Diane Coleman has remained a resident of York Brook Apartments in Bensenville for the past three years, largely because of what she calls the staff’s “customer orientation.”
Coleman, executive director of the Forest Park-based Progress Center for Independent Living, a self-help organization for people with disabilities, said she believes management responds to her distinctive needs as a user of a motorized wheelchair.
“There have been a couple of times I couldn’t carry a load in from my van, and they were very happy to come do that,” she recalled. “And maintenance did things in my apartment at no expense to me. They put extensions on the temperature control so I could operate it with my reacher. They took out the cabinet under the bathroom sink. They added an extra switch for the air conditioner at a height I could reach. And they took out the sliding doors of the hallway closet to widen the hallway.”
Coleman’s positive experience isn’t unique among Chicago-area renters with disabilities. For more than two decades, a number of apartment communities have been modifying units to take into account the distinctive needs of people with disabilities, according to Judith Roettig, executive vice president of the Schiller Park-based Chicagoland Apartment Association (CAA).
“The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act, which became law in 1990) has certainly sensitized developers and management,” she said. “But they’ve been sensitive to this area long before the ADA. A number of developers, as far back as the 1970s, included apartments designed for people with disabilities–apartments that were wheelchair accessible, with lower counters, wider door frames and shower stalls designed specifically for people with disabilities.”
Up until recently, however, no comprehensive service existed to point people with disabilities to units modified to their needs. That has changed with the advent of the National Accessible Apartment Clearinghouse. A development of the Alexandria, Va.-based National Apartment Association, of which the CAA is a member, the registry is the only nationally maintained database of accessible apartments.
It lists some 15,000 apartments nationwide in more than 120 metropolitan areas, and gets more than 80 inquiries weekly.
“If a person with a disability in Chicago doesn’t know where to start looking, (he or she) can contact this clearinghouse for apartment listings of units designed for people with disabilities,” Roettig noted. “It’s a total win-win. It benefits people with disabilities, but it also benefits the owners, because it’s great advertising.”
The number of the clearinghouse is 800-421-1221.
In the Chicago area, West Point Plaza in Chicago and York Brook Apartments are among a growing number of communities known for being especially accommodating to people with disabilities.
West Point Plaza, 300 S. Damen Ave., is a 21-story, 200-unit building in which 10 percent of the units include accommodations for people with disabilities, said property manager Patricia Allen-Brown.
Accommodations in the bathrooms include extra-large toilets, three grab bars over tubs and wall-mounted lever-controlled sinks. Open areas beneath kitchen and bathroom sinks allow for wheelchair access. Baseboard heating controls, lower-mount air conditioners, front-control stoves and 3 1/2-foot-high clothes rods in closets are among the other accommodations found in the accessible units.
In addition, the units feature emergency call switches in bathrooms and bedrooms that are connected to the main floor security station. All light switches in each of West Point Plaza’s 200 units are 36 inches off the ground.
In the common areas, closed-loop carpeting (which is also found in the units themselves) allows for enhanced maneuverability by residents who use wheelchairs, noted Allen-Brown.
The building offers a close-in parking area for people with disabilities, access ramps to the front door, key-card control access at the front door, two extra-large elevators, hand rails on corridor walls, lever-operated doors to the garbage chute room, front-loading washers and dryers in the laundry room, a public phone 48 inches off the floor and a “Window View” waiting area for transportation pickup.
“Once (people with disabilities) move in and get into the unit, they tell you how truly accessible it is,” said Allen-Brown. “This makes it easier for them to do things on their own, without waiting for outside help.”
West Point Plaza was an entry in the CAA’s 1998 Chicagoland Apartment Marketing and Management Excellence (CAMME) Award competition in the category of “Best Apartment Designed For Persons with Disabilities.” The winner of the 1998 CAMME in this category was York Brook Apartments, 100 E. George St., Bensenville.
That apartment community features 571 units in four six-story buildings. About two dozen people with disabilities currently reside there, said Karen Brandt, leasing trainer for Hinsdale-based Partnership Concepts Realty Management, which manages York Brook.
There’s no restriction on which apartments can accommodate people with disabilities at the complex, Brandt said. When a renter with a disability moves in, management makes modifications consistent with the resident’s needs.
Among accommodations York Brook offers for persons with disabilities are: remote control units that resemble garage-door openers and that can open the front security door; grab bars in hallways and bathrooms; lower clothes rods; wider door frames; and close-in parking areas.
The community’s maintenance staff works closely with residents to gear accommodations to their individual needs, said Brandt. She believes such customization is crucial to making the community appealing to people with disabilities.
“I hate the phrase `reasonable accommodations,’ ” Brandt declared. “What’s reasonable for one person is unreasonable for another.”
Brandt is especially sensitive to the needs of people with disabilities. Her 30-year-old sister, Carlana Lee Stone, a paraplegic as a result of a 1986 auto accident, has overcome physical challenges to become an on-air news reporter at WLPG, the ABC-TV affiliate in Miami.
Brandt noted that residents with disabilities come to York Brook Apartments “because they are independent. They want to be independent. They don’t want to be treated differently. Their needs are no greater, just different. That’s the philosophy we try to follow.”
Coleman agrees that the philosophy is much in evidence at York Brook. “They’re very responsive to every tenant,” she said. “And they don’t act like it’s an exceptional issue to pay attention to something I might need that’s different from something another tenant might need.”
