The pursuit of accessible spaces: Sandy Redmon Interview

Ever wondered how someone with a disability navigates the world of accessible home ownership? All successful disabled individuals can find their success from hard work and the Americans with Disability Act of 1990.

Join us as we chat with Sandy, a quadriplegic woman, who shares her journey from adapting her childhood home to her college dorm experience and the pursuit of accessible living spaces. Listen and learn how Sandy faced the challenges of modifying a house or a condo for accessibility and how she managed to create a safe and comfortable living space for herself.

Throughout the episode, we discuss the importance of not only considering the law but also individual needs when it comes to home accessibility. Sandy shares her experiences in modifying her living spaces, from adding plugs and door pulls to working with realtors and buyers to ensure her homes are accessible for future owners. Discover the differences between modifying a house vs a condo, and how accessibility features can be attractive to those looking to age in place.

Finally, we explore the valuable tips and tricks Sandy has learned on her journey to accessible home ownership. From being open to creative solutions to recognizing the importance of sharing collective experiences, we uncover the keys to making any living space comfortable and safe for individuals with disabilities. Don't miss this enlightening conversation with Sandy, as it provides valuable insights for anyone navigating the world of accessible living.

Transcript click here.

Horizontal Houses, host of Accessibility Is Home,  is proud to support the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 33rd Anniversary. On July 26th we celebrate this important civil rights law that works to ensure all people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else. Celebrate with us by visiting: adaanniversary.org #ADA33 #ThanksToTheADA #disability #housing #FairHousingAct #wheelchair #quadriplegic #realestate #realestatetips #inclusion #accessibilityishome 

Cush Pocket, a proud sponsor, is a disabled owned company that sells wheelchair bags. Get $1 off by using code Angela Fox 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to AI Home Podcast, the first podcast for real estate resources and independent living strategies for the disability community. Why? Because accessibility is home. Hi, i'm Angela Fox, blogger, author and your host. Now let's begin. Alright, thank you so much, sandy, for joining us today, and I'm very excited to have you on board. who have reached out to me when I put on a little Facebook post to say, hey, women of the World, who owns an accessible home? and you are kind enough to respond. I would love for you to introduce yourself to the audience and we can kind of discuss what accessibility you've done. I know it's been more than one house, so we can go into that, but do you want to introduce yourself?

Speaker 2: 0:50

Absolutely Pleasure to be here. I've been looking forward to meeting with you. This is Sandy and I'm a quadriplegic, and so I've had a long history for the last few years of figuring it out on how to kind of analyze my landscape and my life as a wheelchair user. I've had lots of ups and downs, like most people, and challenges to figure out and learned a lot of lessons along the way. so I'm happy to share about my experience with accessible homes and some not so accessible homes.

Speaker 1: 1:23

You and I kind of talked earlier greatly about all the variations. So I was born with disabilities so I've always been in a wheelchair. I know you said you came to say you were very young as well and you briefly talked about childhood homes. So do you want to kind of get into that and what you learned about the inaccessible part of it?

Speaker 2: 1:44

Absolutely Yeah. I was injured when I was 18, and when that happened and I was coming home from the hospital, i went back to my parents' house and it was not built to be accessible. I had a room on the second floor and my parents and I was somehow from the community.

Speaker 2: 2:03

I tried to do what we could to accommodate the house for my new needs And, fellow creative, we took the dining room space and put up a wall where I had been open between the dining room and the living room, added a door between the dining room and the kitchen to give me a little privacy. We had a half bath on the main floor that we bumped out into the garage, but a roll-on shower there.

Speaker 2: 2:31

Luckily, the garage was only about a step up or so so we put a ramp inside the garage that allowed me to enter and exit. Just tried to do as much as we could in this space, knowing that this was going to be a temporary space for me. I was embarking on my adult life at this point, Yeah.

Speaker 1: 2:49

And you went on to the school in. And how was that accessibility with that?

Speaker 2: 2:54

I did So from a living perspective. I went to USC in Columbia, south Carolina, for my undergraduate degree and it was. They actually did a really nice job. They had a lot of things that were accessible Probably not perfect, but they had modified some dorm rooms And so I had a nice space where I actually did have a roll-on shower, which I know might be the case for a lot of people. So I really felt pretty grateful for the opportunities that we had there.

Speaker 1: 3:24

So you went to college, you started your career, and then what was the healthy situation after that?

