How this SC town is making sure accessibility access at home is no longer a problem
When Mary Maher and Steve Griffin built their Surfside Beach home in 1998, they didn’t think about needing a lift to get into the raised house. But last winter, Griffin suffered a fall that made them think again.
After that, they decided to apply for a permit to install a lift. It wasn’t until six months later that it was installed.
Now, thanks to a new ordinance passed in Surfside Beach recently, others with disabilities in the town won’t have to go through the anxiety-inducing wait period that Maher and Griffin described.
Under previous rules, anyone who wanted to construct something on a setback -- a section of property where building is prohibited -- needed to go through the lengthy process of getting a variance. The new ordinance states that residents can build structures necessary to make their homes accessible up to 50% of the length of the setback.
The Americans with Disabilities Act, which was passed in 1990, requires public places to be accessible, but private residences aren’t regulated under the law. If a resident brings an issue to a local government, they are required to alter their codes to be more accessible unless they can prove it’s too costly or would alter the function of the government under the ADA, according to Rebecca Williams, an information specialist with the training and technical division of the ADA.
“There’s been lots of cases where people have filed an ADA complaint because municipalities wouldn’t alter an ordinance,” Williams said.
Surfside Beach town council passed the ordinance unanimously at a Nov. 10 meeting, and council members were vocal about their support.
“People are looking ahead and as our community ages we’re probably gonna see more and more of this,” council member Debbie Scoles said when the ordinance was first introduced in late October.
Apply and wait
For residents like Maher and Griffin and Everote and Ray Alexander, applying for the variance meant months upon months of waiting, partly due to the coronavirus pandemic derailing scheduled meetings.
Maher and Griffin, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease eight years ago, said the complicated process of getting the variance and installing the porch lift made them consider moving.
“It would have been very expensive for us to move and emotionally very tough,” Maher said.
The couple first requested the permit in January. Their porch lift wasn’t installed until June.
“When there’s a health issue, to wait a month even to have a meeting and get it approved is a long time,” Maher said. “It would have saved us, or at least me, months of anxiety and worry.”
Parkinson’s often comes with symptoms like stiffness and shaking. While Griffin isn’t wheelchair-bound, he uses a cane to walk. Stairs posed a particular challenge, especially since the home is stilted, like many others near the beach.
“People who have Parkinson’s can fall in an instant,” Griffin said. “Standing there one minute and on the floor the next.”
The couple eventually sent a letter to be read at the Surfside Beach town council meeting earlier this fall. Since everything at council meetings is public, they hesitated to put their story out there, but decided “whatever works, whatever is going to help.”
‘He was confined’
Ray Alexander waited five months for the town of Surfside Beach to approve a request to get a lift installed in his home.
“It was a nightmare,” Ray’s wife, Everote Alexander, said. “If I had known, before I purchased in Surfside, how cantankerous and how hard it was to deal with those folks in town hall, I would never have bought in Surfside.”
Surfside Beach Town Council did not respond to requests for comment.
Ray Alexander has mobility issues that make it difficult for him to get up the stairs to his Surfside Beach home. Ray is a diabetic and cancer patient.
“He has no feeling in his fingertips or his feet,” Everote Alexander said. “So if he stumbles, he doesn’t feel it. It’s really dangerous for him to try and be going up and down the stairs.”
Ray Alexander said he was afraid of falling and becoming injured when using the stairs to get into his home.
“It was slow. I had to take one step at a time and hold onto both sides of the rail. If you can imagine going up 13 steps one at a time, it takes a while,” Ray Alexander said.
Everote and Ray Alexander, who live in Lexington, S.C. for most of the year, said the accessibility issues meant they couldn’t visit their Surfside Beach home as often.
“It was a constant fear of him falling,” Everote Alexander said. “When he went up the steps, I followed him. When he went down the steps, I went in front of him.
“Before we got the lift, he got up, he had to stay up. When he got down, he had to stay down. He was confined. Which should not have happened,” Everote Alexander said. “That permit should have been issued immediately and that lift should have been installed in June instead of November.”
“The only thing I have to do (now) is walk to the back porch, take one step, and I’m on the lift and going down,” Ray Alexander said. “It’s a lot easier for me.”
‘They just will lose access to their house’
Tim Moore, a certified home access consultant at Mobility Works in Murrells Inlet, worked with both couples to get their lifts installed. He said many homes in Surfside Beach aren’t equipped to handle an interior elevator, so most people who need lifts end up getting a porch lift installed on the exterior of the home.
“Without this equipment, plain and simple, they just will lose access to their house,” he said.
Moore said his team, which works in three states, installs anywhere from eight to 12 porch lifts each month, depending on the time of year. Different cities have different rules for additions onto homes like this, but some municipalities don’t regulate it at all.
Horry County and Georgetown County have passed similar laws, but Surfside Beach and some other towns are still getting up to speed. A recent case in Irmo, South Carolina, resulted in a complaint with the Department of Justice, which is responsible for enforcing the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to Sarah Nichols, a spokesperson for Able South Carolina.
Nichols said the situations in Surfside Beach and Irmo are representative of a larger issue surrounding accessibility, specifically in places like Surfside Beach which attract swaths of retirees.
Some of these cities, often quiet, picturesque beach towns, can get caught in a catch-22, Nichols said. The local governments sometimes end up “holding onto these aesthetics” instead of keeping accessibility in mind.
“When you rely on people who are retired to come and live in your community, you want to make it as accessible as possible,” she said.
This story was originally published November 23, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
