Accessibility Is Home podcast

Esp. 38# From Napkin Sketch to Accessible Housing: Rolling Out Accessible Homes That Move With You

• Angela Fox • Season 5 • Episode 38

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A bedroom and bathroom on wheels might be the fastest way to keep a family together—and out of an institution. We sit down with Samantha and RJ from WheelPad to unpack how a simple, universally accessible SuitePad attaches to an existing home in weeks, why towns approve faster when they hear a clear human story, and how labels like ADU, accessory structure, or “guest house” shift by zip code. Along the way, we pull apart myths that accessibility is “ugly,” and show how universal design quietly makes every home better for parents, patients, kids, and caregivers.

We get practical about timelines, permits, and budgets: why speed beats a years-long addition, how inspectors can become allies when they see the real need, and which features to “steal” for your next renovation—zero-step entries, roll-in showers, reachable switches, blocking for lifts, and outlets placed where they’re actually usable. Samantha shares lived-experience tips for low-cost accessibility, while RJ makes the case every realtor should hear: accessible homes sell to a motivated market because they save the two scarcest resources—time and money.

If you’ve wondered whether ADA guarantees accessible housing (it often doesn’t), how to navigate local zoning without getting stuck, or how to future-proof a home for aging, injury, or visiting loved ones, this conversation connects the dots. We also talk leasing, resale, and the growing after-market for accessible units that proves the value is real and repeatable.

Subscribe for more smart strategies on accessible housing, share this with someone planning a renovation, and leave a review to help more people find practical, dignified solutions that turn a house into a home.

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SPEAKER_01:

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. Hello, audience. Thank you for joining me today again at horizontalhouses.com where we know that there's more accessibility beyond the bathroom. So I am Angela Fox and I'm sitting in my wheelchair accessible bathroom. I am a white middle-aged white woman. I'm wearing a fabulous royal purple, as I call it, with in my electric wheelchair, wearing my little pet my necklace. It says wheel on and be calm. And I have my headphones, and again, I'm sitting in my wheelchair, in my accessible bathroom. And I have some fabulous guests today from Wheelpad. If you're like, what is Wheelpad? We're going to talk lots about that. But I have two guests today. I don't always do that. I'm super thrilled. I have Samantha and RJ. Samantha, would you like to say hello to the audience and describe yourself?

SPEAKER_03:

Hi, everybody. My name is Samantha. I am, I don't know if I want to call myself middle-aged. I'm in my 30s. I'm also a white woman. I work with wheelpad, but I always forget to say this when I'm on Zoom. I am in a wheelchair. I have a manual wheelchair. I have a spiral board injury that happened when I was 21 from my waist down to about T10. That's my injury. I am also wearing my Ocean City, New Jersey blue sweatshirt for this podcast.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you, Samantha. Welcome. RJ, you want to say hello?

SPEAKER_00:

Hey folks, my name's RJ Adler. I would like to think I still have brown hair, but in actuality, there's a lot of white in it. And I am wearing a red plaid shirt and in a room painted with the colors that my wife would describe as John Deere Green. My role at WheelPad is director of growth, and I really dig what I do every day.

SPEAKER_01:

Excellent. Thank you both again for joining. So I want to start out with kind of introducing how I got connected, and that is through Samantha. Samantha and I actually met in Washington, D.C. during the annual role on Capitol Hill through the United Spinal Cord Enjury Association, where we're advocating for certain things like a more accessible parking study. We did also paratransit, Medicaid, and a few other items where we got to talk to Congress as an organization. And I ran into Samantha and it was a just kindred spears at the first site. Samantha, do you want to describe your brief experience with Roll on Capitol Hill before we kind of talk a little bit about wheelpad and housing in general?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, and actually on the lines in a full circle type of way, as lots of things do. During the pandemic, I had moved out of my apartment because it was just the price was going up and it really wasn't accessible. I came back to my home where my mom lived with an accessible apartment underneath me. And I started looking for alternative solutions, found wheelpad, found United Spinal at the same time. So it was like the match of I needed advocacy support and others who are like-minded in wanting to create change to be part of the change, not just sitting around waiting for the change. So I found United Spinal, found Annie and Steve in National, also linked me up to my local chapter. But in the same search, I found the housing alternative, which was Wheelpad, a housing alternative. And I was super interested in the company, reached out to Julie, who put me in touch with RJ and met RJ and just developed a relationship getting to know about the company. Fast forward to, I can't believe that was it's now 2026. I'm still now working with Wheelpad and also a volunteer with United Spinal. And like you said, we met at Roll on Capitol Hill. So Roll on Capitol Hill, it's the annual advocacy event. Every other year, we go in person to advocate for legislation that's important to us. And it's a bunch of wheelchair users from around the country. And after our long day of meetings in the Capitol, we were gathering for a picture. And Angela and I just naturally ran into each other and got to talking, gave her my card, and she was like, Oh my god, wheelpad! I was so excited! I was so excited. And like me, I was a fan of the company and the idea before I started working, and they offered me a position. So we just naturally got to talking, and uh you've been in this game. There's a difference. You lived with something that you were born with was paralyzed at 21. So there's a significant difference in life experience and how we've overcome things. But it's also for us who were injured, it's comforting to lean on people who've been dealing with it their whole lives and living in a way like we as a mentor in a specific way for somebody who is just paralyzed. So all of us coming together as allies is super important, and we can bring all of our experiences to the legislators and advocate for things that are important to us.