Speaker 2: 3:33

Absolutely So. when I finished school and I started looking for a job, and even actually while I was in school, eventually I transitioned over into an apartment which was a little bit less accessible. But when I graduated, i moved into an apartment where I was renting and it was supposed to be accessible. They said, yeah, this is good to go. In fact it even had a rolling shower. But I will tell you that I couldn't actually get into the rolling shower because it was around a tight corner. Hair would not fit around the corner. It was the best laid plans kind of thing. I had to get creative there with home periodically for a real, true shower, but otherwise a lot of creative bathing is a lot of us do.

Speaker 1: 4:19

Yeah, yeah, and I'm a big proponent. I think a lot of people don't realize that. They often ask why I focus on disability home ownership, because apartment living is a lot more sustainable as well as initially, but that's simply because there's a lot that the law does not require. There's very specific things in the Fair Housing Act and they literally call them barrier-free accommodations, which I don't know. Barrier-free is pre-and outdated and you have to pay for that. I think that's beyond that. You have to pay for it, and so I know when you and I talked, i talked about my wonderful experience with my first apartment, going to law school and how it's.

Speaker 1: 5:01

A bathroom was accessible, but what about the kitchen? Anything that was lower countertops, things that were kind of granted, that kind of was like a wall oven. Everybody likes a wall oven happens to be accessible for wheelchair users. Even 10, 15 years ago, when I had my first apartment, it was not accessible, and being creative was definitely something that I had to experience for my own apartment, but you and I kind of can about that, but just seeing what decade it is is still the same issue.

Speaker 2: 5:30

Yes, yeah, and when you're living in those circumstances.

Speaker 2: 5:34

Pretty shortly you start to look for hey, how can I improve on this? You know what are my next steps. What can I do to make this better? Because I don't want to live the rest of my life like that, where I can maybe not get into the laundry room. I had a galley kitchen in my first apartment. I couldn't turn around, so if I wanted to use the right side of the kitchen I had to go in forward, i had to back out and then back into it to use the other side of the kitchen.

Speaker 1: 5:55

Yeah yeah. So you step back. It's just got to be a better way. I bought up the whole economic. If you're going to have to pay for my vacations for an apartment, in my view, why not put it into a home? But how did you make that decision? Because I know you start to look into an accessible home correct.

Speaker 2: 6:14

I did, and I started looking at all kinds of different things. I realized that if I really wanted a space that I was going to be comfortable in, it's going to need to buy something, and then either buy something and modify it or build something. So I looked at a lot of existing homes. When you start to get into particularly a lot of the older homes, you have to deal with a lot of things that are not as universally friendly a lot of long hallways and very small doorways and some of the spaces 28 inches.

Speaker 1: 6:50

Yes, yes.

Speaker 2: 6:52

So you start to think, okay, this is probably not feasible. So I looked at some newer homes where I started looking at floor plans that had fewer hallway and trying to put some of those things into my criteria, looking for things that I said they were like open design or started to look at. We had a number in the area I was living. We had a number of communities that were being built up at the time. We had those predetermined plans. I was like you can pick from these five floor plans, okay. So I started to explore that.

Speaker 2: 7:28

I thought this would be great because I can build it and make the modifications while it's being built, and so it seemed fabulous at the time. And there's a butt coming right now, right. But so the butt was that with these predetermined plans where they're doing like large scale manufacturing, they're very rigid on what they will do to change that designated plan. If I asked them to do something as simple as widen a doorway and install an appropriate sized door, they'd say, oh, it's going to be an extra And it was quite an uptick in the cost. Okay, it quickly escalated, which made me feel like it was a lot less feasible. I wanted a comfortable space where I could actually use the kitchen and I could use the bathroom, the laundry room and so forth. The number of changes that I wanted to make or felt like I would need to make to be comfortable, just made it impractical for my needs. Okay, okay.

Speaker 1: 8:30

So basically, another way to think of it is like you could buy the basic plan, but if you want the pro plan, which is more applications, then how you're talking a much heftier price 100% Yeah, and they just weren't very open to the idea I felt like they were.

Speaker 2: 8:50

They were like this is our box, this is what we do really well. Yeah, we do not want to be outside of that box.

