agz win said:

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38 years in business and draws a line in the sand and won't build a simple ramp for handicap access. Wife and kids must be so proud.

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You mean the landlord, not the business owner.

agz win said:

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38 years in business and draws a line in the sand and won't build a simple ramp for handicap access. Wife and kids must be so proud.

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The article says the landlord said it would cost too much. Notice how we didn't get the landlord's side of the story in the article. We get a sob story about the person that couldn't eat at the restaurant and the owner of the business saying the landlord wouldn't accommodate.

We never get the side explaining how onerous it can be to comply with these ridiculous standards. People like you lap it up without thinking.

Who here ridiculed the handicapped? Appears you are reading something that's not there.

You think the fix here was only a couple of hundred bucks?

I mean, this is the Bay Area of California. Getting a permit there probably several thousand. Contractor also, and they probably require a green architect and certain number of transgenders on the crew!

LOL 3 pages in no one can cite what posts are in poor taste?

Had to redo a ramp for a recent project. The change order was around 6k for the galvanized railing and another 6-7k for the concrete and form work. This happened during the project. If it was just the ramp with permit, various city/ada inspections, and contractor overhead probably a lot more. Yeah….a few hundred bucks.

Also, this was just an 18" off set. Costs really go up if the ramp has to be longer. Really wish the article had more detail on what was involved.

BrazosDog02 said:

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shack009 said:

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agz win said:

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38 years in business and draws a line in the sand and won't build a simple ramp for handicap access. Wife and kids must be so proud.

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The article says the landlord said it would cost too much. Notice how we didn't get the landlord's side of the story in the article. We get a sob story about the person that couldn't eat at the restaurant and the owner of the business saying the landlord wouldn't accommodate.

We never get the side explaining how onerous it can be to comply with these ridiculous standards. People like you lap it up without thinking.

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Because the other side helped make this a reality.

We killed a business over a few hundred dollars of lumber. Hahaha….i can't imagine what the books look like for someone to just roll over on a lawsuit instead of dining a high school kid on Nextdoor to build a fuggin ramp so some handicapped dude can roll up it every 3 years.

Not a better way to get rid of an underpaying tenant than fixing them into bankruptcy with a ADA suit. Lol.

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Based on your first and last sentences, I'm not sure you have any idea what is happening here. Based on your middle paragraph, I don't think you have any idea what is happening at all anywhere.

FL_Ag1998 said:

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annie88 said:

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Wow, I'm kind of disgusted by some of the comments on here, and it tells me that most of you have never had to deal with any kind of serious restriction in your lives.

Do better.

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This x100000000. When my dad was going through the cancer that ultimately killed him the chemo left him so weak it took all his strength just to walk from the handicap parking spot right next to the doctor's office door into the lobby. It gave me a new perspective on how crucial handicap access is.

Most of the comments above are just pathetic.

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Would he have sued a restaurant for having a bathroom stall that is 46.5 inches wide instead of 48? Because that is the racket we are complaining about here. The money grubbing lawyers and power hungry buerocrats that turned a great idea into a parasitic monstrosity.

I blame chevron deference for the giant leech that the Ada has become.

GeorgiAg said:

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Ryan the Temp said:

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If you want to see an example of how ridiculous this stuff can get, Vancouver, BC has banned round doorknobs. This includes residential structures. Only lever style door knobs are permitted.

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There is zero advantage to a round doorknob and it costs the same as a lever doorknob. In a fire, it can be the difference between life or death for a disabled person. I don't get the indignation.

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Only a Dem voter would be okay with the government telling you what kind of doorknobs you can have in your home.

whatthehey78 said:

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annie88 said:

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Wow, I'm kind of disgusted by some of the comments on here, and it tells me that most of you have never had to deal with any kind of serious restriction in your lives.

Do better.

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Two members of my family are permanently wheelchair bound. Shame on all posters herein who have ridiculed the handicapped!! I'm sure your parents are proud.

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Who ridiculed the handicapped???

My dad suffered with and died of ALS. I can't find anything on this thread to be even remotely upset about. It's almost like some you are seeing different posts than I am.

A real world example of the 'hidden' costs of ADA compliance.