SPEAKER_01:

I love it. And just for those Gen Z out there, there is a benefit to have a hard copy business card instead of everything on your phone. I'm so excited that I was able to connect with you, Samantha. And those who might be joining my podcast just now, I actually did an episode where I described my experience on roll on Capitol Hill. So if you want to know more about that event, it happens every year. I think it was around every June. You can certainly listen to that episode as well. But the Samantha, yes. Oh, thank you so much. Thank you for the kind words. RJ, Samantha and I have been saying the word wheelpad left and right, but a lot of our audience may not know what wheelpad is. So can you describe what wheelpad is and what was the inspiration of that company?

SPEAKER_00:

Sure. Wheelpad is the company that Samantha and I work for. We build modular accessible housing, and our main product that we have available right now is a bedroom and bathroom on wheels called SuitePad. That's universally accessible. And we can roll it up and connect it to a house in a matter of weeks. In addition to the other accessible home options that might be out there. The inspiration came from the founders of the company, my business partners, Julie Leinberger and Joseph Sincata. In 2010, their godson was in a traumatic accident, which resulted in quadriplegia. And he recovered. He was gonna move before the accident, he was planning to move to Portland, Oregon for a new job. And he said, I'm still going. No big deal. I'll find myself an accessible apartment and just live my life. And he did that, minus the finding himself an accessible apartment thing. He lived for nine months in a motel because that was the only place that had an accessible shower where a caregiver could help him. And in that time, he reached out to Julian Joseph and said, I purchased this ranch. Can you help me make it accessible to suit my needs? Of course. They then, in the middle of that renovation project, sat down for dinner one night, and Joseph sketched out on a napkin, hey, Riley, what if we had a pad that was just a bedroom and bathroom that you could have attached to your mom's house or attached to your brother's house, and you wouldn't have had to be so isolated for such a long time. Fast forward what 15, almost 16 years, and here we are. Founded in 2015, after they kicked the idea around for a little while.

SPEAKER_01:

That is great. I believe the best ideas come from napkins. I just read this fabulous book called Build a Damn Thing and I forget the woman's name, but she was just talking about being an entrepreneur. Sometimes it's just simple of just getting a piece of paper, sketch something out, or a napkin. I can see that happening. Now, my question is wheel pad housing considered module housing. Is that true?

SPEAKER_00:

Where do you look it depends on so many different factors?

SPEAKER_01:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

But in general, we don't fit neatly into any one bucket. And that means that most towns that we go to are looking at what we're building for the first time.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Uh fortunately, cities and towns are getting more progressive and liberal with their zoning and housing laws. And especially for this population, it makes it easy for us to say, hey, we're installing a sweet pad on somebody's property because they just got in a motorcycle accident. It's a little bit easier to tell that story and get the building permit than if the same family goes to say, hey, I'm gonna put a little tiny house Airbnb in the backyard so I can rake in a cool$5,000 a month from this tourist economy.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So what I'm hearing you're saying is being specific with your story. It's a person behind the housing that is needed versus just incorporating this idea of wheelpack being added to a house for disability reasons or non-disabled reasons, which is one of the things I always tell people though, and I think we're all like-minded, is that you can become disabled any day, right? And so it's unfortunate that housing is still very reactive instead of trying to prevent the the uh-oh, what am I gonna do now? I'm disabled. So I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_03:

Can I add something real quick? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think it's really important because uh listen, I didn't know how government worked. And when you asked, is it classified as a modular home? It's really important for people to know. A 13-year-old could be listening to this. Uh townships, cities, states, and our national government have different rules and regulations for where we live. So we can't just classify it under one thing when there's cities, towns, states that we have to work in partnership with. I think that's important to explain to people because we don't just fit in one box. So if we can have partnerships with different states or different towns to try to fit the needs of people in an innovative way, I think that's super important.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you for putting that up. It really is. And I love this idea. You say a 13-year-old could could be listening. And you're absolutely right. Have you also tried, have you had need, if you're not gonna say it's a module home, have you done classifying sometimes it as an ADU? Accessible dwelling unit, is that right?

