For practically twenty years, I’ve navigated the housing market from a wheelchair, and the truth is bleak. Through the 15 years I used to be a renter, I by no means discovered a single accessible condominium in a constructing with fewer than six tales. This isn’t a coincidence; it’s a design failure dictated by Washington state’s outdated codes.
Present constructing codes mandate elevators that exceed dimension and value constraints for many small-scale buildings. You may suppose that our guidelines about elevators would assist wheelchair customers, however they’ll inadvertently obtain the alternative: overkill in elevator code kills elevators. Small-scale homebuilders can’t make big elevators work, so that they go for no elevator in any respect. And, fewer elevators means fewer accessible properties for somebody like me.
State legislators have taken daring motion in recent times to increase “center housing,” opening doorways to inexpensive properties in small-scale multifamily buildings (2023’s House Bill 1110). In Seattle, the place I dwell, we lately handed zoning adjustments to make stacked flats viable, a type of constructing design that holds monumental potential for wheelchair-friendly, single-story flooring plans. It is a win that I and different incapacity advocates fought for. However there’s a catch: With out elevators, these buildings can solely provide accessible properties on the bottom flooring. We want a lot extra for Washington’s seniors, mother and father with disabilities, households with kids who’ve disabilities, cost-burdened disabled renters and others navigating unsafe housing conditions with restricted mobility.
The mathematics of accessibility is already stacked towards us. Once I was apartment-hunting, the one elevator-accessible selections have been big condominium complexes or high-rises — choices that got here with excessive rents. That’s a deal-breaker when you think about that individuals with disabilities are twice as more likely to dwell in poverty. However each revenue bracket has a stake: 19% of U.S. households have a member with a mobility incapacity, but nationwide, lower than 5% of housing is accessible and fewer than 1% of that’s wheelchair-accessible.
And Washington’s inhabitants is growing older. With the variety of state residents 65 and older practically doubling from 1.25 million in 2020 to over 2.28 million by 2050, our want for accessible housing choices turns into much more urgent.
I can report excellent news on that entrance: State legislators maintain the keys to unlock extra elevators and accessible properties in Washington, with a invoice that might modernize the code to make elevators extra possible for smaller buildings and smaller homebuilders. Senate Bill 5156 would enable smaller, cost-effective elevators in buildings as much as six tales and 24 models. This modification opens the door for elevators that deplete much less area in a constructing, value much less and nonetheless accommodate a wheelchair, aligning the state’s elevator dimension guidelines with federal Individuals with Disabilities Act requirements.
The upshot: We’d get extra elevators. Extra accessible properties. Washington communities would proceed to paved the way on center housing, with out leaving folks with disabilities and our households behind.
