Sometimes you run across news that is so weird that you've just gotta say something about it -- even when it has nothing to do with Louisville access.
There's just such a story out of Syracuse, New York: On Nov. 19, the Syracuse Post-Standard reported that developers were planning to turn a long-closed state institution into a segregated resort -- "for the handicapped only."
I'm not sure which is worse: the idea, or the fact that the developers and the state seem to clueless as to why this might in fact be offensive.
"What we are trying to do is give handicapped people something they never have had," Jim Benjamin, one of the owners of the firm Syracuse Resort for the Disabled told the newspaper. The firm was created specifically to purchase the property from the state and develop it.
"They can go to any hotel. But in most hotels, there's one handicapped bathroom. Here, the whole thing will be for them."
This one quote brings up so many issues, none of them asked in the stories, that I've been spending awhile trying to figure out how to explain things succinctly:
1. Why should something that's accessible immediately brand it as for "the handicapped only"? That's really at the heart of the thinking behind this -- and it's the same kind of thinking that keeps nondisabled people out of accessible restroom stalls in restaurants, or reluctant to push the button to activate an automated door into a mall, even when their arms are overflowing with packages. "If it's accessible, it's 'special for the handicapped.'" That kind of thinking, which seems to be the basis of Benjamin's concept, is the enemy of universal design -- the concept behind designing buildings and products that are simply accessible for everyone. Access of a piecemeal nature -- the kind Benjamin has observed in hotels -- in fact encourages and perpetuates segregationist thinking, and that's at the heart of Benjamin's proposal.
2. Any new or renovated hotel that has only "one handicapped bathroom" is breaking a bunch of laws. Nonetheless, I don't doubt that many hotels are in just this category.
3. If Benjamin-and-partners are committed to the idea of disabled people having access at resorts, why don't they simply design a fully accessible resort -- and open it to everyone? Is that such a far-out idea? Evidently.
Benjamin, you see, is not focused on universal design but on "helping." He gets his inspiration not from the disability rights and access movement but from a relative newcomer to disability, who perhaps can be forgiven for not seeing the larger issue:
Benjamin said his brother was the inspiration for the resort concept. His brother became disabled about three years ago after he suffered a stroke, Benjamin said.
Syracuse Resort intends to convert the existing 585,000-square-foot compound into a luxury hotel, he said.
"We felt this building was perfect. And it was made and designed for handicapped. That's the reason we came to Syracuse," Benjamin said.
Benjamin's brother may not know about the larger issues, but someone who plans to develop a major resort has some responsibility to do a little research, it seems.
It also seems clear that Benjamin is clueless as well about the history of institutionalization, and its horrors. The Syracuse Developmental Center functioned for more than a century as an institution for people labeled mentally disabled. The last of its 430 residents were moved into group homes in 1998. Since then, the site has been largely vacant. "It costs the state about $1.5 million per year to maintain," the newspaper reported, raising yet more questions about the responsible use of public money.
Maybe most folks don't realize the hell-holes that these kinds of institutions were. Or how disability groups have fought for decades to get them closed nationwide. (Here in Kentucky we still have Oakwood, and parents of the disabled people put there fight bitterly to keep it open.) For more about why institutions are so disliked by disability activists, go here and here and here.
"How about a resort just for Jews on the former site of Dachau?" quipped the disability rights activist who alerted me to the story.
The site itself isn't the most problematic part of this story, though. The problem is the segregation which is being proposed -- without a clue as to why segregation isn't a good idea.
Syracuse disability activist Karen Gillette called Benjamin's plan "bizarre". Others have vowed to protest if the plan goes forward.