SPEAKER_00:

Accessory dwelling unit.

SPEAKER_01:

There we go. In my city, at least, talk about the different layers of government. So I live in Rockville, Maryland, and Montgomery County is the richest county in the state of Maryland, and a few years ago started allowed to be either attached to the home or even separate on the property, which was great because some homes you just can't attach, or you just want some more rental income. So it wasn't specifically related to mother-in-law suite that a lot of people think about that. Have you ever experienced going into a town or county and saying, hey, this is actually an EU?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, and but again, it depends on the town. And it also depends on the product. A sweet pad is a bedroom and bathroom. And if you we want to get real wonky and down into some rabbit holes, that is not an accessory dwelling unit because an accessory dwelling unit requires that there's sleeping facilities, kitchen facilities, and bathroom facilities. So we have a larger product that we're building now, it's gonna be available next year called Studio Pad. That is gonna be considered an ADU because it's gonna be four feet longer and in the middle. But again, it really depends on the town, right? And so they want their ADUs to be permanently affixed to the property, take it off the trailer. In other towns, they don't want that. In the state of California, if you have an external bedroom and bathroom, it's called a guest house. In certain places, we fit under accessory structures law. So as I said earlier, we're not in one bucket, and we get to pick and choose as to which bucket works best.

SPEAKER_01:

And I think that's a way to go. I think with the passing of the 88 guidelines for subsidized housing and then the Fair Housing Act, which is very limited, I think really having the ability to be nimble and meet the needs of not just the disability community, but the government officials, whether that's city, state, not necessarily federal so much, but it could be depending on the circumstances. So in your experience, RJ, uh, what is the benefit of using wheelpad instead of reaching out to let's say a contractor and say, hey, I want to add 500 square feet that's accessible for somebody in my family that might be in a wheelchair.

SPEAKER_00:

I'd say the main difference is time. And I want all the contractors out there to be building accessible homes. I joke that our goal as a business is to go out of business because one day all houses will just be accessible.

SPEAKER_01:

I love that.

SPEAKER_00:

We folks who have leased a sweet pad, and during the lease, they've built an accessible addition on their home to suit their needs. We very much work in tandem. We're the Grainy Smith apple to the red delicious apple of a home renovation. If somebody's discharging from the hospital in 45 days, or they found out that their dad really can't live on his own anymore in a safe way, then we are a better choice than building an addition because we can deliver and get hooked up in a matter of months, not a matter of years, which is normally what it takes to plan an addition, build an addition, that sort of thing. So that's one of the first things that we say to folks when they come to us is what is your best option? And your best option might not be our product, right? To really try to get that understanding.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, great. I love that the Apple analogy, because I'm originally from Indiana, so I love apples. But I really do love that. And we you start talking a little bit about this, RJ, but my next question is what are some misconceptions that whether it's realtors or housing developers or government officials have on accessible housing or your product?

SPEAKER_00:

I I think uh the biggest misconception is that accessible housing is somehow unattractive. And that's another big thing that we're trying to change as people are aging into their homes and they overwhelmingly don't want to leave. ARP says something like 87% of seniors want to age in place. The idea that a senior might make a home accessible and then it's quote unquote harder to sell that's ridiculous. Because I have two young kids and an accessible easier thing, whatever it may be, is going to be easier whether I need it right now or whether I need it temporarily or whether I need it for the rest of my life. That's I think the biggest misconception. A lot of people that are in the housing and real estate world, once they see and understand our products, they see the benefit and they see how it works for some clients and not for others.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. You know, it's interesting that you mentioned it's ugly. If you do accessible housing, it's it's ugly. And I'm just wondering, RJ, and obviously I know that your focus has been to produce a product, build it, and then you're done usually. And I understand that. But I'm just curious, just because you're in this field in general, have you had any conversations with realtors about besides of it being ugly, what are their misconceptions as realtors?

SPEAKER_00:

Not specifically that question. Okay. I think a lot of realtors are coming to understand that if it's built in the right way and designed in the right way, it can be a beautiful structure. So that that kind of gets into the design piece that is not my expertise. I'm not an architect, but I play one on Zoom sometimes.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm not a real tube. I ask those difficult questions anyways. Oh, it's all good.

