is -- these are very, very complicated issues and there was no way in this short time period I was going to be able to cover all of it, but I wanted to at least define what these were, show the differences between them and so the last page is a limited list of resources that are out there. I mention Fair Housing Accessibility First and that's a very valuable resource. The website is listed there. If you have any questions about the specifications for fair housing accessibility, definitely contact them. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, their website is good to get a general idea of what they expect and also where they stand on universal design and visitability as an incentive. Concrete Change -- that is a good organization that really has taken the whole concept of visitability and made it viable. They have spearheaded that movement in this country. Center for Universal Design and Adaptive Environments are 18 both leaders in the world of universal design and how it applies, not just to housing, but to public accommodation areas, transportation, communication, websites. So those will all be really good things for everyone to know about. So one last statement before I switch over to taking questions from people, but one of the reasons I really wanted to do this presentation is that we've seen over the few years some really negative consequences that have come out of people not understanding what these concepts were. So I have seen cases where people have been charged with fair housing violations because they used visitability and assumed that visitability was going to make the unit completely accessible. And as you can see from the discussion here that it doesn't really. I've seen people use universal design and make the assumption that they were going to be compliant with whatever state code, municipal code or federal fair housing, and unless somebody consciously made the effort to incorporate the code mandates into it, it doesn't happen. There is an interesting case that's happening in New York State right now that I think the disability community as well as the design community should pay close attention to because it really sort of shows the point I'm trying to make. Several developers in New York are now being charged with fair housing violations because they were following a state code that they assumed was exactly the same as the federal Fair Housing Act. And it turned out that the federal Fair Housing Act actually had a few specifications that were higher level accessibility than the state code. So all these developers are now facing some very serious fair housing violations on construction because they chose to just take one code, their 19 state code, and not take into consideration there might be other things to do. And I warn people on that when they look at visitability and universal design, they are great things that should be incorporated, but also remember that you've got to look at what you are designing, a multifamily building of four or more units, you need to remind yourself that within the scope of visitability, within the scope of universal design, that you need to incorporate those fair housing mandates as well. Otherwise, you are setting yourself up for some serious problems. So I'll start taking any questions that people have right now. >> JACQUIE: Okay. >> BARBARA: I'm sorry, I forgot something. >> JACQUIE: Probably what I was just about to say. So go ahead. >> BARBARA: I wanted to give you an example of where visitability actually works out quite well. And I know Jacquie has more information on this than I do, but the easy living homes Texas programs has worked very hard on the whole concept of how to build visitability into new construction. And they have a fabulous website that I was on, but I just wanted to sort of turn to Jacquie first so she can talk a little bit more about what easy living homes in Texas is doing. I know there are easy living home programs in other states as well. I believe Vermont has it as well. So take it away, Jacquie. >> JACQUIE: There are a couple of others -- easylivinghometexas.org is the website and you can find out a lot more about it, but it's a program that we have here at ILRU and they certify homes for meeting some very basic elements just for visitability, just so that the homes are visitable. 20 And so they can certify new homes and it's just some very simple things like you've discussed, like having the entrance be on a firm surface like a sidewalk or a garage floor and having at least a 32-inch wide path and having an accessible -- if there is a ramp, having the slope be 1 to 12 ratio, those kinds of things. Having at least one usable bathroom on the main floor and just having the space on the main floor be navigable. So it's a really great program, and I'm glad you mentioned it. Thanks, Barbara. Okay, questions. Let me get to the sort of simpler question first and then I'll work up to a more complicated one. >> BARBARA: Okay. >> JACQUIE: This one is what does "first occupied" refer to? Does it mean the first tenant for the building or the first tenant for the unit? >> BARBARA: Okay, you're right, that's an easy one. First occupancy means when the building was officially cleared by the local building inspectors to be occupied. So in most communities, it means an occupancy permit was issued by the building inspector saying that it was compliant with the code and people could move in. It does not mean that somebody actually has to have been living there. >> JACQUIE: Okay. And then the more complicated one. Okay, it says as I understand it, when HUD adopts the ADAAG, that ADAAG standard, both scoping and technical requirements will replace the you fast for residential facilities built