I have done the site design for several apartment complexes in the past. Here are some rough numbers and constraint parameters. Assume we have a 5 Acre site or 5 AC @ 43560 SF/AC = 217800 SF. 1 VF of depth means 217800 SF @ 1 VF @ 1 CY/27 CF or 8067 CY. Using recent CoSA unit pricing of something in the range of $30/CY excavation (Cut) and $50/CY embankment (Fill) you can put a price guess of how much pushing dirt around costs.

Let's say the site has an ~8% natural grade from the existing street either sloping up or sloping down. If the depth of the site (distance from street ROW to the rear boundary) is 500', then the elevation difference is 40 VF. Using the above 5 Acres to start with we are talking a rectangle area of 500' x 435' or so.

ADA requires an 'accessible route' (AR) from the street ROW to each unit in the apartment complex. Max slope of the AR is 5% and must be minimum of 5' wide with no more than a 2% cross slope. These are the striped cross walks you see in parking lots for example. Just to be simple, the vertical difference between 500 LF of 8% slope and 500 LF of 5% slope is 15 VF. If you assume a triangular cross section from front to back for a fill situation, 0.5 x 500 x 15 = 3750 SF. For the 435 LF width of the site you have 3750 SF @ 435 LF = 1631250 CF or 60417 CY. If this is a fill situation then for $50/CY you are talking about ~$3M for embankment, or just the cost to reduce the overall site slope to an acceptable grade via mass grading before you start putting foundations on the ground.

Let's say each unit is a 3 story version with 8 each 1250 SF units per floor or a slab area of 10000 SF per unit. Counting driveways, parking, office, etc., assume we can fit 10 units on this site. If each unit has 24 apartments you have a total of 10 units @ 24 apartments/unit or 240 units for the complex.

$3M divided by 240 units is $1250/unit. This means every apartment required this much cost just to push dirt around to make the site ADA feasible.

The above is very simplistic, obviously. A real site design is MUCH more complicated/involved. The real world is not always nice and flat, with no trees to work around/save or variances in the existing ground slope, rocks, etc. Foundations for large single level slabs on slopes can get costly. Lots of steps and ADA ramps, sometimes. Standard ADA ramp can only be max length of 30' (Run) with max slope of 8.33% (1:12), with a flat landing on each end, with railing around it.

You would think that it would make common sense to have 1 or 2 units, closest to the street, with an ADA route to the bottom floor apartments, thinking this would suffice for possible renters with this requirement. NOPE, regs state that EVERY UNIT has to be compliant. This is where the 'hidden' costs of ADA ripples through a project. People pay for all of this, even when they have no idea of it. Lots of cost gets built into a project like this just to account for the slight chance that EACH ONE of the 80 ground floor apartments of this theoretical complex would have an ADA tenant someday. Common sense tells you that a third of the complex population will not be ADA but the Owner had to pay for it up front.

I throw this all out as an example of how well intended government requlations/requirements get warped into bad implementations. The wheelchair toilet rails in the female restroom in a strip joint deal. As I said initially, I had a late BIL with ALS who was wheelchair bound for 4 years and I understand how tough mobility can be for a person/family in that situation. The Federal one size fits all mentality is often clumsy and counterproductive for all parties concerned. The entire ADA deal needs a serious common sense overhaul, and is best left to the lowest level of government, i.e., municipalities, for oversight.

GeorgiAg said:

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I've defended a dozen of these cases and have two currently. These lawyers have a disabled person or two on the payroll and send them around to businesses to be "inconvenienced." The same lawyer and plaintiff have hit every liquor store in town.

If you fight these cases you lose. This lawyer is pretty decent. He will give you years to comply and won't make you do ridiculous things.

I have a great ADA expert and the lawyer would take anything he said as gospel. It's a scam but it gets things done and doesn't cost taxpayers anything.

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What an odd post. "It's a scam, but it gets things done" is quite the sentence.

That lawyer is not decent if he has somebody he is sending around to every place in town so that he can sue them.

It doesn't cost taxpayers anything? You doing your defending for free, counselor?

shack009 said:

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GeorgiAg said:

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I've defended a dozen of these cases and have two currently. These lawyers have a disabled person or two on the payroll and send them around to businesses to be "inconvenienced." The same lawyer and plaintiff have hit every liquor store in town.

