 Green Mountain supports services to empower neighbors with disabilities to be home in the community. Major support also includes Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Alai Israel, All People Know Limits. Hello and welcome to this edition of Available Good on Air, the one and only program that in Vermont and beyond focuses on the needs, concerns, and achievements of the definitely able. I'm your host Lauren Sila. I'm Lauren Sila. And on this television program we focus on Wheelpad, an organization that focuses on helping people live better lives through inclusion and temporary housing, etc. Before we introduce our guests, let's, you know, we would like to thank our sponsors, Washington County Mental Health, Green Mountain Support Services, and Alai Israel. We would like to welcome our guest, Julie Linebacker, president and CEO of Wheelpad, Inc. Julie, thank you for joining us on Abled in Our Land. Thank you very much for having me. Can you tell us the missions and goals of Wheelpad and what exactly that is? That is a 200 square foot accessible bedroom and bathroom that can attach to an existing home. And we developed this to hang on one second. We developed this as a means of inclusion for people who have different mobility issues. And we basically, our goal is to provide inclusion and accessible housing for people with mobility issues. So can you go down the list? In terms of mobility issues, what exactly would that mean in this case? Yeah, our mission is to respectfully and supportively provide both transitional and permanent housing for people needing accessible living accommodations in an economical, socially conscious and environmentally friendly way. So we have put up Wheelpads for people. We have a veteran in Jericho who has ALS. We have a young girl, Alfie, and her parents used to carry her up and down stairs. And now, as she's aging, they want her to be able to have a little bit more independence so they add a Wheelpad onto their house. We have another one in Massachusetts that's going to a senior who does not at the moment have mobility issues but knows she will and her family wants her to live close to her. So we have another person who was unfortunately shot in a random accident and rather in that his family's house was not accessible, so we brought in a Wheelpad so he can stay with his family, continue attending school, and continue to be with his family. So there are a multitude of reasons that people choose to have a Wheelpad. It's not really for they say, oh, but I'm not in a wheelchair. I don't need the hoist because we do have a hoist track for people who need that. But it is for anyone who needs to have somewhat of an accessible place to live and wants to still be with their family whose house might not be accessible. So Wheelpad, in a sense, the short definition of it, is an extension of a house because the house is not accessible? Yes, especially in Vermont we see so many houses that, especially bathrooms because many of the housing stuff, maybe the houses in Vermont were actually built before bathrooms. Yeah, more like our houses. So with our Wheelpad, we pull it up, through a sliding glass door we build a ramp, and then through the other door on the other side, we make a connection to a window through whatever means. The person has an accessible entry, usually from a driveway, and then has their own accessible bedroom and bathroom, but can still roll into the main house for dinner to help the sister with the homework, whatever it is, so it can still be included in family. So how big, in a sense, you said square feet? 200 square feet. 200 square feet. So the bathroom is accessible, there's a track for a Hoyer lift, you said? Yes. There's a track for a Hoyer lift, it's just standard. Now what if, let's say, walk me through this, let's say for example, I know sometimes obesity is not really considered a challenge, you know, under self security administration as far as disability is concerned, but what if a person is, let's say, overweight? No issue. How can the wheel pad help that person? Same way, it's built on a trailer chassis, you can keep it on the chassis, or you can put it on a permanent foundation. When we take wheel pad on tours, we have had extremely overweight people for it, with their heavy electric wheelchair, and it is built for that, so we have had no issues. Yeah, so that works out just fine. Okay, go ahead. How long has wheel pad been around? We have been manufacturing for two years. It started as an idea with, came quadriplegic in an accident shortly before his 26th birthday. Nike had offered him a job before his accident, and Nike honored the job, so he moved to Portland, Oregon. In Portland, Oregon, a place that is known to be, you know, very socially conscious, he could not find an accessible place to live, and was forced to tell room for ate-ness, his lion's-sink architecture, so he called us, his godparents, hey, can you make this house I bought, you know, universally accessible for my wheelchair, so we did. And as we were working with Riley, my husband, who's our principal architect and has a trillion ideas a year, said, Riley, what if there had been this portable accessible bedroom that we could have attached to your mom's house, or your dad's house, so that while you were figuring out your long-term solution, you would have not been isolated in a hotel room, and here he would be picked up by the Nike van, go to work, come back home, and all his friends and family were like, Riley, come on, I'll take you out, come over to my house, I'll cook, but there was no room for people to come to his hotel room, and quite frankly, he didn't have the bandwidth, so he ended up being very socially isolated for those eight months, which is not good for anyone's head. So Riley is minority owner in the company. He helped us with promotion. The idea was born, and we went to a couple, I went to a couple of building business plan competitions, starting with this down in Brattleboro, Vermont, and the first one, you know, I won the competition. I thought, wow, we're not the only ones who think this is a good idea. And as I told you, I'm so sad not to be in your studio meeting with people from the Veterans Administration, because there are a number of veterans who are languishing in Walter Reed Hospital and various other hospitals solely. We