A No-Step Entrance

A "Good" bathroom*

A reasonable path of travel to common area

(*Good, in this context, means one that will allow a person with a walker or a wheelchair to get in and close the door.)

There are many groups across North America and the world now working to include these simple features in as many homes as possible. Increasing numbers of communities are passing ordinances requiring visitability. The town of Bolingbroke, Illinois passed a landmark ordinance in 2003 and over 4,000 homes have been built there with these features.

The focus of this site is not regulatory, but to provide practical tools for implementing visitable features, to provide home buyers, developers, contractors and advocates with some methods and details, and to promote understanding of the many reasons why including them in as many homes as possible is not only a physical but a social good, with positive results for virtually everyone.

If you are not interested in the arguments for and against visitable homes and want to get right to the design and construction section, click here:

Viewpoints

A certain amount of controversy is attached to visitability, and flare-ups are not unknown. Underlying the differences of opinion is the fact that what is being sought is a revolution in housing, and like any revolution, there are a number of factions both pro and counter. We cheerfully present a few of these outlooks.

Eleanor Smith founded Concrete Change in Atlanta Georgia. She is the pioneer. The read her story, go to her site: www.concretechange.org. Eleanor is a lifelong wheelchair user, and began the movement as a solution to people with disabilities being unable to visit the homes of friends and family. As a movement advocating for people with disabilities, a lot of the issues of superior design and safety have been obscured by emotional appeal and rhetoric from various factions, such as advocacy groups and builder??s associations, all claiming to speak for all members of their groups. As usual, the picture is really much more complicated, and more interesting. The extremes might be phrased thus:
1) All Contractors Are Corner-Cutting Crooks Trying To Take Advantage Of People With Disabilities
2) All People With Disabilities Are Trying To Get Stuff For Free From People Who Are Trying To Run A Business.
Hint: These are both bad attitudes.

The focus of Visitability In PA since 1995 has been cooperation between builders and the disability community. We encourage advocates to learn more about construction and business realities, and we try to highlight to contractors and developers the very real need for better designed housing as the population ages and the costs that society bears for people displaced by inaccessible dwellings mounts.

Although we heartily agree that it is important for people of all ages and capacities to be able to visit, the safety net for the homeowners in the event of a temporary or permanent difficulty is also of great importance. People with broken limbs, who have had a stroke or heart problems, who are ill and cannot move by themselves can be cared for or can care for themselves better with these features. No step, wider halls, accessible bathrooms are beneficial to movers, shoppers, mothers carrying or pushing children and have no appreciable downside. The tradition of steps in many parts of the country requires that design and construction details be addressed. In most cases a no-step entry can be accomplished without great difficulty or expense.

Some advocates feel that the requirements for a visitable home are not stringent enough, and would like to see a ground floor bedroom and a fully accessible bathroom as requirements. Because of the perceived need for a 5' turning radius in a fully accessible bathroom, we have avoided this criteria, as it has been demonstrated that requiring it would reduce the number of homes in urban renewal projects that would qualify for the visitable status, which, thanks to the initiative by the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, involves financial incentives that are important to these endeavors for Pennsylvania builders and buyers.