by Jordan Davis
Lately, a surprising subject has been coming up at tenant meetings of the Central City SRO Collaborative, one that’s near and dear to my heart: Grab bars in showers.
A tenant organizer at the collaborative has been encouraging tenants to fill out forms requesting grab bars in their single-resident occupancy (SRO) hotels and persuade their doctors to write them a note requesting reasonable accommodation.
It took a tremendous push over several years to reach this point..
Back in 2017, when I served on the city’s SRO Task Force, several members who had ties to the SRO collaborative opposed me on this basic accessibility issue.
In 2013, the Board of Supervisors passed legislation requiring all common restrooms in SROs to be equipped with appropriate grab bars. During public comment, Dan Jordan, then a tenant leader for the Central City SRO Collaborative, supported the legislation, claiming that it was necessary to prevent slip and falls.
Fast forward to 2017: I had just been appointed to the SRO Task Force earlier that spring. I was riding high from passing a motion to support expanding the all-gender restroom ordinance to include common bathrooms in SROs, which later became the first law of its kind in the nation. Young, optimistic and excited about this victory, I pushed to expand this ordinance to cover private bathrooms in SROs as well, with the intent of proposing a motion to deal with the issue.
The task force brought this topic up for discussion in September 2017, and raised questions about expense, landlord entry, and the logistics of tearing out walls and moving tenants in the meantime. At the same time, I was also involved with Senior & Disability Action‘s SRO workgroup, and when I brought this matter to their attention, the workgroup brought up some real concerns that older bathrooms lacked studs to install the grab bars. I wish I addressed this matter sooner.
After a rough morning of hearing about the supposed infeasibility of such a plan, I decided to do some overdue homework. I was able to find at least one product online that allows for the quick installation of grab bars into any type of wall, even without studs. When the topic was discussed the following November, the same old lies kept coming up. Throughout this whole process, Dan Jordan, who served in the task force’s other tenant seat, was claiming that expanding the grab bar ordinance that he supported back in 2013 was a bridge too far, citing cost, even though he saw through the landlord’s BS back in 2013, and that the cost wasn’t over $1 million. Clifford Gilmore, a Central City SRO Collaborative employee who was aligned with the more conservative pro-landlord bloc, high-balled the costs. Because the task force’s more progressive members were not showing up at the meetings, I decided to punt on the motion. The proposal was brought up again in 2018, but it never moved forward.
In 2019, the Task Force disbanded, and I focused on #30RightNow throughout the pandemic. I moved to another building and later got my gender confirmation surgery, which required me to stand up in the shower for the first eight weeks of my recovery. Without grab bars, I was risking my safety.
In March of 2022, during my recovery period, I slipped and fell in the shower. Before reaching that eight-week mark, management notified us that grab bars would soon be installed in our private bathrooms. I watched workers install the grab bars in less than an hour, without having to tear out the wall, contrary to what landlords and their task force allies previously claimed. Those grab bars have held for three years, even though I weigh 250 pounds—the minimum amount of pressure that grab bars must be rated for.
Ironically, the Central City SRO Collaborative is now encouraging tenants to request grab bars after two people within that community tried to torpedo the original proposal. I am glad that the tenant organizer is doing this, and I don’t want to relitigate the past. I do think, however, that expanding the grab bar ordinance to include private SRO restrooms is long overdue, and I hope the costs won’t burden residents. These grab bars will benefit current and future residents alike. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
If you live in permanent supportive housing with a private bathroom that doesn’t have grab bars, please contact Jordan Davis at 30rightnow@gmail.com