know that when a wounded vet especially is home with their family, home where they can be participating in society, not in a hospital somewhere, that's going to help their healing of the whole person, not just the physical. So I'm down here meeting with people to see what we can do to get it through the bureaucratic process of the VA so we can actually help veterans. To backtrack for me, I mean, now as far as the Americans with Disabilities Act and accessible housing, because I know the Americans with Disabilities Act is a big thing with employment there, but as far as accessible housing, how can, because we know the Americans with Disabilities Act, there's a lot of bureaucratic stuff that needs to be changed as far as housing. What's one thing that you can work on or that you're telling people to work on when it comes to accessible housing? Well, with our architectural practice and our focus with Will Pad on ADA accommodations, what we do now in all buildings, it is so easy to make everything into what they call universal design, which either meets or exceeds the ADA requirement, the American with Disabilities Act. And it takes us a little bit of thought for inclusion. So we are very proponent, very much proponent of making every building we have include universal design. In our office, our studio in Wilmington, Vermont, we actually keep a wheelchair in there. Right now, all of our employees do not need to use a wheelchair, but whenever we're thinking about things, we keep that wheelchair in there to remind us, okay, is there an accessible bathroom on every floor of this building we're designing? Is the entry barrier free? What about the showers? Because especially right now with the advances in medical technology, more and more people are living through debilitating diseases and debilitating accidents, such as Riley, that there was an accident in the pool. You look at the extreme skiers, you look at so many people that there's no reason why all of our housing stock, especially the new stuff that's being built, should not be universally designed. Have you ever made an accessible kitchen? Yes. Yes, we did for Riley as a matter of fact. And it doesn't take that much. It means putting the, it means having, you know, we did, it means having a sink at a proper height. It means having either shelves that lower or making sure that there's room for grippers. I don't know if that's a proper name for them, but people used to get things off by herself. It means using just a plug that's easy to do. All it takes is a little thought. So what do you think, I'll give you a prime example. Some weeks ago, we interviewed a, or we went to an art gallery that they were debuting an accessible elevator, and it took them a long time to get it because of a grandfather clause in the building. Okay, so my question is, why is it that it takes organizations so long to, or why do you think, in your opinion, it takes organizations so long to put accessible things into meaning for, you know, people with special needs? Is it because of laziness or is it because your opinion? I think it's due to them not having the experience of inclusion. Maybe they've never met someone or maybe they don't have an employee. For example, we just built a ski lodge, the new Carinthia Base Lodge at Mount Snow. Yes. And we put in an accessible elevator, we put in accessible bathrooms, and not our client. Our client was wonderful. They wanted to do accessibility, but people would, other people would ask us. They would say, it's a ski lodge. Why are you putting in an accessible elevator? Have you never heard of adaptive skiing? Have you never heard of terraces? Adaptive sports in Vermont, they're big on that, yeah. Exactly. So, people resorts there who were our clients for the Carinthia, they got it 100%. It was other people saying, well, why do you have to spend that much money? You know what? It's not about spending money, it's about thought and it's about inclusion. And we are all Americans, we are all citizens, and everyone deserves to watch the ski competition. Everyone deserves it if they're into adaptive skiing, to participate in that. So it's really, I think maybe, their lack of experience with people of various abilities. Sister said that, no. Okay, so you built an accessible kitchen. Now, this is just a bathroom, you said, bathroom and bedroom type of thing. Right. Are you going to add kitchens or kitchen edge to wheel pads at any point? We, on this particular model, it's called the Norwich model because it was built by the cadets up at Norwich University, our first prototype. That is just for what it is to be attached to an existing home for homes that are not accessible. Yes. We just finished the design of an accessible tiny house that can be a standalone. Accessible what? I'm sorry, repeat that? And we hope to have that online and available within six to nine months. Wow. Okay. Have you ever made an accessible swimming pool? We have not made an accessible swimming pool yet. I'd love to see one because, you know, people, you know, it's hard for me to get in out of a pool, you know. Something without the stairs, something like a little, you know, a little easy to get in out of the pool, you know. That is the superb idea. If you know anyone that wants this, send them our way. We'll design it for them. That would be wonderful. You basically, you also besides, besides housing, you basically design anything that needs to be accessible, correct? Exactly. Yeah. Now, how long does it take as far as the wheel pad design? How long does it take to design one? Well, we have them designed. It's just the manufacturing. We build three to five at a time. And if someone needs custom, well, then it can take up to six to nine months, depending on where our manufacturer is in his cycle. But right now, for example, we have stock, we have one actually available, and we're about to go into production for five more. So it depends on when someone calls us. But usually we try to keep always at least one, usually two in stock for if someone needs something very quickly. Now, do you usually meet the people who need this? Like you have meetings with the family members? How does that go? Yes, we do. And it goes wonderfully. We meet with them because we walk every family through the process. We do have two models right now. We have the Norwitz