BARBARA’S FAIR HOUSING STORY
(This story is also available in Spanish and Chinese.)
Finding an apartment in New York City or its suburbs can be challenging. If you’re one of New York’s 3.9 million adults with disabilities, this already difficult task is exponentially harder.
Barbara, who lives on her own with a physical disability, is no stranger to these challenges. When she moved to her current Long Island apartment, Barbara assumed that her landlord would help her make her home more accessible.
Barbara lives in a duplex, with a flight of stairs separating her home’s two floors. Although she does not use a wheelchair, Barbara’s mobility issues make walking up the stairs difficult. She knew a stairlift would greatly improve her quality of life, but when she reached out to her landlord to inquire about installing one in her unit, he flat-out refused to help her.
“I was shocked,” she said. He was adamant that he would not pay for any part of the modification or help her find a reputable company to do the assessment and stairlift installation.
A stairlift can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000: a hefty price to pay for the ability to fully use and enjoy your home. Barbara explained the frustration she felt when she realized she would have to cover the entire cost herself. “I really thought this was something he [the landlord] was going to do, or I would have thought about not taking the apartment. I had trouble coming up with [funds for] my deposit, let alone a stairlift.”
Barbara began making calls to local organizations to find out about other possible options for assistance. She was told about several programs providing modification services, but only for homeowners. “This is ridiculous,” she thought. “What about renters?”
Eventually, Barbara was referred to the Fair Housing Justice Center (FHJC) and learned about the Adele Friedman Housing Accessibility Fund (AFHAF), which provides renters with targeted financial assistance for disability-related housing modifications. One of FHJC’s Intake and Outreach Specialists reached out to Barbara to explain the intake process, and before long, Barbara had a stairlift in her home. “It was actually a really painless experience,” she shared.
Barbara has been using the stairlift for a few months now. When reflecting on the year that she lived without it, she recalled how different her day-to-day life looked. Because of her mobility issues, Barbara could only go up and down the stairs once a day. “Without the stairlift,” she explained, “I would have had to start sleeping on the couch on the first floor.“
It’s worth noting that while disability-based housing discrimination is prohibited nationwide under the Fair Housing Act and other federal laws and regulations, landlords’ financial responsibilities vary under state and local laws. Had Barbara lived just a few towns over—in Queens, or any other NYC borough—her landlord would have been financially responsible for the modification due to specific provisions in the New York City Human Rights Law.
Being aware of these discrepancies enables individuals to be fully informed about their fair housing rights and improve their living situation. Barbara admits the rules and regulations are complex—“Who could know all this, all these laws?”—but she encourages other people with disabilities facing a similar situation to learn their rights and to not give up. “You just have to keep going.”
This newsletter is part of the FHJC’s My Fair Housing Story outreach initiative. To read the other stories in the series as they are published, click HERE or visit bit.ly/FHJCmfhs.
The mission of the FHJC, a nonprofit civil rights organization, is to eliminate housing discrimination, promote policies and programs that foster open, accessible, and inclusive communities, and strengthen enforcement of fair housing laws in the New York City region.