 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters here. And welcome to the condo insider or program about everything having to do with condominium living, condominium owning. Even last week we had how it was to buy a condominium. And this week I am pleased to have as my guest somebody who I've known for a number of years and have actually spoke with or at events over the years as a panel speaker and things like that. And that is Francine Y. who is the Executive Director of the Disability and Communication Access Board of the Department of Health. And welcome, Francine. I'm so excited to have you here today. As I mentioned before, you and I have spoken together at a number of events over the years and I will admit that I have actually learned some things from you over the years. So first to start out our program today, which again is about condo living, but we'll get to that in just a little bit. But first I wanted to ask you, because I was curious myself, what is the Disability and Communication Access Board? Okay. Well, the Disability and Communication Access Board, we shortened it to call it DECAB, the initials DCAB. So it's just long for me to say that over again. So DECAB is a state agency. We are administratively attached to the Department of Health. And our job is to promote equal access for persons with disabilities in Hawaii and society. So we have a number of programs that we offer. We're not a direct service agency in the sense that we don't provide therapy or counseling or rehab or education services. We don't actually have case workers. But what we do is we provide information and technical assistance, and to some extent, regulatory services on that impact equal access for a person with a disability to benefit and to live independently in society. So you're not actually going out and doing these things, but you're providing the information for the people who need the assistance. Right. We don't actually go out most of the time, but we do provide a number of services that are definitely interactive in the community. So as an example, we administer the parking program for people with disabilities who get a placard. So we write the rules. We contract with the counties where you go and get your placard. We maintain the database. We get the statistics. We order the placards. We order the decals. We help with enforcement. We work on renewals. So we are what you would call technical assistance and voluntary compliance because there's so many laws that give people with disabilities rights. But we are really there to help both the consumer with a disability as well as the business or the employer or the government agency comply with the law. Our goal is to keep you away from court. Yes. Well, it's interesting you said there's so many laws. Just under my studies of the Americans with Disabilities Act, I have three notebooks on that and they're fairly thick notebooks and that's just the law. That's just one law. Yeah. So and of course you have... There's fair housing law. There are laws that govern the air carriers, access act airplanes. There's laws impacting kids in school. There are laws affecting telecommunications and the internet so that there's a lot. But by far the broadest and the one people know the most about is the Americans with Disabilities Act and then subsequent to that would be the Fair Housing Act. Would be the Fair Housing Laws. Well you know it's interesting you comment about it's not just parking and things like that. Many years ago even before the Americans with Disabilities came out we had a call from a student wanting to attend one of our classes and she was hearing impaired so she was using the teletype at that time and so we would talk to the operator and the operator would type and then type the response back and I'm thinking to myself now that technology has come so far that now you have email, now you have texting and a lot of what we were used to seeing like even at the airport you used to have telephones that had to pull out keyboard on them. Well you still have those, it's just that they're rarely used because technology basically technology has advanced faster than government rules can... This is true. Because government rules are really really slow. In my teachings of disability laws and stuff for the realtors I've pointed out that it's been recognized that there are well over 900 recognized disabilities but not all those disabilities require any special treatment so to speak. You're right that not all disabilities have a functional limitation. I think the number 900, I mean you can play around with how you categorize but there are as many medical conditions as you can diagnose going to medical school so each one of those is a separate impairment whether or not there's a functional limitation or not just depends upon the level of severity and mitigating factors. People have all sorts of conditions that are well controlled by medication. Well it's like one instructor told me many many many years ago not all disabilities are visible so somebody could be disabled may even need accommodation of some sort but it's not visible and I think that's what happens when you're dealing with the handicapped parking space is somebody sees somebody get out of the car and walk away and they go well you can't possibly be handicapped well that's not necessarily so. Right. So well first thank you for explaining what it is you actually do. And beside parking we do interpreter testing credentialing. We review blueprints for projects to ensure that they're designed appropriately. We help individuals and their employers if they need to understand what a possible reasonable accommodation on the job is but if you think you've personally been discriminated against we don't investigate your complaint. You're helping people stay away from that but then they have to go to either Fair Housing or the Hawaii Civil Rights Commission if they feel that they've had something done wrong to them. And if somebody gets to that point and says you know I absolutely feel I've been wrong then we'll tell them what the process is to file a complaint. Well you had also pointed out that you help businesses and I hope I'm not the only one who sends you crazy stuff although I'm beginning to think I am but I one time had sent you a picture of a parking space that said handicapped parking only and right underneath it was another sign that says electric car parking only. And that raised an issue with me because to me it was it's either one or the other it's not both. You're correct yes. But you had mentioned in that one and we won't say the name for the sake of propriety that you had actually guys had reviewed their plan before they opened. I think in that particular instance we had seen the space although I can't remember where it was but we would to answer the very specific question EV parking stalls have to be accessible so that someone who has a disability and has a car that needs to use that stall can use it but those are separate than the accessible parking stalls. And there's some discussion you know of that an EV an EV location is really not a parking space it's a charging station where you leave your car while it's being charged as opposed to it being a parking space. Yeah that's a good argument though there. Yeah. Yeah. Well now that we know what your department does let's