model, which I told you about, which is the 200 square foot model. We have one that's a little bit larger because we had one client that said, well, I'm losing my mobility, but I still want to sleep next to my wife. I need a larger one. It needs to be 12-foot wide so I can have a queen bed in there. The standard wheel bed can only fit a double bed or a hospital bed. So we designed what we call the XL model, the 12-foot. Now, the XL cannot be on a chassis. That needs to be on a permanent foundation. And that one gets custom. When someone orders an XL, then we make it. And that usually takes probably about four months. Wow. Every day for restaurants? We have done accessible restaurants. We haven't used one with line sink architecture. It has designed restaurants for accessibility. Wheel bed is a product that people can just purchase. Then line sink architecture does the designs for any type of situation, whether it's an office building or a school. I really like your idea. You've got my head spinning now about designing an accessible pool because the weightlessness of water therapy is fantastic for very many people. Yeah. Now, is there anything that you haven't designed yet besides the pool that you would like to design? Do you have any future plans of designing those items? Well, as I said, we're in the middle of producing an accessible tiny home. And we really kind of go when clients come to us with an issue, then we work with our clients, we collaborate with our clients. What do you want? If someone says, OK, I want to build an observatory that I can show astronomy things to people who have mobility issues. OK, we'll design that. We would design anything. The whole thing, as I kind of keep mentioning, is it's about inclusion. We all deserve all equal opportunity to participate in life and to participate in great things. One thing that we did that we really like is we developed an accessible woodland path for the Manitou lands in West Brattleboro. The first fully accessible trail that people can go on is like a hiking trail for wheelchair users. That, I like, because being in nature is so important for all people, not just people that aren't in wheelchairs. I have to see more of that, yeah. Well, anything that we haven't covered with wheelpad that you think is important to cover? I haven't talked much about it. We always say it doesn't cost more to be beautiful. And unfortunately, I'm not there in person to show you some of the photos. But when we designed this, we had our god son Riley in mind. So he, my husband, Joseph Sinkato, the architect said, OK, but this is, you know, we have to think this is for Riley. It's got to be the coolest room in the house. So what we try to do, we always say that it doesn't need to cost more to be beautiful. Right, yeah. We didn't want it to look like a hospital room. We didn't want it to look normal. We wanted it to be non-toxic because a lot of people with spinal cord injuries, which Riley has, also have chemical sensitivity. So we worked very hard to make something that was affordable, that was beautiful, that was eco-friendly. So he came up with this idea of using a, of Laticrete, which is a inset that usually is used to set tiles in a bathroom. Now, we don't have any tiles in wheel pad because it's mobile and it has to be under 10,000 pounds to go on agency or transportation roads. So we just used the... What do you mean by under, what do you mean by under 10,000 pounds? Okay, there are restrictions to pulling trailers without a permit. And all the roads, these are the agency of transportation standards. And other than that, there's certain height, width, length, and weight restrictions for that. So we built this so that if there was a veteran say who needed a wheel pad, that his buddies could come to our factory with a trailer hitch and just pick it up and drive it home and save the delivery cost. So we really want wheel pad to be as easily used as possible. So in that, we didn't use tile. We used this finish and then a wood veneer that, yeah, just to make it look good. And, you know, the wood makes it smell good. And because we're in Vermont, we designed it with SIPPS panels, which are structurally insulated panels. The entire roof is one panel. So as you know, our snow loads in Vermont to make sure that there would be never a possibility of a leak because it's one panel. And then we did a certain type of wood on the ceiling. Again, not to raise the cost of smart and beautiful. What is it? I mean, I know we don't really talk about cost, but what is it? What does it cost the family to have a wheel pad? Or do they get special funding for it? Well, you can get funding. The base price for a wheel pad is $65,000. We are trying very hard to lower that. And I think once we build more, we'll be able to. We do have Vermont State Employees Credit Union and also Credit One will give mortgages for wheel pads. Because it's considered a small house. We've had two people use the specially adapted housing grant through the VA, and that pays in full. Our whole goal was that an SAH grant recipient could purchase, deliver, and build the connector to the house, the SAH grant. And that was our goal to make sure that any wounded service member who needed it could afford it through the SAH grant. Well, we would like to thank you for joining us on this edition of Abledon On Air. We'd definitely like to help you in your mission to promote more of wheel pad within your mission. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. And next time, it'll be in studio. Yeah, and maybe we can tour a little wheel pad. Yes, ma'am. Well, we would like to... I really appreciate your hosting and I really appreciate your program. Thank you very much. And that puts an end to this edition of Abledon On Air. I'm Alan Siler. I'm Alan Siler. And we would like to thank Wheel Pad for joining us today as well as our sponsors, Washington County Mental Health, Green Mountain Support Services, and Allah, Israel. Thank you and see you next time. You're great. Support for Abledon On Air, Green Mountain Support Services to empower neighbors with disabilities to be home in the community. Major support also includes Washington County Mental Health, where hope and support come together. Allah, Israel. All people, no limits. And the OSAM Group, working to get better for you at any moment.