with federal financial assistance? (HUD 504) in June, the Department of Justice published an NPRM that in part will make the ADAAG enforceable and the comment period just ended on August 18th. 21 What I need clarification about is the scoping under the ADAAG 233.3 for residential dwelling units provided by entities not subject to HUD Section 504. So the questions around that are what kind of housing will be covered? Will it cover new single-family developments, multistory townhouses without elevators, rehabilitation or conversion of existing structures that involve less than just leaving a facade if 15 or more residential dwelling units are being created? >> BARBARA: Okay. >> JACQUIE: Okay, go! >> BARBARA: I love these questions. This is actually quite a good one. Let me be honest, this question was sent to me earlier so I had time to look it up. I don't want to sound more brilliant than I really am, ut by love this question. The first thing is the way the question was worded, when HUD adopts the ADAAG -- at this time, and this could change at any time, but at this time HUD has not decided that it's going to adopt the ADAAG. So I would tell people that until you had makes an official position and publicizes that, that they are still going to be using the uniform federal accessibility standards otherwise known as UFAS. I want to get that caveat out there. I do know that in the NPRM that DOJ sent out that they were clear that they were going to be encouraging housing -- some of the federal housing act is to adopt ADAAG, but at this time I do not believe HUD has done so. Second thing -- there was a question about what type of housing actually would be covered that wouldn't fall within the HUD Section 504? 22 Let me clarify that when you talk about HUD Section 504, you're talking about housing that was built with direct subsidies from HUD. Section 504 would also apply to housing that was built with direct subsidies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is generally rural housing. There are types of housing that would fall outside of that. If housing units were built with state or local government funds, then Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the ADA, would kick in, and those units would have to therefore fall under ADAAG. A little sort of side note on this to always be careful about, if housing regardless of who funds it is housing that's being built with public accommodations as part of it, such as the manager's office, the leasing office, a community room that is used by the general public, then those public accommodation features would be covered by Title III of the ADA, therefore, falling under ADAAG as well. Okay, now, here is the tricky one. The question was will it cover new single-family developments? In looking at ADAAG, it's interesting the way they do it. They don't specify single-family developments. What they do is they differentiate between rental units and units -- I'm sorry -- home ownership units. And I think this is a little confusing because a home ownership unit could be a single-family home or the types of developments that are all sing am family homes, but it also could be a multifamily building that has condominium units. So it becomes questionable in my mind about how ADAAG really covers this because it doesn't follow the single-family versus multifamily that the fair housing acts does. I am hoping that when DOJ makes its decision on ADAAG, that this is 23 going to be one of the areas that they are going to be a little bit more specific on because I think it is going to concern people. The third one was on how a multistory townhouses without elevator is covered. That's fuzzy in ADAAG as well. It talks about that when you have a development that includes multistory townhouses, that you'll be allowed to have accessible flats in there in order to make the scoping and coverage. And the scoping and coverage -- when they talk about developments as opposed to individual buildings, but you're talking about 5 percent of the units would have to be accessible for persons with physical disabilities, and then you have the 2 percent, but not fewer than one, of the dwelling units that would have the communication features for persons who are deaf or have hearing loss. So to me, if you're looking at a development and it's a mixture of multistory townhouses without elevators, you are allowed to have the accessible flats, but it's not as specific about what happens to that individual townhouse unit itself. There is a clarification that's needed on that one as well. And the last one is rehabilitation or a conversion of existing structures that involve less than just the facade if 15 or more residential units are being created, that one I really couldn't come up with an answer on it. I know what that is under fair housing because if all that's left is the facade, then it's considered new construction. There wasn't anything in the ADAAG that was specific enough for me to comfortably say that, yes, you have to do this. The only thing I can talk about is that under the ADAAG, rehabilitation or conversion does kick in at that 15 units or more, and does talk about removable barriers. That hasn't changed and 24 is actually quite similar to the Section 504 issue. But it doesn't get that specific about what happens when either a building has been torn down to just the foundation being left or just the facade. So my hope is again as DOJ reviews this, that they end up applying a little bit more detail to those types of questions. Again, I apologize for not giving more specific answers than that, but I think some of this stuff just is not clearly worded and I think it's really subjected to individual interpretation and I'm not a person with any