Sunday, May 13, 2012

Adventures in Home Seeking

Yesterday Oscar and I visited an apartment complex which is one of the few to state on their website that they have accessible apartments.
(We later learned more complexes have units, we just need to call around.) Back to our visit yesterday, we met with a lovely and charming employee and were let into a pleasant space with plenty of wheelchair room (provided we can remove the accordion-pleat closet doors that are a pain to maneuver in a chair).  In fact all the employees we encountered were pleasant, helpful and caring.
The ground floor apartment even had a lovely window vista of a corner of the property with only trees and grass within view, behind the patio.
Of course the door leading to the patio had a deep sill, impossible to roll any wheels over. Then there was the wall-to-wall deep pile plushy carpet, also a pretty big barrier to try and wheel around through. (sort of like hiking through thigh-high grass). The final nail in the coffin was the discovery that the building providing the only access to the much-touted heated swimming pool, 24-hour fitness center and 'community' room with big fireplace, wifi and comfy seating was totally inaccessible to wheels. No ramps, high door sills, 2-foot wide path edging around a pop machine to reach the 24-hour door (bordered by a 4 inch drop into soft ground). Yeah. We'll keep looking. We will be sure to communicate with the management that the reason we won't be gracing their establishment is their lack of ADA compliance in the public areas (and the plush carpeting in the accessible apartments. Can you say "Duh!"?.

2 comments:

Don Meyer said...

Not ADA compliant? Stupid! Ridiculous!
Frankly, I'd be furious if I really wanted the apartment.

In the meantime, I do pray that you will find EXACTLY what you want and need. That wasn't it.

AlisonH said...

Silly people. Don't they know that if they want to think it's accessible they should check it out in a chair, just to be sure?

Good luck and I hope you end up with one that will be actually perfect, rather than just described as such.