Irony

I'm writing this, my first CACAD blog entry, at an odd juncture in my life. To give the punch-line away first, I've just transitioned from an aging issue to a disability issue. My mother, for whom I've been a long-distance caregiver for the past several years, died on April 15th; on April 20th, I was involved in a motorcycle accident.

I write this, I'm lying in bed, in my second-floor bedroom, without a real prospect of going downstairs. No, the house is not built well for movement on crutches. It has three living levels with stairs up to the main floor, more stairs to the second floor (where I am now), and a downstairs with -- you guessed it -- stairs. So my first exposure to disability is that my house is not very disability-friendly. In fact, the irony is that I'm trapped in my own second-floor bedroom: me, someone who should know better.

O.K., there were options. I might not have struggled up the stairs Sunday night, but it is my bedroom, where I'm comfortable (the lumps in the bed are all in the right place), so it's where I wanted to be. And I'd already gone up one flight of stairs just to get to the first floor, so I just kept going. And then there was the big option: seven years ago, when I bought this house, I could have opted for a ranch instead, using proper foresight.

Is it really even an issue, that houses have two or three floors of living space and -- as we age-in -- we can only manage one (without substantial expenditures or efforts)? A friend of mine once told me he and his wife were moving to "an old-man's home," a single-level ranch, long before he was unable to negotiate stairs (he still has no problems, but he's there now just in case).

So here I am, supposed to have an idea about housing issues and all that, and I'm trapped anyway. Does one have some type of social or personal responsibility to plan for a life trajectory that will, with a fair level of inevitability, find one as an older adult with limited mobility? Do we all have to plan, to say there is some essential -- and specifically required need to plan for the inevitable decline. Am I socially irresponsible -- or worse: morally bankrupt -- for not having already gone to the old-man's home in preparation for the disabilities of older age. And let's not forget that a disability can affect a person of any age: are we foisting fundamentally inappropriate homes on people, people who at any moment be living in suddenly inaccessible residences?

Are multi-level home (e.g., split-levels, high-ranches, Victorians, etc.) the social equivalent of drinking-and-driving, especially for people over a certain age? (The young -- especially with families -- may be indulged, but of course there's always that possibility of the unforeseen disability.) I'm not sure. I suspect that it is not unreasonable that people should have expectations in line with reality. I know that for every day a person ages it is increasingly likely that he or she will become impaired. Some people, like my mother, will be forced from their homes, in her case at the age of 81, just a year before her death; some (like my maternal grandparents) will live at home (in their custom-built split-level) in essentially good health and unimpaired mobility until their deaths. There's me, presumably only temporarily stranded up here (but there was a guardrail about an inch from neck on Sunday).

Travelling around Albany, we see all manner of multi-story dwellings. The old housing stock along Madison Avenue and State Street around Washington Park is typical of much of the city (I think of this as the generic inner-city brownstone-type, walk-up-type house: that may be somewhat inaccurate, but it gets the idea across). The outer areas of the city, the less urban, more suburban neighborhoods, look like the typical suburban neighborhoods anywhere: that is, multi-stories. It is what it is.

Where does that lead us (or, where does that leave us)? Our housing stock is what it is. Older adults and the disabled are perhaps among the least likely (economically least capable) to have new homes built (or existing ones remodeled) to fit their needs. I do not have an answer for these questions, at least not right now, but I do believe that there is a need have housing match the needs and capabilities of the population, and that we all have to think about this.