Tuesday's City Council meeting was a long and arduous day. Waiting for agenda item #10, heard after 11 a.m. was just the beginning.
I arrived at 8:15 and gathered with my ADAPT friends down in the cafeteria after signing up to speak. One thing I learned being in health care is arrive early and expect everything to take longer than you think it should. That's the only way to be prepared.
I have to give kudos to Mayor Cook on his patience and flexibility when Desert ADAPT appears, meaning there were alot of speakers signed up and he really gave us all a fair shake and a chance to speak. I DO wish, tho, that when he anticipates a showing of ADAPT or other people with disabilities or the elderly on certain agenda items that the agenda item be heard earlier. It takes a tremendous toll on some to wait hours and hours for the item to come up. I had to leave with my patient around 2:30, after we both spoke, as we both needed to eat and take care of other business.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to stay and rebut a few items that Tom Bohannon brought up, but I did so later in the comment section on the article by Newspaper Tree about the action by Desert ADAPT last Thursday at Festival and Mesa streets.
My points in that comment were these:
- How come Tom Bohannon, for 16 years, accepted the 5% rule and did nothing about it, especially if it supposedly hurt his business so much? Now when there's a real need for apartments and the demand is there, economics are at an all-time low, Mr. Bohannon wants to put the squeeze on the city to build fewer accessible apartments- even though he already would be getting tax breaks? It's like the guy selling ice or water during Hurricane Katrina for over-inflated prices! And then he threatens to take his business elsewhere?!!!
- Tom Bohannon is a businessman, right? He's in the business to make money. I think he's doing okay living up there on Cherry Hill. But instead of training his staff to tap into their pool of complexes he owns and manages for an accessible apartment for myself and my client when I was looking at his property The Pointe, which had no accessible apartments at the time I looked 5 years ago, he would rather ask the city to lower their standard for accessible apartments and take tax breaks. Sounds kinda lazy and greedy to me. He hid behind the law that says he doesn't have to do squat for transition if the building was built before 1993. My rebut was- aren't you going to eventually remodel these apartments? Can't you convert or retrofit some to be more accessible? Or at the very least, show me properties that ARE accessible? I hate it when businesses hide behind the "I don't have to, I'm not bound by law to care" excuse. You're leaving out a large part of the community when you don't remodel your bathroom to be accessible and welcoming to the disabled/elderly community, when your aisles are too full of merchandise and a wheelchair can't get through etc- that all screams "you're not important enough to me and my business"!
- My last point was a business proposal I made to Tom Bohannon. I basically said let me take over your PR and do some damage control cause what he's been doing just ain't working. I have good contacts in the disabled community, let's sort out all this disorganization and work on getting disabled and elderly into your apartments. This isn't rocket science. I am good at organizing, as a matter of fact, in my past life when I was married my husband and I had our own business and that was to look at small businesses and streamline and condense almost every aspect of that business. We re-trained sales staff, hired staff, did data entry, picked apart every expense and looked for ways to save money etc. Some jobs took a year or more, and when they got computers that was a whole other way to streamline the business and they called us back to do that.
Anyway- I offered to work with Tom Bohannon in a field that I have a vested interest in and we all would have benefitted- Tom would change his image in the disabled community as a man that cares, he'd make money, I'd have more money coming in and the disabled community would have more choices in apartments as they'd be advertised specifically for them and not given away at a discount to non-disabled. All I asked for was an apartment and a small stipend for my work. But Tom Bohannon has not bothered to answer yet. At first my proposal was in jest, tongue-in-cheek, but then I was like heck- this could work!
Anyway- council DID bring up some good points about getting a database together by Volar and the Apartment Association- shoulda been done years ago!
Representative Acosta brought up a good point, too, that many people may be disabled and may not feel comfortable to speak up about their disability and that many disabilities are not seen on the outside, such as heart patients, people with arthritis etc. And there was alot of confusion about how to legally place the disabled and elderly in accessible apartments that are intended for their use without stepping on toes and outright asking if they are disabled or the nature of the disability.
To me, that's a no-brainer. You don't have to ask someone what their ailments are (or aren't)- you can find out their needs by offering the amenities you have. If you are talking to a prospective client looking for an apartment and they have a cane you can offer that you have apartments that have walk-in or roll-in showers- these are amenities that should be celebrated, not shyed away from, and then you can go on and say "or would you prefer having a tub to soak in? We all love baths blah blah blah". TALK to the people, find out about them, show an interest. Yes, there's always going to be someone that might be offended, no one likes the stigma that as we age our needs may change and we are looked at as frail etc, but the majority of us aren't in Ironman competitions in our 40s, 50s, 60s etc ok? Let's be real. This is just one example of ways to try and meet the needs of the disabled/elderly- every case will be different. And all you can do is your best. Maybe a heart patient that looks fit, no cane, doesn't let you know an accessible apartment would be easier on them, for example. You don't want to question every person to find out if they may need an accessible apartment, and actually what I've seen for the most part is that the disabled/elderly community that has started or is in touch with the reality of their needs will be more than forthcoming with their requirements.
The six month hold on this agenda item to get organized and compile the database of accessible apartments is a good start but I don't believe we will truly see the need vs # of units available until guidelines are set and implemented on the advertising end of this issue. And that may take another 6 months or more to gather and decipher information found from that. I also suggest that the apartments do a survey of their tenants in accessible units and ask if they are meeting their needs or if they are even using those amenities. I'm sure that won't go over too good with some tenants that are taking advantage of accessible units at a discount, but you know what? I'd rather piss off that kind of tenant than deny a disabled person an accessible unit because JoeBlow Idontcare wants to save a few bucks.
Just my opinion.
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