talk about where some issues would come up in say condominium living and the first one would be which realtors and particular property managers have to deal with on a regular basis and that's reasonable modifications. Yeah reasonable modification is a structural issue and by that I mean that we're talking about the physical design of a space so if a condominium isn't designed to be accessible then we talk about what kind of reasonable modification do you make. After the Fair Housing Act was enacted in 1988 all condos that were built at apartments multi-family dwelling units were supposed to and I mentioned supposed to because not everything is done the way it's supposed to but in theory everything that was constructed after the Fair Housing Act went into law is already supposed to be accessible. That's a common area and then there are supposed to be certain features for every unit that is on a floor that's accessed by an elevator but usually the problem is not a new condo the problem is an older condo and the law does not have any requirement that the condos go back and retro automatically retrofit so what the condo what the Fair Housing Law says is that a condo association has to consider a request by an individual with a disability who says I need a ramp at the front door I would like to maybe put some modification into the area where the pool is typically the issue is ramps that's the most common or or even a person says you know I own my unit and I would like to make some changes within the unit and I to make it more accessible so what what Fair Housing says is that the condo association has to allow a person to do that but they can also ask the person to pay for it yes exactly unlike another law the Americans with Disabilities Act and one of the reasons is that the condo is where you live you you've typically purchased it or if you even if you are a renter you're you have a an owner and you know Fair Housing Law they did not want to say that all older condominiums had to put in expenses because you didn't know which unit a person with a disability might want to live in exactly yeah and just because they're disabled the assumption is oh it's all going to be on the ground floor no not at all they can be on any floor that they want to be right in my past experience and property management at least the most common requests I used to get for reasonable modification was for a ramp you know they can't get their wheelchair up the up onto the sidewalk and grab bars in the showers yeah and a lot of people know that under the Fair Housing Law for those kind of request it says that you must put the unit back in the same shape it was before you rented it right but what a lot of people don't realize and it's not written into the law but if the modifications that have been made do not affect somebody who is not disabled from renting the property you would normally not make them unwiden a door that you had widened to accommodate a wheelchair or even take the grab bars right or and if you're putting it into a common area like the front door you would not necessarily want to take away a ramp to the front door because there might be somebody next week or next month that's renting yeah well and I always joke you know let them leave the grab bars in the shower because we're all going to need them one day so you and I were chatting before the show because I brought up a fact that I had a condo association where owner had requested to put in a ramp and the board president did not allow the ramp he decided to have a curb cut put in and the and the reason he did that is because he knew that this request was going to come again someday and why not do it right the first time and I think that was a wise decision on that association right well they actually would have to allow the person put it in they could condition putting it in on meeting certain standards but if it's in the common area the maintenance and liability is going to fall on the exact nation so it's really wise for the association to take the bull by the horns and to go ahead and do it because if I were to ask to put in a ramp because I had an elderly person or a person with a disability and in where I live the fact is that it's going to be used by everybody with their shopping carts baby so the association really ought to do it you know and not say hey you know you can go ahead and put it in the way you want because you want to make sure it's got the right slopes and the right grab handrails and everything well we're going to take a quick break and when we come back we're going to talk about reasonable accommodations which is different than modifications but we'll be right back with more of the condo insider this is think tech Hawaii raising public awareness we have this crazy thing going on today I was just walking by and all these djs and producers are set up all around the city I just walked by and I said what's happening guys they told me they were making music so I do it and welcome back to the condo insider everything you ever wanted to know about living and owning in a condominium and we have our guests with us again today Francine why the executive director and the disability and communication access board of the department of health and before we went to break we were talking about reasonable modifications right but there's also this area called reasonable accommodations right that's a little bit different you want to explain that to us yes as I said reasonable modification is modifying bricks and mortar handrails grab bars rams what something even as far as a lift into a swimming pool reasonable accommodation is a modification to your policies and procedures the way you do business so the the easiest example I could give which I say easy but that but it's not typical is let's say somebody has a set of bylaws yeah and it's printed on a piece of paper but you have a tenant or condo condo owner who is blind or visually impaired low vision and they can't read it and they say I'd like to get a copy in braille or large print or I'd like it in electronic format so I can listen to it on the computer you know with voice synthesizer that is an accommodation because you're modifying the way you do business in order to accommodate a person with a disability so I'll have to admit I learned something from you all the time I had never thought of the aspect of the condo association's documents I know when I teach classes if somebody is disabled they need to let me know so I can provide the proper you know is signer braille documents I had never thought of that for bylaws and house rules and stuff like that so I learned something new every day so another type of accommodation might be that if I am in a unit if I'm in a building with central maintenance fees that includes electricity but that also means that nobody has air conditioning as an example but I have a respiratory condition or that requires me to be on oxygen or requires me to have an air conditioner because I have to clear the air of a doctor's note so I may have to run the electricity 24-7 for that particular device so the association might have to accommodate their policy of no AC or whatever to accommodate my needs to have additional equipment well it's interesting you bring that up because one of my friends who was here on a wahoo from Maui for a few months going through