SPEAKER_03:

I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that the ADA covers accessible housing. I've had many people say within the ADA that you should be able to get an apartment in the private sector. Like, but grandfathered in laws make it hard when you live, especially on the East Coast, in one of the 13 original colonies that is old. So that there's a lot of buildings that were built prior to the ADA being signed. One of the biggest misconceptions with everyone is that the ADA covers accessibility within housing, that it's the law.

SPEAKER_01:

But there are loopholes to that. That's big loopholes. Unless it's subsidized housing, it just doesn't count. I know you in the beginning of this interview, you told your story in the housing about how you became disabled and you had to leave your apartment because it just economically wasn't making any sense. But did you consider buying a home or building a home when you were in that process of leaving your apartment?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah. So when I saw the innovative sweet pad and the option of the company wheel pad and their vision, I was like, this isn't really, we do have one customer that's doing it this way, but my original idea and thought when I first saw it was get land, get a sweet pad, and then build on top of that. Because the most two important things for somebody like me are bedroom and bathroom. There's a a surehands track that's available. My shoulders have problems. This is going on 18 years in a wheelchair. Surgery is inevitable. So I can move right now on my own, but I will need that helps. Ownership, yeah, that would be great. But realistically, I saw the opportunity for a sweet pad and I was like, land sweet pad that and then build on top of it. That's really what I thought would be the most beneficial and smartest way to go about something for my future, because bathroom and bedroom is crucial. Yes, I thought about that, but then you also go, is a condo better? Is it better to live in a neighborhood? Do you not want to be secluded? You have to weigh all those options. Do you want to live near doctors or a pharmacy if you have to constantly go through that or public transportation? When you're in a wheelchair, do you have the ability to drive in a car? So you have to weigh all of that when you're picking a place to live for the rest of your life, especially if you're going to buy. But even if you're running, you're paying like six thousand dollars at least for a down payment to get yourself into an apartment, into a building. And that's absolutely crazy. Samantha, how long have you been with wheelpad? Um like six months. Yeah, they were growing and reached out to me, and I was honored to get that call because accessible housing is the path that I was leading down.

SPEAKER_01:

Was it just because of your injury that made you focus on housing? Because before this call, you and I were talking about having an offline conversation. And my perspective is I feel a lot of the focus, and it's understandable, but a lot of the focus has been about health insurance and transportation, and then maybe employment.

SPEAKER_03:

And like disability rights.

SPEAKER_01:

You mean those are the focus? And housing, in my opinion, feels a little almost forgotten in a way.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah, I don't feel like there's as much support just because it's probably a complicated issue. My mom used to take us to, she ran a school board, like she got involved in town meetings. So I've been going and getting involved in community from before my accident. So I think I've always had an interest in community and advocacy and creating change or being part of it. Then my accident happened, and it's, oh, I'm hit in the face with all of these issues that I didn't realize were a thing. So then it drives that passion even more. That's how I kept going with the disability rights advocacy angle. When I approach different groups that are backing the disability community, housing is a push to the back because it's so complicated. In our government, we can't at the national level advocate for local communities to do something specific. So it's tricky. It's probably more of a state issue. We have to find the best lane to advocate for accessible housing. When we're talking about airline flights and getting the airlines to allow wheelchair users on in a safe way, that's much different than advocating for local communities to have proper accessible housing innovative options. You're right. The bottom line, it's difficult, and there probably isn't as much conversation and support. But that's where I feel like we can fill in the gap the best that we can until it's more noticed and accepted.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. I totally agree. I know you just saw it in the last six months, Samantha, but have you had a success story when you've reached out to an organization that's backing disability rights on housing when you've tried to talk about housing? Can you think of a success story and share it with the audience?

SPEAKER_03:

I would just heavily advocate for collaborating with United Spinal because even though they may not have a policy issue that we're advocating for and asking the government for now. The only reason that we were advocating for wheelchair maintenance at the national level when we were at Capitol Hill is because wheelchair users pushed for that policy. So wheelchair users themselves got involved with Annie and the grassroots team, the advocacy team at United Spinal, and said, this is what we want. This is what we want to communicate. So that's how that ball got rolling. It's the people that put power behind that movement and that ask. So there needs to be more of us, wheelchair users, sharing our experience. So as far as one organization, no, not really. But I know that I have support if I develop a local movement, a local idea. If I need support from the advocacy team with United Spinal, I can come to them and talk through it and perspective. So the answer to your question is no, I don't have a personal experience with one advocacy organization that's helped me out with accessible housing. But I do know that the more we organize and the more we bring ideas to the table, it could be looked at. And then we could have backing for a policy that we think is important to propose.