real authoritative pow wrier. So I didn't want to tell you this is exactly what you should do. >> JACQUIE: Are you sure? You seem like you're pretty authoritative and powerful to me. >> BARBARA: I fool them all. >> JACQUIE: Here is another one for you. Are there housing accessibility standards for persons who are deaf or hearing impaired? >> BARBARA: It depends. The only place where those show up is if the development is going to be covered by either Section 504 or the Americans with Disabilities Act. So if there is direct federal subsidy to the building, then 2 percent of those units are going to have to be accessible for persons who are deaf or hard of hearing as defined by UFAS, which is the Uniform Accessibility Standards. If the units are funded through state or local government, you have that 2 percent requirement that for people with hearing loss or are deaf, but the communication accessibility would come under ADAAG. >> JACQUIE: Okay. This is a question from Virginia. When recommending builders to utilize universal design within single-family 25 homes and other non-MSH development, should we recommend builders to utilize ANSI for accessible dwelling units as a basis and then add on universal design features? Or should we create a list of features, specifications that make up a mixture of ANSI and universal design? >> BARBARA: I actually think the latter would make sense because, again, universal design is principles. So what I would do is I would take whatever version of ANSI that is mandated in Virginia, if they are using ANSI as part of their code and look at how some of those standards are applied to the principles. And then for some of those things, it might just be an enhancement of some of the basic ANSI requirements in order to meet the principles. One thing I forgot to say earlier that is an interesting development is the international code council, ICC is now working on a 2008 version of its residential codes, and interestingly enough in there, what they've done is they are offering specifications for visitability. And they are quite good. I thought it was interesting because it sort of surprised me that we were thinking about as a model code visitability, but it does make a great deal of sense. So when that is available, it would be interesting for people to actually look at what ICC has done around visitability. I haven't seen anybody do anything like that for universal design, but it's kind of an interesting road to go down to. I know that strong advocates of universal design do not believe that you should codify it and I tend to agree with them because you lose the flexibility the minute you codify something because then you have to come out with specifications that are absolutes. So that the counter height can 26 only be 48-inches from the finished wall surface. That's not going to help someone who is six five. So I'm not an advocate of codifying universal design, but if people want to incorporate universal design into their state accessibility codes, then they really need to think about how you take those principles and apply them to the types of mandates they are looking at. >> JACQUIE: This is a question that is sort of related to the answer you just gave. Are there any examples of legislation that successfully mandated visitability or universal design in public housing? We've proposed some legislation in Missouri that would do this, but we're getting a lot of push-back. >> BARBARA: I haven't seen it very much in public housing, to be honest with you, and I think for very good reason. Public housing ends up triggering a lot of accessibility mandates that don't always agree with each other. Public housing in this country is directly federally subsidized. So you're going to have your Section 504 requirements of the Rehab Act. Then you're going to have your Fair Housing Act requirements because most of those buildings are multifamily units of four or more and some of them are built after the March 13, 1991. And then in addition to that, whatever your state and local building code is going to kick in as well. So there is already this complexity of trying to read all that code alphabet soup and figure out what does this have to look like. And you're talking about building units that you don't have a lot of money to build them to begin with. So I can understand there is a push-back on this because part of it is feasibility. 27 Having said that however, I don't think it impossible to do. The issue again would be to -- how do you introduce flexibility into the type of building developments that are complex by their very nature. I haven't seen much of this in terms of public housing. I've seen it in low income affordable housing developments that have gone up and they have varied. I know cape cod, Massachusetts had a development where they decided to incorporate visitability into a few of -- this was an affordable housing development. And some of their sing am family homes are standard cookie cutter kind of things. A few of them were built with visitability standards so that people who were applying for that housing had a certain amount of variety to do so. That type of development it's easy to do. If you're looking at your traditional big box, public housing development, I have to say it's going to be difficult -- not impossible, but it's going to be difficult. I would go to the concrete change website and look at what they've got. They've got a pretty comprehensive list of communities that have codified visitability into their codes. So some of those communities might be able to help the people from Missouri to sort of answer some of the objections that they may be facing. I would also check the center for universal design. They have some fairly good