Mary Holowaychuk, 91, fell three times while trying to negotiate three steps
David Hogben
Sun
The B.C. Human Rights Tribunal has ordered a resistant strata council to hire an architect to design a ramp that would allow a 91-year-old New Westminister condominium owner to make it up three steps in the building’s lobby.
The tribunal made the order Thursday after Mary Holowaychuk and her daughter Anne Mahoney were defeated in their attempts to have the council install and pay for the ramp.
The decision by tribunal member Tonie Beharrell states Holowaychuk — who had lived in the building for more than 30 years — fell three times while attempting to negotiate the three steps with her walker.
Holowaychuk required medical attention after her most recent fall on Dec. 18, but that did not persuade some owners to support the installation of a ramp for the senior citizen.
Beharrell said that if the ramp could be built at or below estimate costs already received, it now should be built. (Construction estimates have ranged between $30,000 and $63,000.)
If the ramp costs more, Beharrell said, the parties should engage in “Tribunal-assisted mediation” to resolve the dispute. If mediation fails, Beharrell said, she could make further orders.
Holowaychuk suffers from “a number of conditions, including congestive heart failure, degenerative disc disease, and osteoarthritis,” Beharrell noted in the report.
The building code did not require wheelchair access to residential buildings until 1979.
Holowaychuk said in a telephone interview from her New Westminster condominium that she was proud of her daughter’s work on her behalf.
“I am very happy we won, because we need a ramp,” said Holowaychuk. “My daughter, she beat the lawyer.”
Holowaychuk said people opposing the ramp would have been better off to support it from the beginning, rather than spending $20,000 on a lawyer to oppose the ramp.
“With that money they could have put some money towards a ramp,” she said.
Stephanie Cadieux, with the B.C. Paraplegic Association, said the issue of affordable, accessible housing is huge for people with mobility issues.
“We are going to see a lot more of this [conflict] with the maturing population,” Cadieux said.
Robert Osterman, who testified on behalf of Holowaychuk at the hearing in June, said he attended an annual general meeting where the ramp was discussed. Osterman told the tribunal some of the owners in attendance were against the ramp because they did not want the condominium lobby to look like an “old folks’ home,” Beharrell wrote in the decision.
During the December 2005 annual general meeting a bare majority of the council voted 26 in favor, 25 opposed with three abstentions to put $30,000 towards a ramp.
The vote failed to get the 75 per cent majority required for approval.
Another vote, in December 2007, sought authorization for $3,000 towards drafting of architectural plans for a wheelchair ramp also received majority support, but failed to receive the 75 per cent majority required for approval.
That resolution received 27 votes in favor and 16 opposed.
The strata owners opposed to the ramp argued it would be an “undue hardship to the individual owners of the strata because of the cost involved.”
They said the costs for the ramp — not including architectural costs and permits — could be $63,000.
Beharrell rejected the “undue hardship” argument. She said a special levy would cost, on average, less than $1,000 a unit.
Owners opposing the ramp argued unsuccessfully that if a ramp was ordered that “Ms. Holowaychuk bear the entire entire cost of the installation of the ramp. In addition, the owners submitted that Ms. Holowaychuk should be required to removed the ramp at her own expense at such time as she leaves the building, and be required to return the lobby to its previous condition.”
Beharrell rejected those positions. She noted the ramp would be used by others in the building and that Holowaychuk not be required to pay any more than her share of the costs as a strata owner.