SPEAKER_01:

Because it takes a community, right? You and I could be shelling in the wind, but it takes a community. So I appreciate that. Samantha, RJ, can you share a success or inspiring a story when you like to share with the audience about wheelpad? Is there something that you can think of that you're like, oh, I want to tell this success story.

SPEAKER_00:

There's so many. And I think specifically one I'll gravitate to, we do talk about a lot. It's the Everingham family. They live in West Brattleboro, Vermont. They were the third family to lease the very first sweet pad that we ever built. And we got a frantic call from them in March of 2020 saying, my dad is in a congregate facility. I need to get him out. We're really worried about his health. He's got kidney failure. We happened to have a model available. The family that had been leasing it was done with it. And we were able to re-deliver it to their home. We got it set up by April 10th. So that's less than a month from certain initial phone call to set up. John Everingham was the person living there. Bob Everingham is his son. John had been given a diagnosis of six months to live. He lived for another two years and six months. Which obviously there's a million, maybe it was just a bad diagnosis. There's a million things that that could have gone right or wrong, but maybe he just enjoyed life enough to stick around. That's both both from the speed of the installation, what's possible when we have an inventory available to what we called the town of Brattleboro during that time, and they said, you don't need permits. This is clearly needed. What happens when communities recognize the need and move quickly? That's I'd say one example out of many.

SPEAKER_01:

And would you say 30 days is still something you guys can achieve if you have the inventory, or was that just a little bit of the times you were in?

SPEAKER_00:

It's a little bit of both. I think it depends on active a customer is and able to support themselves and also what else is available. We're working with a family right now. They haven't even signed a contract yet, but they're pretty sure they want to get a sweet pad there in South Carolina. And in this case, the individual has a case that has ALS, and he's a former general contractor. So he knows how to get things built in his community, and he's lining up all the people in the right places. So even though it's a stringent community, we're moving through that pretty quickly. Other success stories involve families that have looked at our products, weighed them against a customized renovation, and used both, right? They've leased our products and then built their customized renovation. And I would even say success stories are people that look at our products and steal our stuff. And then say, wow, I really want the outlets in my renovation to be 30 inches off the ground. I really want to make sure that I build in space for a release trap if I need. We're one company that builds one thing. And I refer to that one thing sometimes as a trapezoidal-shaped peg. And we can fit in a round hole and we can fit in a square hole, but we can't fit in a star-shaped hole. So I tend to spend my time chatting with people, understanding what the shape of their hole is and if we can fill it, and understanding then how we need to grow and change as a company, what other products or services we need to offer if we want to continue supporting the this population.

SPEAKER_01:

I love how Wheelpad is so open on sharing information because as I saw it and turned to this housing, even though I was born with my disability, I really didn't get the housing bug until I was done with law school and been employed for a few years, and I decided to buy my own home that was in an apartment that was not real chair accessible. And I suffered a lot of discrimination with realtors and everything. And that's my origin story. But as I'm reaching out to different individuals that might be involved in the housing arena, when we haven't really come together of sharing, this is how I do it. Yes, you can go and take it and make it your own, or this is the data I have. Even when there's a whole bunch of organizations out there that might do accessible short-term vacation home, which is not what we're talking about in this episode, but certainly that does dovetail into showcasing to the world.

SPEAKER_03:

We deserve to have vacations too.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, exactly. So I just love it, RJ, that you were telling us, hey, we want to go out of business if this is so successful that other people are doing what we're doing. And I think that is something that everybody needs to know. And I think besides the wheel pad concept, the products you are providing, which I think is just on the front line, is also this openness. And I think That needs to be acknowledged and actually embraced by other groups and other housing markets out there. So I really I just want to take that moment and highlight that for the audience and give you RJ and Wheelpad kudos for doing that. So having that mindset. So thank you as a disabled person. As and I'm sure my audience will agree with me. RJ, one thing we have really quickly mentioned, where is Wheelpad located? And is where do you go? Is it nationally?

SPEAKER_00:

We are located in Wilmington, Vermont, which is in the center of the south of the state. And we can deliver nationally. It might take a little bit of extra to get it to far-off places nationally, like Hawaii and Alaska. But we built international building codes. Angela, do you have a commercial driver's license? No. You don't need one to pull a sweet pad wherever you want to go behind a regular. Wow. That's and that's part of this sort of speed and accessibility of it, is that if you have an uncle with F-350 that likes making road trips, we can reduce the cost and deliver it and have you come pick it up. But also, if we need to deliver it to some far-flown state like Tennessee, I don't have to call Pennsylvania and ask for a permit to get it through.