information there and I was looking at this today. They have a really good handbook on how universal design is applied to housing. And it talks about ranges and options and that might be something that would assist the Missouri group to really formalize what they are asking for. >> JACQUIE: Okay, good. We may need more information for you to answer this question, but it says for single-family homes, what benefit can 28 I give the owner to upgrade his house? >> BARBARA: I'm sorry, would you say that again for me, please? >> JACQUIE: For single-family homes, what benefit can I give the owner to upgrade his house? >> BARBARA: I'm not sure what that question means, but let me take it from what would be the advantages that should be there. First of all, if you're talking about a specific client that you're serving, a customer, you zero in on what does that person really want and need. That's the starting point. If they are not a person with a disability, but they have some concerns around disabled relatives, elderly relatives that they would like to be able to visit quite a bit, then you really do need to look at the types of accessibility that's out there. And then you can incorporate the universal design and visitability depending on what that person wants. If the question really meant that they have a customer that needs to upgrade their housing due to either illness, aging, disability, and they have to prioritize what would really be the thing to focus on most, the two areas that people tend to say are the most difficult for them to handle and have disabilities is the kitchen and the bathroom. So that if he's upgrading in order to make his house more livable for him due to aging or a disability, I would be looking at those two rooms and I would be concentrating on a few features. One is you need the clear floor space. You need that area for increased mobility even if you're not using a wheelchair. The more room you've got to turn around in, to back up, whatever, would be a big advantage. Grab bars -- absolutely in bathrooms. And one of the things about people need to remember about grab bars is we 29 don't have to go back to those ugly stainless steel hospital institutional looking ones. They have some out there in all different types of colors and building materials and textures that you can actually get something that looks quite attractive. I would also be advising in the bathroom to be looking at the fixtures. Most places have bathtubs, and bathtubs can be a big barrier. So depending on how much funding is available, looking at either getting a bathtub that is easy to put the person to use, if they insist on keeping the tub or replacing it with a walk in shower. If funding is a problem, I would be looking at shower seats. I would also be looking at replacing the shower heads so you could have a hand-held shower. Those are always much easier for people to handle. I'd be looking at the hardware at the sink to make sure that it's levered hardware because if they have arthritis or anything of that nature, it's much easier to use. When you get into the kitchen, again, talking about increased floor space makes it much easier for someone to handle a dishwasher for example, to put a stool down to load and unload the dishwasher. Replacing apply answers is a good thing to consider if they don't have a stove with the controls on the front, that Bob something that they really should look at. They should look at the hardware on the kitchen sink and again a lever would be useful. Kitchen cabinets -- as people age, the top kitchen cabinets, the upper ones become useless to many people because they can no longer reach them. So they are stuffing more stuff in the bottom ones and things get pushed to the back and they eventually can't get those. So looking at cabinets -- some people refer to them as Lazy Susans -- so the 30 person can actually store more there and then get at it. And looking at products as well, they are not all that attractive but they useful, reachers, especially in the kitchen to get things out of the cabinets. Those things can be a real life saver at times. >> JACQUIE: Where can I go locally to find out what type of accessibility is mandated in my community? >> BARBARA: I would start at the most local level. Which means your local code inspection department. A call to them asking exactly what codes they are following will tell you where to go. If you don't get any satisfaction at the local level, then most states have a state code office. I think there is only two states that really don't, but most of them have a state code office that you can locate in the community services pages of your telephone book or you can find them on your state website. Sometimes even on the state website you can find the code itself. >> JACQUIE: If a person with a disability is purchasing a single-family home that is in design or in the building stages, can they ask for the design to be altered to use universal design or visitability standards? And if that results in extra cost, who pays for that? >> BARBARA: Okay. It can be done a couple of ways. First of all, yes, they can. It's important to remember that a person with a disability who is buying a home is a consumer. So as consumers, you have the right to say what you want, to actually spend your money on. So, yes, you can ask that universal design principles or visitability be incorporated into the design of the property. Now, the cost factors around this are -- it depends at what point in 31 the process you actually ask for those types of changes or any type of customized changes. If you want something specific to your disability or whatever, if you make those requests early such as the design stage, then there is very, very