ADA Case vs Shelter Providers Settled in DC

(A settlement agreement in an ADA case brought in Washington DC by lawyers for the US Department of Justice [yes, the same DOJ that says it's OK to torture prisoners] has nationwide significance for shelters and homeless services providers.  Here's some details.)

On December 10, 2008, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) entered into a settlement agreement with the District of Columbia to improve the accessibility of D.C. homeless shelters for people with disabilities after numerous complaints about the District's widespread violations of Title II of the American with Disabilities Act (ADA).  The agreement covers all severe weather, low barrier, and temporary shelters run directly or through contractual arrangement by D.C.  The settlement will remain in effect for three years for all terms except the physical accessibility provisions, which will remain in effect for five years.  The full settlement can be found at http://www.ada.gov/dc_shelter.htm#settlement.

The press releases from the Department of Justice and the D.C. Attorney General summarize the settlement as follows:

"The terms of the settlement require the District to increase the accessibility of its shelter program by:

• Developing a comprehensive plan to ensure that persons with disabilities have equal access to the District's homeless shelter facilities;
• Implementing specific policies, practices and training to ensure that individuals with disabilities have equivalent access to all services and activities of the shelter program;
• Improving notice and procedures to ensure that shelter applicants and residents are aware of their rights under the ADA;
• Enhancing effective communication with shelter applicants and residents who have disabilities related to speech, vision or hearing; and
• Enhancing oversight of private contractors and subcontractors that provide homeless shelter services in the District."

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2008/December/08-crt-1096.html; http://dc.gov/mayor/news/release.asp?id=1438&mon=200812. 

Major findings and requirements contained within the settlement:

1. D.C. must make changes to its policies and procedures to allow for greater programmatic accessibility, including the following:
• Notifying shelter applicants of their rights to request reasonable modifications to rules, policies, practices, or procedures because of a disability.
• Individuals are not required to use specific forms or procedures to make requests, and requests cannot be denied for failing to follow a preferred procedure.
• Shelter providers shall only request verification regarding the reasonable modification request if it is necessary and tailored to verifying the disability or the need for the request.  Such verification can usually come from the requester or another person in the know.
• Shelter providers must respond promptly to requests for reasonable modifications.  In addition: "Reasonable modification requests shall be granted immediately where the denial of the request is reasonably likely to cause serious harm to an individual with a disability." (Paragraph 21(a)(iii)).

2. DOJ surveyed 15 shelters for physical accessibility, 10 of which D.C. claimed met ADA standards. DOJ found that none of the shelters complied with the ADA, thus D.C. does not operate a single homeless shelter that is accessible to persons with physical disabilities.  There is a detailed appendix to the settlement listing the violations. 

3. D.C. must draft and implement an interim and comprehensive physical accessibility plan to bring the shelter system into compliance with the ADA.  The first drafts of the plans are due no later than ninety (90) days from December 10^th.  The shelters must be brought into compliance within two (2) years of the completion of the comprehensive plan.  The public will have an opportunity to comment on these plans in writing and at a public hearing.

4. If the comprehensive physical accessibility plan does not require that every shelter be accessible, "it must ensure that:
1. the locations of the accessible Shelters are at least equivalent to the locations of the inaccessible Shelters with regard to the Shelters' proximity to various forms of public transportation and non-Shelter services that are frequently used by individuals residing at Shelters including, but not limited to, meal programs, employment assistance programs, health clinics, legal clinics, and government offices that administer or distribute benefits to low-income residents of the District;
2. individuals with physical disabilities are not subjected to Shelter rules or requirements more burdensome than those used at inaccessible Shelters;
3. individuals with physical disabilities have access to the Shelter Program in the most integrated setting appropriate to the needs of such individuals; and
4. individuals with physical disabilities otherwise have equivalent access to the services, programs, and activities of the Shelter Program." (Paragraph 20(c)).

5. D.C. must develop the means to effectively communicate with shelter applicants and residents with speech, vision, or hearing-related disabilities, including acquiring necessary equipment, alternative formats, and oral and sign language interpretation services.

6. D.C. must draft and implement a plan for accessible transportation among shelters and services.

7. D.C. must have at least one ADA Coordinator to oversee ADA compliance in the shelter system, resolve complaints, and monitor the adherence to the terms of the settlement.  Currently, Rhonda Stewart at DHS is the ADA Coordinator (671-4422).

8. D.C. has to post notifications of ADA rights and complaint procedures in all shelters and places where shelter residents might use services.

9. D.C. must develop and implement procedures to improve monitoring and oversight of the ADA compliance of its contractors and subcontractors to "include, but not necessarily be limited to:
1. review of contractors' or subcontractors' written rules and procedures;
2. scheduled and unscheduled visits to intake sites and Shelters. Such visits shall include inspection of clients' files and interviews with Shelter clients and applicants;
3. review of Shelter denials;
4. strict time limits for corrective action for any deficiencies discovered during monitoring; and
5. sanctions for contractors or subcontractors." (Paragraph 24).

10. D.C. must develop, through the D.C. Office of Disability Rights, a comprehensive training program for shelter staff on the ADA, reasonable modification policies and procedures and the requirements of the settlement.

No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in ‘Passive Houses’(Germany)

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL - NY Times 12/27/08

DARMSTADT, Germany — From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace.

In Berthold Kaufmann's home, there is, to be fair, one radiator for emergency backup in the living room — but it is not in use. Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann's new "passive house" and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer.