If you fight these cases you lose. This lawyer is pretty decent. He will give you years to comply and won't make you do ridiculous things.

I have a great ADA expert and the lawyer would take anything he said as gospel. It's a scam but it gets things done and doesn't cost taxpayers anything.

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What an odd post. "It's a scam, but it gets things done" is quite the sentence.

That lawyer is not decent if he has somebody he is sending around to every place in town so that he can sue them.

It doesn't cost taxpayers anything? You doing your defending for free, counselor?

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A classic case of "it is free" when it is literally not free because it requires someone to pay a COST to comply. That cost either costs the taxpayer (business owner) and likely also the consumers (more taxpayers) in the way of higher cost of goods for the business owner to recoup costs. Or in this case the COST of not having a restaurant people enjoyed.

I am just baffled at how economically illiterate people are to think that because they don't directly experience a transaction the cost = $0 to them.

I like how he says the lawyer has a disabled person on his payroll that is creating lawsuits, but also says he is a decent person.

lawyers have definitely earned our horrible reputatio and it's amazing how many perpetuate the stereotype.

Looking at pictures of this thing a 6-8" ramp would probably have cost 10k. What? 10k you say? Well let's look at the costs:

-Designer/arch/eng to draw up the plan for city approval
-someone to oversee the permit process
-someone to oversee the city/ada inspection
-Demo of existing
-formwork and concrete (probably no railing on this thing so that's good news).

And then....that just gets you to the door. Then you'll have to get a proper door threshold. THEN once they get to the counter to order that has to be compliant. Oh hai....now i can get to their restrooms, I wonder if those bad boys check all the clearances, railing, reaches, etc.

If I'm a small business and the landlord is telling me to pound sand, yeah...I'd be out too. Guess I'm going to have to disappoint my children for not complying to ADA.

GeorgiAg said:

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texagbeliever said:

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shack009 said:

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GeorgiAg said:

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I've defended a dozen of these cases and have two currently. These lawyers have a disabled person or two on the payroll and send them around to businesses to be "inconvenienced." The same lawyer and plaintiff have hit every liquor store in town.

If you fight these cases you lose. This lawyer is pretty decent. He will give you years to comply and won't make you do ridiculous things.

I have a great ADA expert and the lawyer would take anything he said as gospel. It's a scam but it gets things done and doesn't cost taxpayers anything.

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What an odd post. "It's a scam, but it gets things done" is quite the sentence.

That lawyer is not decent if he has somebody he is sending around to every place in town so that he can sue them.

It doesn't cost taxpayers anything? You doing your defending for free, counselor?

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A classic case of "it is free" when it is literally not free because it requires someone to pay a COST to comply. That cost either costs the taxpayer (business owner) and likely also the consumers (more taxpayers) in the way of higher cost of goods for the business owner to recoup costs. Or in this case the COST of not having a restaurant people enjoyed.

I am just baffled at how economically illiterate people are to think that because they don't directly experience a transaction the cost = $0 to them.

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If you don't have ADA lawsuits then you'd have government inspectors/prosecutors on taxpayer dime. This is more efficient. I know it sucks for the business but the alternative is what? A big f you to the disabled?

I agree there are some regulations that are ridiculous. But a handicap ramp isn't one of them. I also represented a disabled lady who broke her ankle trying to exit a bathroom at a Toyota dealership because the door was set with way too forceful of a closing mechanism. What is she supposed to do? Piss herself?

She was disabled because her ex husband shot her in the back.

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Yes we should be THANKFUL that lawyers are out there looking for insignificant violations so that they can sue businesses. Gosh I am just so dumb. Thank you lawyers. Especially ambulance chasers and the ones at the ACLU.

Okay did she ask for help and the Toyota employees said No sorry only able bodied people can use it. Asking for help is not an unreasonable bar to set. It is a sad circumstance for your client but it doesn't mean Toyota should be responsible for it in any way.

whatthehey78 said:

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annie88 said:

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Wow, I'm kind of disgusted by some of the comments on here, and it tells me that most of you have never had to deal with any kind of serious restriction in your lives.

Do better.

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Two members of my family are permanently wheelchair bound. Shame on all posters herein who have ridiculed the handicapped!! I'm sure your parents are proud.

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Shame on all posters herein who have flung accusations without providing even one example.

Do better.