Urge Assembly Speaker Silver to Take Action on Visitability

Statewide Systems Advocacy Network (SSAN)
ACTION ALERT
July 19, 2010


Issue: Urge Speaker Silver to take action on Visitability.

Action: The Senate passed the Visitability bill (S.8150) on June 18th, but the Assembly left town without doing the same. In order to get it to the Assembly floor for a vote, it still has to go through the Assembly Committee on Rules.

Contact Speaker Silver, Chair of the Assembly's Committee on Rules, in his district office at 212-312-1420 or via email and urge him to take action on the Visitability bill (A.9409) immediately following the Assembly's return to Albany by bringing it to the floor for a vote.

Talking points:
• The Visitability bill (S.8150/A.9409) will ensure that people with disabilities are no longer excluded from new home construction sponsored by government funding.

• This bill will save NYS money because it is much more expensive to renovate new homes for access, after they have been already built, rather than include access features from the beginning. Everyone will benefit from those basic access features like no-step entrance and wider hallways and doorways.

• The demand for access to housing is growing drastically with baby boomer and senior population and visitability will help meet that need in a cost effective way in our local communities across the state.

Background: "Visitability" is a movement to change home construction practices so that new homes offer specific features that would make it easier for people with a mobility impairment to occupy and visit. The spirit of "Visitability" is the belief that it is unacceptable that new homes continue to be built with gross barriers, given the ease and low cost of building basic access into the majority of new homes and the harsh effects major barriers have on people's lives, including physically unsafe conditions, social isolation and unwanted institutionalization.

Visitability requires only those accessibility features needed to allow a person with a mobility impairment to comfortably visit a home, not the full range of features that make a building "accessible."

The purpose of the visitability bill, S.8150/A.9409, is to establish minimum regulations for the design and construction of new single family homes, townhouses or the ground unit of a building with three or less units. This bill only affects new homes that are built using state or federal funds and subsidies.

The bill establishes minimum standards in every home for accessibility for the mobility impaired:
o At least one no-step entrance to the home from the public street or driveway to the exterior door
o All interior doorways at least 36 inches wide
o All environmental controls on the ground level at accessible heights, between 15 " and 48" from the ground
o One accessible bathroom on the ground level