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An international effort to make all homes Visitable!
info@concretechange.org 600 Dancing Fox Road Decatur GA 30032 USA
Visitability Defined 2003
Visitability is a movement to change home construction
practices so that virtually all new homes--not merely those custom-built for
occupants who currently have disabilities--offer a few specific
features that make the home easier for people who develop mobility impairments
to live in and visit. Several people
have asked for a more detailed definition, noting that the list of required
features has not been identical in all Visitability legislation, handouts and
other materials, and in some voluntary programs.
While the concept of
Visitability is very simple, the definition has several interactive layers: spirit, features, scope, and moment in
history.
First, the spirit of Visitability is as important as the list of features. That spirit says, it's not just unwise, but unacceptable that new homes continue to be built with gross barriers--- unacceptable, given the how easy it is to build basic access in the great majority of new homes, and given the harsh effects major barriers have on so many people's lives. These easily-avoided barriers cause daily drudgery; unsafe living conditions; social isolation, and forced institutionalization. The appropriate ways to further basic access include, all actions short of violence-- disseminating information; working to pass legislation; incentives (so long as they are moderate and don’t undermine a tax base, impede general affordable housing, or undermine other Visitability efforts); voluntary efforts (so long as they are not programs producing few houses and at the same time forestalling legislation); street theater; advertising campaigns; civil disobedience; and others.
Second, the features list must be partly rigid
and partly flexible. The inflexible features are:
·
Wide passage doors
·
At least a half bath/powder room on the main floor
·
At least one zero-step entrance
No arguments are accepted that "We'll build the house so a ramp could be added later."
At least a half bath on the main floor now belongs as a
non-negotiable feature, but it did not
when the first Visitability legislation was passed in Atlanta in 1992. At that early time in the movement's history, and in the absence of precedents, passing a bill
with a zero-step
and door width requirements in private,
single-family houses was just barely possible even without
the bathroom requirement. Advocates
balanced the obvious
need for a main floor bathroom with the law of averages that nearly
all new
dwellings already include that feature.
Several additional features sometimes are included in Visitability initiatives (for example, reinforcement in bathroom walls and accessible placement of electrical controls.) If very low cost, they are good and appropriate. However, these additions must be flexible according to circumstance because they are so much less essential for survival than the three basic features, and each added feature elicits a set of objections and/or misconceptions to be addressed. If the strategy chosen involves enforceable legislation—which is the means by which the great majority of Visitable homes have been created to date-- the list of prioritized features must be short. Otherwise, passing a Visitability law is currently impossible. In voluntary efforts, more features can be included. For instance, the Georgia EasyLiving Home© voluntary certification program for private, open-market houses requires, besides the basics, also a full bathroom with designated maneuvering space and a bedroom on the main floor.
If people add to their own definition of Visitability advanced features such as a five-foot turning diameter in bathrooms, parking space requirements, a roll-in shower and so on, they are going beyond the scope of what is currently possible for rapid, broad application of Visitability, and we hope they will not use the term Visitability for their initiatives. We are not averse to pushing for those advanced features per se, to the extent that they do not pose a credible threat to general housing affordability. Rather, we are against using the term Visitability for additional features because that works against the reason the Visitability movement has had some success--its extreme simplicity of content, rigorous prioritization, and insistence on application not just cogitation, speculative homes not special homes.
The scope of the dwellings covered and the time in history of a Visitability initiative, whether voluntary or legislative, are also relevant to defining the flexible, evolving Visitability movement. For instance, a legislative effort that required some access in even a small percent of private, single-family houses pushed the borders far in the 1992 Atlanta ordinance, whereas the 2000 Pima County AZ and the 2003 Bolingbrook IL ordinances expanded the borders in a major new way by covering ALL new houses, not just those with some sort of public perk. The Pima County ordinance requires only 2’8’’ doors, i.e., 30 inches of clear passage space, which is 2 inches less than required by other successful legislation. That was a necessary, intelligent compromise, in our view, since 30 inches is quite helpful (although not nearly as helpful as 32) and the Pima County law covers all houses-- a major, unique leap forward in 2000. That law was extremely hard for Arizona advocates to accomplish, barely passed in a 5 to 4 vote, and was sued twice, once on a national level that failed, and again in a local-level appeal, which also failed. Therefore the law stands, and has produced many thousands of Visitable homes. (The two lawsuits were generated and/or assisted by politically powerful housing industry organizations, specifically NAHB and the local Pima County Home Builders Association.)
The above history touches on the flexible part of
scope as it affects features. However, a fixed part of
acceptable (legislative) scope is that a legitimate law must contain an
enforcement mechanism. We find
problematic a document called a law but lacking an enforcement mechanism, so
that in practice it is voluntary, not a law. We are very much in
favor of voluntary initiatives, recommendations, and education campaigns as
long as they are not called laws.
When packaged in law-type formats, they tend to undermine other efforts to pass
enforceable legislation.
On a smaller scale, any action as small as one person giving a Visitability handout to a builder, or advocating Visitability to a friend buying a new house, is a valuable part of the movement. The actions, large and small, of many thousands of participants are gradually reshaping how homes are built.
Eleanor
Smith
For
the Disability Rights Action Coalition for Housing (DRACH)
November, 2003
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