Speaker 1: 8:56

Yeah, it's almost like a liability concern to them. Yeah, yeah, and it's really unfortunate because I do a lot of research and there's actually research that says that for a wider doorway, if you include it in the construction, it's literally just a few dollars extra. Yes, yeah, literally just a few dollars extra for the door and a few dollars extra for the additional buy wall and framing. It's just that their own, very absolutely.

Speaker 2: 9:29

Absolutely. It's almost like it was scary to them to think about oh I don't know what that means for me. I don't know that means for my organization.

Speaker 2: 9:36

So I continued my search, i was like, okay, i looked at a lot more existing homes that just see again seemed like they needed a lot of modifications. Actually, i found a community that was custom-built community. a couple of different contractors and architects or contractors, i guess really who were working in that community spoke with them And I actually found one that seemed pretty excited about the idea. He said hey.

Speaker 2: 10:02

he said I haven't really done an accessible home before, but I'm really interested in doing this with you. So we talked a little bit about it. He was able to direct me to some designers I'm not sure the right term that had floor plans out there that might be close right, Like a lot of open plan design, different things like that we could start from I started looking at times and times of different plans to just see hey, what do I feel like has.

Speaker 2: 10:33

I wanted a little extra space in my master bedroom so I could manage, like my wheelchair and some of the other things, base for things. I wanted to make sure that I had limited hallways to navigate and pretty open kitchen and around it I was like you don't want to back it up, Back it up, right.

Speaker 2: 10:56

But in reverse, absolutely, he ended up being great to work with. He was curious, He was open to my ideas, some of the things that I didn't know. But I knew what my need was, but I didn't know know what solutions were available. I could ask him questions. I'd be like, hey, i need something that allows me to. Whatever, what are our options for? I also wanted it to be aesthetically pleasing, like I didn't want to feel like I had gone to this great effort and done this thing to create a place that I could be comfortable and feel like it was just full of things you would see in a hospital.

Speaker 1: 11:35

Yeah, And that really does. One of my biggest things is really outside of functionality. It's a form. You can match functionality and the form. Then suddenly it's not for the disabled. Suddenly it's just oh, that's just what you want to include, just like any interior design aspect actually is really what inhibits the resale value It really does. It doesn't blend in to the decor and what is typically seen in a house, and I think that's commendable. How did you and a lot of people don't do that, because it's a little extra money. If you want to make stuff look nice that's what the perception is You would think that You just dribble the cause by making it a certain point. Please imagine functional form. Do you believe that? Was that your experience? It?

Speaker 2: 12:35

was not Really interesting things. One of the of the custom build that helped that. For the custom build basically, i had a budget for different areas. I had some flexibility where I could maybe go over my budget in one area a little bit and save some money in another space. I also found that, in addition to the flexibility within where I spent the money, a lot of the products that are designed for a disability are pretty costly.

Speaker 1: 13:13

Yeah, even when they're not covered by insurance. That is the historical nature of it. It's that all is covered by insurance. I had to go through all this medical review, but most things are not.

Speaker 2: 13:25

Yeah, most things are not covered, i found is that by being creative in trying to meet the need of a product, i really didn't have to spend a lot of extra money in that space. We're talking about the doors. Earlier That was a perfect example of one where my elder said he was like you know we're going to be a little bigger, cost a little more. He goes, i'm going to use a little less drywall because there's going to be more space.

Speaker 2: 13:48

So he was very flexible and he was like it's going to be a wash, just things like that a very enjoyable process as I started to go through it. There's a lot of apprehension up front Got to do this thing, I've got to accomplish this huge goal How did you tackle that though?

Speaker 1: 14:03

So why would you earlier say was that the additional cost for things to be a sex pleasing is not necessarily that much more costly, particularly if you stay away things that are labeled for disabled, because that's just a natural uptake and sometimes some things bounce them out. Let's drywall for a bigger doorway. But how did you overcome the anxiety of all that and the planning?

Speaker 2: 14:29

I think part of it was ensuring that I spent a lot of time planning. Yeah, i really. I sat down with the floor plan and I really envisioned myself walking into each space. Okay, thinking about what I needed in that space. I thought a lot about the challenges that I had in my current environment. I've come, i researched a lot about different products that were out there and I talked to a lot of people too. It's just people that were building in that community that were not trying to do a universal design, but just some like hey, what did you? what do you wish you knew when you started building your house. Okay, you know, one of the things I heard is they said put plugs everywhere. You need more outlets than you ever were. The sweet little lady telling me that's just like everywhere, and she was very empathetic And when I thought about it I thought I probably have even more things that have to be plugged in.