SPEAKER_01:

I didn't even think about that concept. That just blows my mind. I'm usually a very detail-oriented person, but I never thought about the barriers of having had to have a certain license, a commercial license. So that is brilliant to be able to eliminate that. Are there other things that you can think of, RJ, that wheelpad done along those lines, eliminate barriers to get wheelpads sold and delivered?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, I'm almost more interested in Samantha's answer on this.

SPEAKER_03:

I don't have that much experience with the barriers yet. Uh, but I think explaining your story and going to your township. If you want one of the sweep pads or CA pads, as somebody who lives with a disability, advocate for yourself. Go to your township, look at your yard, look at the properties of the people in your life who you might be able to put one of the products on their lot of land or see what it would entail. Talk to your local communities, your code enforcement, your county or your council, your township council. Explain why, or an advocate for you, explain why this is necessary, why it's beneficial, and where you would end up, where the person you love would end up without going to this option, like a nursing home, an institutionalized living situation, for example. Those are the barriers that I think work, but I'm not sure if there's logistically anything that the company has overcome that I have not been a part of.

SPEAKER_01:

No, but I think that's very valuable. And I don't know if this has been done. If not, here's an idea that you guys can take and use. Is there like a checklist? When you talk about advocating yourself, reaching out to your local zoning permit people. Do you guys have like checklists or some guidance that you could give to individuals on just what you described, Samantha? These all the things you might want, these are the people in your county that you might want to talk to and tell your story and your need. Do you guys have anything like that?

SPEAKER_03:

I don't think we have something like that professionally yet, but it's definitely something RJ brought me on to be part of the customer experience. And what you're saying is beneficial. And I think that should be incorporated somewhere, even if it's a blog post or something simple that we write, just to advise people that this is how it works, because the United States of America is one country, but each of our states has rules, and each of the boroughs and townships has rules. So it would be interesting to lay out something to educate people because I didn't know any of this before I started studying government. Even into my older years. I really didn't know how it worked. I think something like that would be beneficial just to give people some heads up. So it's something that I don't know if RJ has put in a checklist form, but we definitely have talked about stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01:

What you just mentioned triggered my own experience. And that is when I was under contact from my one-level tiny little 950-square rampler, I wanted to have a driveway put in along with a sidewalk ramp from my driveway that goes around my tree from my house, because I'm a tree lover, and directly into my rambler because it was like five steps. And I knew this was so important that if the Rockville City was going to give me pushback on doing that design, I was going to walk away because I had it officially signed. So I reached out to my permanent office of my city because Rockville city limits is different than the county, just an FYI. Anybody lives in Montgomery County, if you live within the city limits, which is like a four-mile radius, is entirely different rules. I learned that as well. You could still technically have a zip code of Rockville, but there's a city limit. So, anyways, I just digress for those people when you talk about the different layers, right? And so I reached out to that individual and I had that person come and look at the property. I said, this is what I want to do. They saw I was in a wheelchair, the need and everything. And the reason why it was this success story is one, I could fill out the permit myself. You'll be amazed how many permits in counties that if you let the permanent office know that you are going to fill this out, this permit. And there's some permits like electricity and plumbing that could be done by a contractor. And obviously, this is based on your county or your city. But I did my own reprint because it had to cut into the city sidewalk to get to the driveway. And he was totally on board with that. And the reason why this is important, not just I was able to do the permit and do it in a very quick manner, but I lost my contractor at the last minute. And I had to go with a new contractor. Luckily, I had said I need this driveway to be a certain way. And he wanted to charge me extra. He did not want to raise the driveway. My low ramp on my van could easily get into without the steepness. And he was like, I don't want to do it. But I contacted the permit guy came out to do the checklist, the final inspection, and he says, I'm not going to approve this. You knew she was in a wheelchair. I'm pretty sure she put ADA in the contract. Even if she didn't, I will not approve this, and you will not charge her the extra cost of the cement. Permit office said that? Yeah. Because the permit office also has inspectors in it. So to get signed off, they push back. I'm my contractor because I had met with the individual even before I had the house. I was under contract. That's just a little bit of a success story of how if you work with people, you work with your permit, and you work with your inspectors, and how they could collaborate with you. I have a law degree, so I knew you need the permit. I have an understanding of who the permit people are and the inspectors and this concept of zoning. I could figure that out on my own. But as you say, Samantha, you're brand new, or you could get very overwhelming without some kind of guidance.

