PS Check out Sang Kee at 9th & Vine & let me know if you like the
improvements.  Maybe we can do lunch when you're not courting.

----- Original Message -----
From: "I. S. Margolis" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: "CPL" <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Saturday, April 15, 2000 11:37 AM
Subject: Court to PHA Add wheelchair ramps.htm


CONGRATS!


April 15, 2000

Court to PHA: Add wheelchair ramps
by Jim Smith
Daily News Staff Writer

 While spending millions in federal funds in the mid-1990s to renovate
scattered-site public housing, the Philadelphia Housing Authority overlooked
the need to make many of the homes accessible to the disabled, a federal
judge ruled yesterday.
Calling U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III's ruling "terrific" and
unprecedented, attorney Stephen F. Gold, an advocate for the disabled, said
the ruling means PHA now must make about 350 homes wheelchair-accessible.
 Gold said PHA could do the job at little added cost by putting ramps and
other accommodations on scattered sites that are being remodeled.
 The added cost would be about 1 percent of the job, Gold estimated.
 PHA attorney Carl Oxholm III yesterday said he hadn't seen the judge's
decision and declined to comment on it.
 Gold sued PHA in 1998 on behalf of two advocacy groups, ADAPT of
Philadelphia and Liberty Resources Inc., alleging too little had been done
to make scattered site public housing accessible to the mobility impaired.
 In his 24-page opinion, Bartle said both sides requested partial findings
of fact and conclusions of law, following a nine-day trial, "in an effort to
encourage" a settlement.
 "Should the parties fail to do so expeditiously, the court is prepared. .
.to enter an order granting appropriate relief," the judge added.
 PHA, with some 20,000 dwelling units, "is the largest provider of public
housing in Pennsylvania" and gets most of its funds from the federal
government, the judge noted.
 Nearly 7,000 of the units are called "scattered sites" and are usually
rowhouses among private homes, the judge said.
 Between 1993 and 1997, the judge found, PHA used federal funds to renovate
hundreds of its scattered sites, with some units getting entirely new
electrical and plumbing systems, roofs, front steps, windows, floor joists
and fronts.
 "In some instances, PHA was spending the princely sum of $125,000 to
$150,000 per unit," the judge said.
 "PHA made fully wheelchair- accessible only 22 of the . . . units
renovated."
 Building a ramp, widening hallways, lowering counter tops and making other
alterations to make some of the units accessible to the disabled wouldn't
have added much to the cost, the judge found.
 Since so much money was spent to rehab the sites, federal law required that
at least 5 percent of the 7,000 scattered sites be made accessible, Gold
said.