Speaker 1: 15:25

Yeah, right.

Speaker 2: 15:25

I was really cautious about that. You know, i wanted door pulls for my kitchen drawers that were handles not knobs, right, because I grabbed a picked out cabinets. But then I ended up looking on like eBay and purchasing a bunch of four pulls that were the right thing that I wanted and just to put them either horizontally on the door or the door, and I got them really cheap Something that I loved, i thought was beautiful and would make my life easy. It was constantly kind of there and trying to compare that and asking questions on that. Like you mentioned, I had both the custom home and then a little bit later have modified condo. That was like you said. I guess barrier free maybe was the term So it did have a wider bedroom door and a wider door, but really otherwise wasn't accessible. I did some things here also I'm working with it currently.

Speaker 1: 16:27

I did you switch from a house to a condo.

Speaker 2: 16:35

I was moving to a different location. I did to get back to grad school. I wanted to be close to my sister. I brought me down to Charleston, south Carolina. I was just looking for something that would work in my price range and I found a place that wasn't a lot smaller than the home I had been in. I was like, oh, this is doable, it would take little modification comparatively.

Speaker 1: 16:57

Okay, okay. So you found like a condo requires less modifications than if you bought a home and had to modify it. Would that be fair to say? You were looking at homes back in the day and found like there's a lot that you had to modify.

Speaker 2: 17:16

Yeah, and I think that is so. I think it just depends, right, it happened that this condo had a very open floor plan, okay, so all the spaces were kind of out really small doorways or those things. Okay, and maybe I could have found the same thing where I've been located before the home or here at home. I didn't at the time and I did, You know you get what?

Speaker 1: 17:37

you get Depends. What's on the market? It really does. Now let me ask you how difficult was it to sell your home that was modified? Because another thing besides additional costs and just overwhelming is oh my gosh, if I do this, i will be able to resell it. Did you have challenges?

Speaker 2: 19:32

No, at first, when I put it on the market, it was the market was a little slow, so once it did started getting some views, it was pretty competitive.

Speaker 2: 19:43

I knew that the home that I built up was built to be a study-cleasing. There weren't a lot of things that would make you go oh, this is a home for somebody that uses a wheelchair. Yeah, yes, i had a roll under kitchen sink. That was really evident. Roll under stave top with a separate wall oven. Yes, that was a little bit different, but those are probably changes. That would be you're really talking about cabinetry there. If they wanted to change that, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. Also, i think we're in an age where a lot of people are looking for things where they're like hey, i would like to age in place.

Speaker 2: 20:25

Maybe I have nothing going on now, But if I find something that I feel like I can move into and stay here for the rest of my life, that's a pretty cool addition really Yeah, was there any oftentimes as negotiations right, you take the highest bid usually and there's always like maybe an inspection and then some negotiations.

Speaker 1: 20:46

Was there any request to remove some of those accessibility features when you were negotiating with the high I call the highest bidder.

Speaker 2: 20:55

Yeah, no, there actually weren't. It may have had to do something with that We did have. there were a couple of people looking at the home at the time, And so they may have felt like maybe we don't want to.

Speaker 1: 21:08

Maybe they wanted it, but it would seem like a big deal. at least right, it wasn't a hurdle.

Speaker 2: 21:13

No, and even when the relative was showing the home, we never got that feedback, for instance. But if you went into my bathroom, yes, you would see a roll under sink, right, yeah, but it was a pretty good sized space and put a stool there if you wanted for like a vanity area or something along those lines. The roll and shower was. I didn't have any handrails or anything in there, because I didn't need them. I just didn't need them. But I did put blocking in the wall. If you wanted to add it, they could easily do that, but it was. It's poured marble, i think it's what they call it. It has a slightly sloped floor, but it looked like just a nice shower.

Speaker 1: 21:55

That's great. That's great that it wasn't a barrier as far as the resell.

Speaker 2: 21:59

It is, and I think that's an important thing for people to hear and to know, because it can be scary to think about that, and I probably did have that in the back of my mind as well.

Speaker 1: 22:08

Yeah, that would make sense When you worked with Realtor. So my experience when I was looking for homes was I remember one experience where there was an accessible bathroom in that it had handbars and a lower toilet. When I showed up it wasn't there. I had to ask Realtor and they're like, oh yeah, i had advised my clients that we should remove it And I guess what was your experience? We know what the end result was, but what was your experience working with the real about that? Was there an initial Hey, we need to deal with this, or no?

