UPDATED: March 21, 2019 at 1:31 p.m.

Priya Penner would watch groups of students shuffling to parties down Euclid, Ackerman and Sumner Avenues from her first-year dorm in Shaw Hall. She grew angry each night because she knew she would never be able to join them.

The University Hill neighborhood, where older students live and others spend time on weekends, is made up of old houses with tall staircases that are unwelcoming to Penner’s motorized wheelchair, she said.

“I could talk for days about the things I could not do because housing is just inaccessible,” said Penner, now president of SU’s Disability Student Union. “I’m not allowed to do regular stupid ass sh*t that college students do because I don’t have access to said things. That’s just reality.”

Across the country, 29 percent of housing units were built after the 1988 Fair Housing Amendments Act took effect, according to a 2014 report from CNY Fair Housing. The amendment requires buildings with four or more units to have one wheelchair accessible unit. In Syracuse, only 6 percent of houses have been built since then, meaning the other 94 percent of homes are not bound by the Fair Housing Amendments Act and do not need to have wheelchair accessible units, per the 2014 report.

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Syracuse University’s 20-year Campus Framework plan was created in part to build a more inclusive and accessible campus. But Penner said she rarely goes out into the off-campus university neighborhood because of its lack of accommodations. The Campus Framework plan does not address housing updates in the university neighborhood.

“We want to make sure people can choose where they want to live,” said Sally Santangelo, executive director of CNY Fair Housing. “I think that’s kind of a fundamental principle.”

Penner, now a junior, said she started to search for a place to live off campus during her sophomore year. She was not surprised to find that a simple Google search for wheelchair accessible housing in the area returned nothing, she said.

A Google search of wheelchair accessible housing in the area shows SU residence halls and corporate student housing, such as Copper Beech Commons, Park Point and U Point.

She went to the Office of Off-Campus and Commuter Services, which provided her with a list of places to contact. All of those units were built after 1991 and were more expensive than University Hill neighborhood options, Penner said.

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Penner chose U Point, a development one-half mile north of main campus on University Avenue. She said she pays $750 per month in rent and expects that price to increase to $850 per month next year.

Ben Tupper, a University Hill landlord who houses over 400 off-campus students, said he has not received a single request for mobility accommodations in his 23 years as a landlord in the area. Tupper said that installing a brand-new set of stairs would cost around $500, but installing a ramp would cost $1,500 to $2,000.

Invisible complications to upgrades can hike up the cost even further. Houses built before 1978 may contain lead, said Meghan Carroll, manager of mortgage loan operations at Home HeadQuarters, a nonprofit community housing development.

An accessibility upgrade becomes even more expensive because special precautions must be taken. The contractor needs to be lead-certified, abatement protocol must be followed, and the unit must be scrubbed after the work is completed, Tupper said.

“You’re not just widening a doorway, your widening a doorway with lead paint,” said Carroll. “The porch that your trying to turn into a ramp has been painted over 5,000 times and it’s just full of lead at the bottom.”

The independence that comes with off-campus living is worth the hassle for students with disabilities, Penner said.

“By living off campus, or knowing people who live off campus, disabled people have the ability to socialize with other disabled people, or with nondisabled people,” Penner said. “That is so important.”

CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, the graphic explaining the approximate number of houses built after the 1988 Fair Housing Amendment was incorrect. The Daily Orange regrets this error. 

Published on March 19, 2019 at 10:59 pm

Contact Patrick: pjlineha@syr.edu