Tanja Britton is, in her own words, “not a good patient.” After working full-time since her teen years and raising two sons, her diabetes, arthritis and other health problems confined her to a wheelchair.

Her husband, Russell, continued working until caring for Tanja required more time off than an everyday job would allow.

In 2001, Russell Britton stopped working full-time, and the couple applied for affordable, accessible housing from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Four years later, when the building they had lived in for 15 years could not meet inspection codes and the family was still on the HUD waiting list, they ended up homeless.

They had no place to go because, as a Street Sense investigation discovered, no family shelters in Washington, D.C., are fully wheelchair-accessible.

“We were surprised that there was no program for prevention of homelessness; why did it take more than six months [to find a place to live]?” Tanja Britton said. “How do you live in the Nation’s Capital, where the president of the United States is our neighbor, and have no place to live?”

The Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless said that the District of Columbia is breaking several federal laws requiring that shelters be accessible to people with disabilities: the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Rehabilitation Act, the Fair Housing Act and the Homeless Services Reform Act.

The city’s failures to build accessible - or even enough affordable - housing, to move families and individuals to accessible housing, to provide ramps and transportation, along with other violations also contribute to the infringement of D.C. laws, the Legal Clinic added.

By law, family shelters have to be apartment-style, and currently there is no District-funded family shelter that has completely wheelchair-accessible units. D.C. Village is accessible at the front door, but the showers and bathrooms are not completely accessible. New Beginnings on Park Road (run by Families Forward), Spring Road Family Apartments (run by the Coalition for the Homeless), Community of Hope (Girard Street), and Valley Place (run by the Coalition for the Homeless) all are apartment-style but not accessible. Only Community of Hope has any accessible units, but social events and resident meetings are held on a floor to which there is no access by ramp or elevator. The Brittons are only one of many families struggling to find accessible shelter or housing within the District.

Amber Harding of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless said that she has talked with more than a dozen family members with mobility impairments who are struggling to find appropriate shelter or housing.

“Historically, D.C. has had a difficult time [or has not prioritized] finding buildings to serve as shelters,” Harding said. “As a result, the physical facilities are the rejects of the city inventory -- old schools, trailers, old nursing homes, mental institutions, etc. Old buildings tend not to be accessible because they were built before accessibility guidelines came into law.” 

The Street Sense investigation found that accessibility for homeless individuals is more abundant, though limited.

Out of 40 shelters in the city, only six offer any services to handicapped individuals. The Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV) shelter has a men’s unit on the first floor and slightly wider living areas for residents in wheelchairs. For the women upstairs, CCNV has an elevator and similar living arrangements.

John Young, a women’s shelter, is entirely accessible. It has wide bed units and is all on one floor. There are, however, a limited number of beds and infrequent space for more women in wheelchairs.

Harding said that the city faces lower costs by paying fines for not meeting housing requirements than it would by creating the housing units. The city, therefore, has no motivation to build or maintain accessible shelters.

Repeated calls were made to multiple D.C. government agencies seeking comment on this situation, but either phone calls were not returned or those officials contacted declined to comment.

“D.C .is still required to make sure that its services and buildings are accessible to people with disabilities,” Harding said. “They are literally leaving people with disabilities out in the cold when they fail to account for physical accessibility in facilities.”

The Legal Clinic is advocating for legislative and policy changes that would change the system as a whole. It also holds training sessions with clients on disability rights and rights in shelters.

But even if the clinic does get the courts to order changes to make shelters accessible, it may have little effect. That has been the situation with updating publicly funding housing for handicapped-accessibility.

A March 2002 settlement in a lawsuit filed under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act by people with mobility and visual impairments ordered the D.C. Housing Authority (DCHA) to build or renovate 565 accessible public housing units, at the rate of 105 to 135 per year.

DCHA however has not met the settlement requirements or those cited in the reopened version of the case that was filed last May by University Legal Services (ULS). A brief in the case written by the Marjorie Rifkin of ULS said that DCHA has built only 25 of the 105 units required by the first deadline, and many of those units were given to families without a disabled member.

“This is a blatant violation of the order and of federal HUD regulations, which prohibit DCHA from leasing accessible units to able-bodied people when, as in D.C., there are qualified people with mobility disabilities awaiting transfers,” Rifkin wrote.

Because of the lack of accessible family shelters, when the Brittons went to Virginia Williams Family Services, the main intake center for homeless families, they were sent to Motel 6 on Georgia Avenue, NW. When they checked out at noon the following day, the Brittons learned that they would have to reapply for approval to stay there every day. And with no other option, they did so - for seven months.

So when one of the two accessible units at Community of Hope opened up in November 2005, the Britton family moved in immediately. Their two sons, Justin, 14, and Russell Jr., 11, are acclimating to the new lifestyle by making friends, playing sports and doing well in school.

The family continues to search for affordable housing, for rent or purchase, but faces difficulties because Tanja Britton is regularly hospitalized or bedridden.

“Once you become homeless, you lose the identity you had before you were homeless,” she said. “I feel that handicap-accessible housing would allow me to be independent again.”