little cost that's going to be incurred. Did you make it when the building is actually being constructed, then you're incurring greater costs because if they've already finished the building and that's when you come in and ask for this, the cost of retrofitting it to either do the visitability, universal design or any accessibility standards is going to be greater. Now, if you are looking at a single-family home that's in a development of other single-family homes, you are making these requests as actually a reasonable accommodation under the Fair Housing Act, even though the single-family home is not mandated to be designed and constructed according to the act, this falls under the reasonable accommodation provision. So what would happen is that you would only have to pay the differences between what it would have typically cost versus what it will cost. So, for instance, if they had a standard refrigerator that was going to be part of the price and it was a refrigerator with the freezer on the top. Those are not accessible and for a person in a wheelchair, they are impossible to use. So if you ask for that to be replaced, what would happen -- as a reasonable accommodation. The price of the refrigerator they were using was, let's just say, was $500. The one that has the freezer on the bottom or side by side freezer refrigerator costs $550. Would you have to pay the 50-dollar difference, but you couldn't have to 32 pay an additional $550. >> JACQUIE: Right. Okay, are there government moneys available to the owner who wants to make modifications? >> BARBARA: That depends on where you live. Some states -- Massachusetts, for instance -- has a reasonable modification program for low income homeowners. And so in Massachusetts if you own your home and you need some modifications in order to make it more accessible for you, then you can get either a no interest to low interest loan or it's taken out of the equity of the home when the home is sold. Not all states have that. Some people have used reverse mortgages or home equity in order to pay for these types of things. HUD does have a reasonable modification grant program that people can go on the website and look at. Reverse mortgages and home equity can be a good idea, but I caution people, just as we've been experiencing the mortgage crisis, the ballooning interest rates can happen when you do reverse mortgages or home equity loans. Read the fine print before you sign on the dotted line. >> JACQUIE: How do these standards that we've been discussing relate to housing products like apply answers or bathroom fixtures, those kinds of things? >> BARBARA: Mainly universal design does. Fair housing and visitability don't get into products at all, but universal design does. And when you go on either the Adaptive Environments or the Center for Universal Design to design websites, you'll see they talk a lot about products. An example I've already used, a stove that has the controls on the front may work better for people. Ability in ovens to be built in, 33 that way you can choose exactly what height you want the oven at works well for a lot of people. People who are in wheelchairs, people who prefer to sit down while using the oven, people who are short. You can get it at whatever height you want. Hardware -- bathroom and kitchen hardware are examples of products that are universal designed so you can get something that suits what you need at the time. The other interesting thing about products when you look at universal design is this goes beyond the standard concept of appliances and fixtures. It will talk about things such as flooring materials that you don't want, very glossy floor material because that could be considered a problem for people whose vision is beginning to fade. You may want to have -- (inaudible) with a contrasting color so you can see that the countertop actually has a definitive end to it which decreases spillage. Universal design goes as far as even something simple as, you know, steak knife or measuring spoon. So there is a lot there that you can actually get right off the shelf from your Kmart or target and Wal-Mart. A lot of them have these universally designed kitchen appliances and gadgets you can bring into your home. So it's not always the major construction items, some of it can be as simple as getting a microwave that has cupped numbers on it so you can easily handle it if your vision is not what it used to be. >> JACQUIE: What does it mean when HUD and the Department of Justice refer to building codes or standards as being substantially equivalent? And then there is a related question: Are there advantages to being substantially equivalent? 34 >> BARBARA: Substantial equivalency means that there is an access standard that HUD and the Department of Justice has reviewed, and that that access standard does meet the functional requirements of the Fair Housing Act. So when you look at the Fair Housing Act, you'll noticed there are ten safe harbors. I didn't go into this earlier. Each swoun an access standard that HUD and DOJ has reviewed and said that by following that standard you can be in compliance most likely with the Fair Housing Act. Now, I say most likely because interpretation of specifications can sometimes vary and sometimes it can vary to a degree that it causes noncompliance, but for the most part, a safe who're bore, which is substantially equivalent will have compliance. There are advantages to it. Some states have actually moved towards having their state building code -- some states have specialty access codes -- to be substantially equivalent to the Fair Housing Act. Florida, for instance, has codified the Fair Housing Act guidelines. So that in Florida when you're looking at what