Speaker 2: 22:48

No, and I don't know if I was just really fortunate. Okay, I didn't ask Cause. Why didn't ask about it? The feedback I got from the realtor when she was yeah, was the typical things you would hear right, let's declutter, make it look neutral so that anybody can envision themselves living here. Um, we did those things and then we saw what happened from any of the showings. I don't think I ever heard anything about that. But when you're working with a realtor to buy him, oftentimes that realtor is going to be vocal.

Speaker 2: 23:21

Yeah, share that feedback with you. So it turned out to be a nice process.

Speaker 1: 23:24

That's great. That's really great Cause I know we just said it, but it is really important that people realize that if you do an aesthetic, pleasing function and form, the house not only is more valuable because more people can be accessible to it, but it doesn't affect the resell value, not any more than you always will get picky people. That's why I know Cause you look into maybe buying my second home and I'm like, oh no, i don't want to deal with this. You asked me 15 years ago. I'll be like, oh, that's great.

Speaker 2: 23:55

But you also make another really good point, which is that what you know and think now isn't the same thing of what you will know and think 15 years from now. Yeah, I think you have to give yourself enough grace when you're making modifications or you're building something that at some point I'm not going to think everything here is perfect and that's okay. Right After you get the really important things done and then at some point try not to worry about the rest. And that probably goes back to the anxiety thing too.

Speaker 1: 24:27

That's excellent advice. I totally just got to focus not maybe on everything, but focus on things that are your priority and give yourself grace. I think that's fabulous. So when you were looking at condo, though, um, sometimes there's a tendency in the realtor industry that if you say condo, what you're really meeting is 55 plus communities. Did you experience any of that?

Speaker 2: 24:55

Yeah, I'll tell you, i did a lot of my looking online. First, i want to look at this, i don't know. Look at that. Yeah, my realtor did provide options for me as well. At that point in time, they knew me pretty well. I think that relationship is probably really important And I think you, you should. I would hope that everybody would be open to kind of bring Hey, i'm not really interested in maybe a community that's 55 plus. I think that we should make sure, and sometimes I saw it and also people that I know that have disabilities. One of the things I've learned is we get very accustomed to adapting to our surroundings And so we can sometimes just go Oh, i just am going to deal with whatever. But in any kind of situation where you're trying to create something, a better space for yourself, sharing that and what's important to you and being open about it and not showing away from the fact that I deserve this, you deserve that.

Speaker 2: 26:01

I'll deserve to have a comfortable space to come to and recharge our batteries and all those things. No, that's an excellent point.

Speaker 1: 26:12

I think we also have a tendency not just to deal with it but to say I know I'm making a mistake. initially was I need a wheelchair accessible home or disabled housing, and you went. what I'm hearing from you is that you did the research and you say these are the things that I'm looking that I might be interested in, and that kind of changes the narrative a little bit in that you're taking more ownership, took more ownership than I did by saying this is why I've looked into and this is what I want to go see, versus buying on a realtor, like I did, would be like what's you know what? wheelchair housing, yes, and that's exactly what.

Speaker 2: 26:52

I initially did.

Speaker 1: 26:55

I call my interview of the realtors, instead of just saying, hey, i want to go look at these, and then, kalini, maybe why? So I think that's a much better approach and also kind of goes back to what you're saying is, we should have to just deal with it. We have to accommodate the rest of the world. Will we come home? I always like to say everything should be my size.

Speaker 2: 27:21

Yes, I love that.

Speaker 1: 27:23

Yes, right. So do you have any other final like tips or strategies for either buying building, because you've done both buying a building, an accessible home.

Speaker 2: 27:36

Yeah, I don't know if I have anything additional to say. Just to reiterate to you know, make sure your voice is heard, make sure it's part of what you need. Don't hesitate to ask questions, because even if the answer is no, you'll get people's gears thinking about no, but what else could we do, or something along those lines. I like that.

Speaker 1: 27:58

No but.

Speaker 2: 28:00

I just be open to being creative If something doesn't look like exactly what you need initially.

Speaker 1: 28:32

By connecting through my Facebook page. Remember, sharing our collective experiences will allow us each to lower the kitchen sink but raise the bar for disability home ownership. Thank you.