Why the heck I'm living here...
Feb. 12th, 2008 03:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
capri0mniThere were a couple of replies to my last entry, wondering why the heck I'm living here, since it seems like such a bad match. I could reply to each of those replies. But I decided to make a new entry, so it's out in the open (and I don't have to repeat myself). So here goes:
If I chose a city, I'd have to live in an apartment:
ADA (The Americans with Disabilituies Act) requires that there be a minimum of apartments in buildings with a certain number of tenents be made wheelchair accessible. But ADA uses the template of a 5'8" paralised person for determining the standards for public access. This means (for example) that toilets are raised to a height that enables a person to slide sideways directly from the seat of the wheelchair to toilet. But I am 4'10", and not paralised... I have to stand up from my wheelchair and step and turn and sit down on the toilet. When the toilet is raised several inches, I also have to try and jump up and backwards to get onto it. This is an inconvenience I can live with if I have do it once, every so often. But it is uncomfortable, awkward, and potentionally unsafe if I have to do it several times a day, every day (law of averages). I also need my countertops to be at 30" high, instead of 33", and so forth.
So I decided to have a house built designed to be barrier-free for me, not some anonymous standard that I don't fit. This meant I needed to buy my own land.
When I moved down here, I was promised a better system of public transportation:
According to the realtor, when I was investigating this area, there was an ambulette service provided for people in wheelchairs, that gave door-to-door service. Unfortunately, by the time my house was finished, the system had been cut back, and you needed to call ahead by 48 hours if you needed a ride anywhere.
In the years since, it has been cut back even more, and now only follows the strick letter of the ADA law, giving exactly the same rights as able-bodied people: now, instead of door-to-door service, it will only drop a person off within 3/4 of a mile of a bus stop... which, if you don't have access to a bus stop, because you have no sidewalks, is just as good as nothing (and then the local mass transit system says it's not worth expanding bus routes, because no one uses them *headdesk*).
I moved here for the climate:
The same amount of snow that would stop me, in my wheelchair, stops everyone else, too.
This place is still close enough to my childhood home:
So that I can still travel back home, occassionally, within one day, without flying.
I chose not to move next door to relatives:
Because I feared that those relatives would see my pressence as an obligation, and I didn't want family resentments to arise. I now regret that decision. But I can't go back in time and unmake it.
And that's it. I would move away, except the first reason still holds, and won't change, regardless of where I might move to. And even if I sell this place for a profit, the cost of building a new place to live somewhere else would also be more expensive (and, regionally, this is still a relatively cheap place to live). And, inside the walls of this house, I am comfortable -- my kitchen might be a little nicer if I had a bit more room there, but otherwise this house does fit me, even if I do get lonely, sometimes.
If I chose a city, I'd have to live in an apartment:
ADA (The Americans with Disabilituies Act) requires that there be a minimum of apartments in buildings with a certain number of tenents be made wheelchair accessible. But ADA uses the template of a 5'8" paralised person for determining the standards for public access. This means (for example) that toilets are raised to a height that enables a person to slide sideways directly from the seat of the wheelchair to toilet. But I am 4'10", and not paralised... I have to stand up from my wheelchair and step and turn and sit down on the toilet. When the toilet is raised several inches, I also have to try and jump up and backwards to get onto it. This is an inconvenience I can live with if I have do it once, every so often. But it is uncomfortable, awkward, and potentionally unsafe if I have to do it several times a day, every day (law of averages). I also need my countertops to be at 30" high, instead of 33", and so forth.
So I decided to have a house built designed to be barrier-free for me, not some anonymous standard that I don't fit. This meant I needed to buy my own land.
When I moved down here, I was promised a better system of public transportation:
According to the realtor, when I was investigating this area, there was an ambulette service provided for people in wheelchairs, that gave door-to-door service. Unfortunately, by the time my house was finished, the system had been cut back, and you needed to call ahead by 48 hours if you needed a ride anywhere.
In the years since, it has been cut back even more, and now only follows the strick letter of the ADA law, giving exactly the same rights as able-bodied people: now, instead of door-to-door service, it will only drop a person off within 3/4 of a mile of a bus stop... which, if you don't have access to a bus stop, because you have no sidewalks, is just as good as nothing (and then the local mass transit system says it's not worth expanding bus routes, because no one uses them *headdesk*).
I moved here for the climate:
The same amount of snow that would stop me, in my wheelchair, stops everyone else, too.
This place is still close enough to my childhood home:
So that I can still travel back home, occassionally, within one day, without flying.
I chose not to move next door to relatives:
Because I feared that those relatives would see my pressence as an obligation, and I didn't want family resentments to arise. I now regret that decision. But I can't go back in time and unmake it.
And that's it. I would move away, except the first reason still holds, and won't change, regardless of where I might move to. And even if I sell this place for a profit, the cost of building a new place to live somewhere else would also be more expensive (and, regionally, this is still a relatively cheap place to live). And, inside the walls of this house, I am comfortable -- my kitchen might be a little nicer if I had a bit more room there, but otherwise this house does fit me, even if I do get lonely, sometimes.