SPEAKER_03:

I had no, I'll tell you, when I got my apartment, it was like a 950 square foot apartment, not accessible, just doable in a neighborhood that was great. I went to my state representative to talk to him about possibly universal design within new buildings of apartments. If you're doing renovations, hey, that would be great. He promised like a meeting. He promised all this stuff, never happened. So I went to the county, didn't realize that's not really the place to go. Then what's the township? That wasn't the place to go. I was everywhere because I didn't know where to go. So that's why I think it's important to have these conversations. Here, I was writing ideas for bills to propose before I even knew anything about government, really. I was just Googling it. So that's when I started studying government and really trying to understand what are the steps to take and taking myself a little bit more seriously and holding myself accountable to getting involved in the right way to propose universal design in housing options because it's important. And like you said in the beginning, disability does not discriminate. At any time, at any second, somebody could walk out of their house, God forbid, we don't wish that on anybody, but it is possible. Somebody could have a child that's born with a disability that you're now faced with taking care of. These are things that happen regularly in our line of work, in our community. We see this every day. But it's the people who come to us, who it just happens to, who are like, what do I do now? There's no help, there's no options, we need help. Lots of us in the disability community who now have lives and careers and independent causes of our own where we're fighting for accessible housing. We have Kelly out there who's working on pressure sore campaigns, and other influencer working on pressure sore campaigns. We have others who are vouching in the lane of accessible opportunities for sporting events. We have others who are fighting for proper health care or preventative maintenance in wheelchairs. It's up to us to come together and vouch for these things that we see hurdles with in life.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. I appreciate you both coming. I have two questions if we have the time. So, one question, it could be either one of you, and if you don't have the answer, but I always like to ask this question because once you get these little nuggets, right? Like the commercial license aspect. I didn't even think about that, RJ. Still blows my mind. But my question to you, to either one of you, what are some creative budget-friendly solutions for making homes more accessible?

SPEAKER_03:

I so use all your senses. When you lose a sense, I lost the ability to walk. So I take a minute to think on things, how to make things more accessible. Going to the store, going to Home Depot and talking to the workers about how do we take this two by four or make a smaller ramp rather than taking and pouring concrete. That's one idea. Talking to your friends who might be contractors are in different fields rather than hiring a full team, reaching out to your community is important. But I I use resistance bands and post them on my walls to have something to reach up to. You have your stoy. That's fine. And as cheap alternatives. I use resistance bands for a lot of things. Whether that's lassoing something or a spatula, I try to use that for length.

SPEAKER_01:

I appreciate I'm showing there's somebody out there that's new to disability community, but I didn't think of that. Jay, the same question.

SPEAKER_00:

I'd say there's features that are in the wheel pad that you can steal, as as I've suggested earlier, right? And I always joke with people like do a renovation before you're working with me professionally. And add accessible design to your renovation omelet because it's a lot easier to build an omelet one day than build an omelet the next day, right? Making sure that if you're deciding to build a deck on your house, make don't just make it a zero step as opposed to doing that one step down. Look around your access into your house, think about how it can be changed. And maybe that's not building a ramp, it's just putting more dirt and rocks so it's a zero-step entry into the house. If you're planning an addition, do it with accessibility in mind, even if you don't think you need it today, because you may tear your ACL and or you may become pregnant, and these are times in your life where you're gonna want accessibility at home, or you're gonna have little kids. And I know I mentioned that before, but it's gonna be harder to deal with them in a place that's harder to live in. Budget-friendly is different for a lot of different people, but that's a lot of the reason that we are looking to promote accessibility solutions beyond what we're bringing to the table as a company, because again, we solve one thing in one way right now.

SPEAKER_01:

I do agree. Budget friendly is different for everybody. And I tell everybody certainly do what you need to do for your safety, but also keep in mind a planning beyond your disability, right? And that includes maybe your disability will change. Maybe you will have other individuals who have different disabilities come and visit you. And then, of course, the equity, the value of your home. Can you do things that are budget-friendly that will not take away from the value of your home? Which simple thing is make things pretty. So many people don't even think about that. Pay that ramp, you can actually increase the value of your home by just doing that. So I do appreciate you both. I have one last question, as I told you, I had two earlier. And we've talked a lot about this, but I just want to make sure we've covered everything. And my last question for either one of you is what's one aspect of disability home ownership that deserves more attention from real estate?