the accessibility requirements are in residential housing, you're actually following the federal Fair Housing Act. The advantage to that is that if it's codified like Florida did, their inspectors are looking for compliance with the Florida codes. So coincidentally, they are getting compliance with the federal Fair Housing Act. The federal Fair Housing Act does not have an inspection system. Violations are only found when complaints are done. So it's very similar to ADA in that it's a complaint driven system. So when states codify the 35 Fair Housing Act or have a state code that's substantially equivalent, it means that most likely the housing that will be built will not only be compliant with the state code, but it will also be come ply ant with the Fair Housing Act. This is an advantage to the design field as well because the frequent complaint you hear from architectures and I actually agree with them on this is that oftentimes you have five or six different code books on your desk and you're going back and forth like the Fair Housing Act says this, and Section 504 says this, and the state code says this. I have a public accommodation feature here and I have to go to ADAAG on that and they are trying to combine several different codes with the same building. This is how a lot of mistakes get made and it's a nightmare. So when you go for substantial equivalency, then you eliminate all that and you probably will only have one code book on your desk in order to grant accessibility. Again, I refer back to the recent Fair Housing Act representative tie in New York. This is exactly what problem was. People made the assumption that the New York code was going to be -- was substantially equivalent and they didn't have to pay attention to the fair housing specification, and it wasn't equivalent. So there is an advantage in terms of compliance issues and an advantage in terms of lessening the stakes. However, the Fair Housing Act does not offer a very high level of accessibility. So even though there are advantages to substantial equivalency, people should know that having substantial equivalency does not mean that you can't in your state code go beyond the Fair Housing Act. So I think some states that have started off with a Fair Housing Act 36 guidelines and then brought them top a higher level, so that meant you got a higher level of accessibility than the Fair Housing Act, and at the same time you were in compliance. So I know advocates get concerned particularly at the local level because they want the highest level of accessibility possible. And I support that because when you look at the Fair Housing Act guidelines, and Section 504 and ADAAG and housing, it's not high level. And so it's important that the local advocates not give up their right to higher levels of accessibility. So you can become substantially equivalent and at the same time have a higher level. >> JACQUIE: Right. I'm confused about townhouse access. If townhouses don't have an elevator, do they have to provide ground floor access? >> BARBARA: townhouses are very, very confusing. My dream is some day to rewrite all townhouse regulations so they are more streamlined. But if you have a townhouse, which again is defined as a multilevel unit, that does not have an elevator inside it or is not part of a common use elevator building, then it is not required to provide any accessibility at all under the federal Fair Housing Act. Okay? Now, I think what gets confusing is if a unit appears in a building that has a common use elevator -- if you have a townhouse in a building with a common use elevator, then there has to be a primary entrance level that's designated. And some places that could be the ground floor level. In other places, it could be a second floor level or third floor level. I've seen this in so many different configurations that there is no standard as far as I'm concerned; but under the act, there has to be a 37 primary service level. And that level has to be served by the elevator. And on that level you have to meet the requirements 3 to 7 and then on that level you also have to have either an accessible bathroom or can you substitute an accessible powder room for that. >> JACQUIE: Okay. Now of course that we're getting towards the end we're having tons of questions pour in. So we'll see how many we can get to. My landlord doesn't have the money to fix the place for me. My house was built in 1939. So that's the entire thing. It doesn't really ask a question, but I'm assuming -- it sounds as if it's a house, and of course -- so I'll let you speak to that. It just say the house was built -- >> BARBARA: If they are asking what their rights are under the federal Fair Housing Act, they have the right to ask for a reasonable modification. And the costs are to be assumed by the person making the request. What I would encourage this person to do is get in touch with near local interested living center, again, because some local municipalities, some states actually do have home modification programs that could assist them. So I think the best bet for this person again is to call their independent living center and find out if they can identify for them local resources. >> JACQUIE: Right. Because actually we've got a lot of these questions are simply I can't afford to get the work done. You know, so -- >> BARBARA: That is a major, major problem. And I don't ever want to under estimate the importance of that. 38 The other thing people should do is also check their state's fair housing laws. In some states they actually reverse the cost assumption based on some specifications. So, for instance, here in Massachusetts, if there are ten or more contiguous units or if the development receives direct government