Fifty-six steps and four corridors separate the portal from the door of Amparo Jiménez's apartment, on Clivia Street, in Madrid.
A building without an elevator that means that her family cannot lead a normal life.
Nor her husband, José Martínez, 57 years old, who suffers from the lung disease COPD, with a 53% disability;
nor her son, with reduced mobility and a 75% disability;
nor her daughter, with degenerative anemia, which causes fatigue and tiredness and 37% disability;
nor herself, Amparo, who suffers from back operations.
To make matters worse, the house, of which they are tenants, belongs to the Social Housing Agency of the Community of Madrid (AVS, the former Ivima).
In that community, eight neighbors are owners and two tenants in apartments that belong to the AVS.
“We have been asking the Community of Madrid since 2015, and also since 2018 to the Ombudsman, to install an elevator.
Following the latter's requirements, in 2020 the AVS stated that it would request budgets for its installation.
Until today,” argues Amparo.
“Meanwhile, every time my husband returns from the hospital he has to go step by step putting on rescue medication, and when he enters the door he goes directly to the balcony because he almost has no oxygen,” she says.
“And although my son lives with us, he occasionally moves to his partner's house, which has an elevator, to avoid the stairs.”
It is not an isolated case.
Many people with disabilities have had to leave their homes due to lack of accessibility, practically 22% with reduced mobility, which rises to 31% in the case of those who move in a wheelchair, according to the report Accessibility and mobility: improving quality of life of people with disabilities, prepared by the Mutual Owners Foundation.
Another 100,000 people do not have the possibility of looking for an alternative and live permanently locked in their own homes.
The lack of agreement between neighbors (47%) and economic reasons (55%) are the main reasons for not carrying out this type of improvements, says Laura López, executive vice president of this foundation.
Another study by Fotocasa estimates that 38% of Spaniards live in poorly accessible homes.
According to Royal Decree 1/2013, in December 2017 the deadline expired for all buildings, in their public part, to allow the use and access of all people.
Seven years later, the situation has not improved, despite existing subsidies for removing barriers.
“Although the law is mandatory, administrations do not have the capacity to control the effective adaptation to accessibility regulations of existing buildings,” reveals Elisa Entrena, member of the Accessibility Commission of the General Council of Technical Architecture of Spain ( CGATE).
A requirement that is normally made through the Building Evaluation Report, in those municipalities that have it regulated, or when comprehensive rehabilitation interventions are proposed or action is taken in the common areas of the communities of owners.
This same opinion is shared by Anxo Queiruga, president of Cocemfe, the Spanish Confederation of People with Physical and Organic Disabilities, for whom the administrations do not monitor or act ex officio to guarantee compliance: “There are no resources, strategy, or instruments to do so. ”.
In addition to Royal Decree 1/2013 of the General Law on the rights of people with disabilities, there are other regulations to comply with in parallel, such as the Horizontal Property Law.
“There are legal loopholes that communities of owners use to not carry out the necessary interventions, relying on excessive costs,” Queiruga reasons.
Cocemfe has been proposing a reform of this law for years so that the costs of accessibility works and actions in common elements where people with disabilities or people over 70 years of age live are assumed in their entirety by the neighborhood communities themselves, even if they exceed the 12 ordinary monthly payments of common expenses, once the subsidies have been deducted, as established by the norm.
Also from Famma, the Federation of Associations of People with Physical and Organic Disabilities of Madrid, its president, Javier Font, believes that in Spain there is a commitment to building accessible housing for people with disabilities on paper, but the reality is very different.
“The Horizontal Property Law is the great obstacle that exists to unblock the situation that has been punishing millions of people,” he says.
Greater difficulties
It is no secret that the most important difficulties are found in the accesses and common areas of the building, but the main problem remains the lack of an elevator.
Although the profile of citizens who live in blocks of three or more heights without an elevator, and which represents 10% of the population, are people over 60 years of age, there are also young people in more central homes who decide to leave the building without an elevator in benefit of greater comfort, says Carmen Fernández, technical architect with a specialty in accessibility.
And she describes the case of a 45-year-old person who lived in a building with nine homes distributed over three floors, who after experiencing Covid-19 left significant consequences for his mobility and breathing.
“After various efforts to install an elevator, and faced with the difficulties due to the number of cases that occurred among the neighbors, she decided to move,” she says.
Since 2010, the Technical Building Code requires that all residential buildings, both public and private, be accessible at entrances and in common areas (hallways, garages, gardens, etc.), however, regarding A minimum of 4% of accessible properties is programmed for subsidized housing projects.
"It would be interesting to extend this obligation to any type of promotion, although it would be more practical for free housing promoters to understand the need that society has for this type of accessible apartments and that they are profitable initiatives, without always having to resort to requirement of the regulations,” says Entrena.
Meanwhile, carrying out accessibility actions (elevator, ramp, saving the doorway step, motorized door opener...) has a price.
The barrier of 2,000 euros per household is the turning point to consider whether or not the execution of these actions is probable, according to the Mutual Owners Foundation.
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