"You don't think about temperature — the house just adjusts," said Mr. Kaufmann, watching his 2-year-old daughter, dressed in a T-shirt, tuck into her sausage in the spacious living room, whose glass doors open to a patio. His new home uses about one-twentieth the heating energy of his parents' home of roughly the same size, he said.

Architects in many countries, in attempts to meet new energy efficiency standards like the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standard in the United States, are designing homes with better insulation and high-efficiency appliances, as well as tapping into alternative sources of power, like solar panels and wind turbines.

The concept of the passive house, pioneered in this city of 140,000 outside Frankfurt, approaches the challenge from a different angle. Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants' bodies.

And in Germany, passive houses cost only about 5 to 7 percent more to build than conventional houses.

Decades ago, attempts at creating sealed solar-heated homes failed, because of stagnant air and mold. But new passive houses use an ingenious central ventilation system. The warm air going out passes side by side with clean, cold air coming in, exchanging heat with 90 percent efficiency.

"The myth before was that to be warm you had to have heating. Our goal is to create a warm house without energy demand," said Wolfgang Hasper, an engineer at the Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt. "This is not about wearing thick pullovers, turning the thermostat down and putting up with drafts. It's about being comfortable with less energy input, and we do this by recycling heating."

There are now an estimated 15,000 passive houses around the world, the vast majority built in the past few years in German-speaking countries or Scandinavia.

The first passive home was built here in 1991 by Wolfgang Feist, a local physicist, but diffusion of the idea was slowed by language. The courses and literature were mostly in German, and even now the components are mass-produced only in this part of the world.

The industry is thriving in Germany, however — for example, schools in Frankfurt are built with the technique.

Moreover, its popularity is spreading. The European Commission is promoting passive-house building, and the European Parliament has proposed that new buildings meet passive-house standards by 2011.

The United States Army, long a presence in this part of Germany, is considering passive-house barracks.

"Awareness is skyrocketing; it's hard for us to keep up with requests," Mr. Hasper said.

Nabih Tahan, a California architect who worked in Austria for 11 years, is completing one of the first passive houses in the United States for his family in Berkeley. He heads a group of 70 Bay Area architects and engineers working to encourage wider acceptance of the standards. "This is a recipe for energy that makes sense to people," Mr. Tahan said. "Why not reuse this heat you get for free?"

Ironically, however, when California inspectors were examining the Berkeley home to determine whether it met "green" building codes (it did), he could not get credit for the heat exchanger, a device that is still uncommon in the United States. "When you think about passive-house standards, you start looking at buildings in a different way," he said.

Buildings that are certified hermetically sealed may sound suffocating. (To meet the standard, a building must pass a "blow test" showing that it loses minimal air under pressure.) In fact, passive houses have plenty of windows — though far more face south than north — and all can be opened.

Inside, a passive home does have a slightly different gestalt from conventional houses, just as an electric car drives differently from its gas-using cousin. There is a kind of spaceship-like uniformity of air and temperature. The air from outside all goes through HEPA filters before entering the rooms. The cement floor of the basement isn't cold. The walls and the air are basically the same temperature.

Look closer and there are technical differences: When the windows are swung open, you see their layers of glass and gas, as well as the elaborate seals around the edges. A small, grated duct near the ceiling in the living room brings in clean air. In the basement there is no furnace, but instead what looks like a giant Styrofoam cooler, containing the heat exchanger.

Passive houses need no human tinkering, but most architects put in a switch with three settings, which can be turned down for vacations, or up to circulate air for a party (though you can also just open the windows). "We've found it's very important to people that they feel they can influence the system," Mr. Hasper said.

The houses may be too radical for those who treasure an experience like drinking hot chocolate in a cold kitchen. But not for others. "I grew up in a great old house that was always 10 degrees too cold, so I knew I wanted to make something different," said Georg W. Zielke, who built his first passive house here, for his family, in 2003 and now designs no other kinds of buildings.

In Germany the added construction costs of passive houses are modest and, because of their growing popularity and an ever larger array of attractive off-the-shelf components, are shrinking.

But the sophisticated windows and heat-exchange ventilation systems needed to make passive houses work properly are not readily available in the United States. So the construction of passive houses in the United States, at least initially, is likely to entail a higher price differential.

Moreover, the kinds of home construction popular in the United States are more difficult to adapt to the standard: residential buildings tend not to have built-in ventilation systems of any kind, and sliding windows are hard to seal.

Dr. Feist's original passive house — a boxy white building with four apartments — looks like the science project that it was intended to be. But new passive houses come in many shapes and styles. The Passivhaus Institut, which he founded a decade ago, continues to conduct research, teaches architects, and tests homes to make sure they meet standards. It now has affiliates in Britain and the United States.

Still, there are challenges to broader adoption even in Europe.

Because a successful passive house requires the interplay of the building, the sun and the climate, architects need to be careful about site selection. Passive-house heating might not work in a shady valley in Switzerland, or on an urban street with no south-facing wall. Researchers are looking into whether the concept will work in warmer climates — where a heat exchanger could be used in reverse, to keep cool air in and warm air out.

And those who want passive-house mansions may be disappointed. Compact shapes are simpler to seal, while sprawling homes are difficult to insulate and heat.

Most passive houses allow about 500 square feet per person, a comfortable though not expansive living space. Mr. Hasper said people who wanted thousands of square feet per person should look for another design.