SPEAKER_03:

We've talked about the lot paying attention to accessibility features. It's not really it's zero-step entry, but is there room under your kitchen sink? Is there room under the bathroom sink? What does the bathroom look like? What's the size of the bathroom or where the toilet and the shower is placed for somebody with a disability? So I think we need to do more work on the marriage of realtors and encouraging universal design, not just accessible design, but universal design. It would fit everybody. Universal features don't take away from the person who's standing, it just adds value and option. So I think I don't know if that answers your right.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, that's great. Audgey? I'm gonna sound like a capitalist white dude here, but accessibility is a smart business decision, and it gives you a higher chance of selling into a more motivated market that is smaller, that has less options. I don't want to make it sound like I want that to be the future, right? Obviously, we're looking to have more accessibility options, but the fact of the matter is right now, if you have an accessible home that you're trying to sell, and there's a family that needs accessibility, they are going to be more motivated to purchase a home that already suits their needs rather than a home that they're gonna have to do a project to create. Because every project takes two resources, time and money. And time is the resource that we cannot make more of. And especially a family looking to choose homes while also considering the caregiving that they need to provide. Maybe they're in the sandwich generation, they're raising their children and lowering their parents. When they see something that's gonna work to suit their needs, they're gonna be that much more motivated to buy it. As more and more homes become accessible, like that's not necessarily gonna be the case. But we are decades away from that point because less than 7% of homes in America are deemed minimally accessible. I think that's a HUD statistic or something like that. And there's 8.3 million Americans with a permanent mobility challenge, 17,500 people get a spinal cord injury every year, there's 5,000 people that get a diagnosis of ALS, 7,500 people get a diagnosis of MS, 300,000 seniors fall and break their hip every year. So the market for accessibility is only growing. This is just a great business decision type of thing, but it also happens to be good for community and society. Oftentimes, realtors, they're business people, right? And understanding this, doing this purely for business reasons, for financial reasons, I'm fine with that, right? Like I'm I'm not in it for the money, but I understand that it's a smart move for business. So if people start jumping into accessible housing for that reason, it doesn't matter. That's their primary reason.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And RJ, I just love you said that. I did pay for you to say that because that's literally part of my focus of my startup company, Horizontal Houses, and that is working with realtors of understanding you can make money. There is a market, and then how do you advertise an accessible house? How do you market that house to the disability community? And that's the focus of my startup company, is just what you just said, is that there's money to be had. I'm so glad you said that. But then how do you do that? And that's my pivotal, my focus in my startup company. But you'll be amazed how many people don't understand that. They feel it's not valuable. And RJ, I'm just quickly, I know I said I only had two questions. Are you aware of any wheel pads that let's say been attached to a house and then been sold later on successfully?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Can you talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_00:

The so two sweet pads have been on houses at this point, and they've been leased three times each and then sold out of our lease fleet. We sell the pre-leased model for less than what a new one would cost. And one of them we actually just repurchased back from that person that bought it the fourth time and had sold it to a family that needs it again. People use our products temporarily. We offer them for lease and for repurchase because they don't know what temporary means sometimes.

SPEAKER_01:

Samantha, do you have anything to add to that conversation?

SPEAKER_03:

Not really, other than like 17 years ago, 18 years ago when I was paralyzed, my friends' family got together and built me the place that I'm in right now. It's an apartment that was a two and a half car garage. But looking back, if there were a product like this on the market, I wouldn't have had to live in my living room with sheets covering my siblings walking around and everybody's around for several months, like five, six months before my apartment was done. But had we been able to do the route of a wheel pad, it would have been more beneficial and I would have had that for myself. And it would have been more of an investment. It would have been more of an opportunity for me to grow from there with the wheel pad and be able to either move it or build onto it on my own property. So I think products like this are important and being innovative about accessibility from the town level to the state level to the national level, it's an important conversation that we must keep having.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, great. Thank you both. Audrey real quickly, if somebody wants to learn more about Wheelpad, how do they do that?

SPEAKER_00:

Wheelpad.com or giving me a call at 802-458-7194.

SPEAKER_01:

All right. And do you have any social media out there?

SPEAKER_00:

We're on Facebook, we're on Blue Sky. We work with a really great marketing team that handles all of social media.

SPEAKER_01:

They could Google WheelPad on all social media channels and connect you that way. For us millennials, that's how we communicate. Or you could go to wheelpad.com. Thank you. Thank you. Horizontalhouses.com is e-hub for all things related to disability home ownership. You will find my blog, this podcast, my book, and how my consulting services can help real estate agents or healthy developers market and tap into the largest minority group, the disability community. Please help me continue this exploration of disability home ownership by connecting through my Facebook page. Member, sharing our collective experiences will allow us each to lower the kitchen sink but raise the bar for disability home ownership. Thank you.