rehab from a hip replacement needed to be in an air conditioned environment and where she was staying was one of those situations where electricity was included in the maintenance fee so she was allowed to have an air conditioner but she paid an additional $50 a month correct that's correct and and so the electric company can give you a really good very accurate estimate of how much you're running a bipap machine or a CPAP machine or oxygen concentrator would be and in fact the Department of Housing and Urban Development when they give subsidies for low to moderate income houses for instance at public housing they have an adjustment based upon different types of appliances if you happen to have a disability so that's already built in and calculated they'll give you $27 a month more or $40 or whatever it might be depending upon your situation so that's not an uncommon request somebody might say you know you might have a rule that says only tenants may use the washing machine because you don't obviously you don't want to be having all your relatives come in exactly and use the machine but if i if you have an individual who has an attendant and that individual has quadriplegia and can't do his own laundry then the the rule has to be modified to allow the tenant to use the washing machine funny you should say that i've been noticing over the last few years more and more rules so to speak where they're now acknowledging caretakers right also being covered if they're taking care of somebody who is disabled right yes so at least now we're getting to the point where caretakers are also acknowledged because somebody's got to come in and do the stuff for for people with disability yeah do the laundry have an extra set of keys perhaps because the individual's going to be coming in two or three times a day and typically the condo association rules only give a key out to somebody who's residing there now the other thing is in regards to rules is and i've seen it many times um is no external and uh ornamentation outside the door like please take your slippers off that kind of stuff but if the person is hearing impaired as an example they must allow them to install one of the special um doorbells right which when they push the doorbell the lights flash in the unit yes so if someone's deaf or hard of hearing the um the adjustments would include that type of doorbell um if they have something on their phone probably nobody would ever yeah you wouldn't need any kind of a special permission to do that but yeah so there's there's a lot of nuance things that that people may need to be accommodated and that's um what reasonable accommodation means well i think also when you talked about policy like the bylaws and stuff like that you could actually have something in the bylaws or the house rules that on the face of it doesn't look discriminatory right um but the enforcement of it becomes discriminatory which is disparate impact which has really come up again uh in the last couple years because people have good intentions when they make policy but don't think beyond that policy that it could have an effect on somebody with a disability right so we're seeing more and more of those cases starting to pop up right now by far and and i don't i know we're not going to discuss this today because this is a whole radio show by itself but by far the biggest reasonable accommodation request is for somebody to have an animal or which would be either in housing either a service animal or an emotional support animal in uh an association or a building that doesn't allow pets if it allows pets that's not the issue i think at every seminar you and i have ever done that is the number one topic that's right but prior to that happening because that's sort of been really on the rise in the last four or five years i think one of the biggest issues at a condo association prior to the emotional support animal issue or service animal issue was parking right right because well because parking is limited and in many condo associations and even some apartments as well there is a specifically a specific assigned stall and it comes deeded to the condo so it's very difficult to uh if not impossible to force somebody to give up a parking stall so if you have a hundred unit building and you have a hundred unit excuse me you have a hundred units and you have a hundred parking stalls and you don't have any extras there's not a lot of flexibility there when though they're deeded and so if i buy into a unit and at the time that i buy into it i don't have a disability but i decide to live there for 40 years or 30 years and at some point acquire a disability i might be using a wheelchair and then what happens i say i want to i want accessible parking stall and my parking stalls on the fifth floor but i can't force the person who has their parking assigned next to the first floor on the ground floor to give up their parking you know if all parking is not assigned but is open and the management has the opportunity to reserve a stall that's different yeah and then you get into real complications when when either you have a unit that's part rental part owners part vacation rentals which are going to be transient or that you have people with placards parking in the guest stalls that's another difficult and you know one of the things that over all the years that i've been doing management and stuff there people always complain about the special things that the disabled person gets well i try to remind people in my classes and even one to one that being a person with the disability is the only minority group that you can become a member of in an instant yeah you're gonna have a stroke you can get hit by a car and suddenly you are now part of this minority group and i've actually seen it where i've had people argue with me about giving a special parking space and then a couple years later they themselves are disabled and demanding the same the same you know so it's it's an interesting aspect there yeah i i'd say parking is very difficult to accommodate and sometimes depending upon the organization the way the association is structured you can encourage people to swap stalls but sometimes it just isn't possible when the law was written there was an expectation not expect there was the assumption there was the assumption that management had control of all the parking stalls which isn't the case and management could then say scott if you need a parking stall because you have a placard we're going to give you stall 101 and we're going to move and they could move people around and in some places they can in some places they can't they can't do that but i found that the vast majority they can't they can't you know it the parking to me seems in a commercial setting it's possible in a residential setting like a condominium it it can get pretty hairy that's right well we've run out of time it's the fastest 30 minutes we've ever gone through but again i want to thank our guest francine for coming in today i'm always fascinated with everything that she tells me and i again learned something new today just sitting next to you so thank you again for being on the condo insider you're welcome and be sure to tune in next thursday for everything you ever wanted to know about condominium living and condominium ownership right here on condo insider thank you