funding, then the property owner has to assume the cost. There are other states that, you know, depending on the number of units, it may be the property owner who assumes it. Your best bet is to look up who does your fair housing -- your state fair housing compliance work. Again, easily found in your community service pages of the telephone book or if you go on your state government website. Oftentimes you can find out who is the state entity that handles the discrimination and they can tell you what the reasonable modification responsibilities in terms of costs are. Some cities and towns have like fair housing commissions or disability commissions. Check with them as well because they may know that sometimes the local ordinances offer greater flexibility than the federal law does on reasonable modifications. >> JACQUIE: Okay, this is a comment by some bun and you just might want to comment on this comment because there is really no question. It says visitability is by its premise and nature a patronizing concept and is in fact discriminatory. As a person with a long term disability, I resent it. Moreover, as long as any proposed ordinance maintains a 36-inch minimum width for hallways, it doesn't provide an adequate turning radius because a minimum of 44-inches must be required. >> BARBARA: I agree with the specification comment. I really do. I 39 think the issue is that visitability is -- out of the three, is probably the lowest standard. I'm not sure what part of it that is upsetting the caller more. I agree that a 48-inch internal route makes a lot more sense. I understand the issue about that it might be condescending. You know, part of it is again the big question -- how do you create a living environment that can be inclusive of all people? Visitability is one attempt to do that. Universal design is another. I'm not sure that we have the ultimate answer, and I know the advocates for both visitability and universal design are all very open to looking at these concepts and to changing them. I've been in the field for awhile and I have noticed how things have evolved, and I think they evolve to comments like this individual has about this doesn't exactly meet what I need. And it needs to be rethought, so I would encourage this person to get in touch with, for instance, concrete change and talk about what their concerns are. >> JACQUIE: Someone -- the state director of the Montana home choice coalition, Michael O'Neal, sent us a link to a place called tool-based services, and they keep an updated list of accessible products for home construction that is searchable by room and product type. So if people want to look that up, it's toolbase.org and you can navigate from there to get to that list of accessible products which actually looks -- >> BARBARA: Yeah, there is another service that people should be aware of is that most states do have the assistive technology projects which do look at accessible projects. They tend to be -- I'm sorry, accessible products. They tend to be more high end kinds of things at times, but they 40 are definitely worth looking at. And again you can find those generally on your state website. Oftentimes your state rehab -- vocational rehab commission will know who is the administrator of those programs. >> JACQUIE: That's a good idea. Okay, well right now that's all the questions that we have. We had a lot that really were all going to get the same answer of questions about how can I afford to make the changes that I want to make. And you answered that and it would have been the answer for a lot of those that came in all at once there. So is there anything else that you want to add before we close it out? >> BARBARA: No, I think the questions have really covered the landscape on what we needed to do on there. On' PowerPoint presentation, the last slide is actually my contact information. So people can E-mail me questions if they have them or any of the other organizations that are listed on that resource page would be good to contact. So again for those who we didn't get to their questions and they still want to go a little bit deeper, they are more than welcome to E-mail me. >> JACQUIE: Okay, great. And we had a couple of people say that they couldn't see the slides advancing, so for those people just remember you do have the PowerPoint at the same page where you linked to join the webcast. There is an abstract and there is a bio of Barbara and then her PowerPoint is there so you can go back and get that. And someone else also wrote that they were hoping to get a copy of the narrative. And we will have the transcript of today's webcast available. So they can get that. Do remember that we have those archives available. So you can share 41 today's presentation with your colleagues and they will be available in the archived webcast tomorrow at ilru.org. And please, if you're listening, don't forget to complete the evaluation on the webcast page. We're really interested in receiving the feedback. I want to thank Barbara so much. She is one of the easiest persons to do these webcasts because she has so much knowledge in this area. I want to thank the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, NIDRR, our sponsor for today. We hope you'll join us on our next webcast on September 10th, Access to Medical Facilities with Mark Derry. The opinions and views expressed today are those of the presenter and no endorsement of the sponsoring agency should be inferred. And finally, this webcast would not be possible without the efforts of our webcast team, Rob Dickehuth, for his technical expertise and our wonderful captioner today, Marie Bryant. Thanks again so much Barbara. Thanks everybody for joining us and have a dazzling day. Bye-bye.