Students with disabilities face housing challenges

from 2021 Renter's Guide | May 3, 2021

Living with other student-athletes ‘builds chemistry... translates to the field

Students with disabilities face housing challenges

By KELSY VALENTINE News Contributor

Kobey Bonin, an Oregon State University senior student majoring in liberal arts who uses a wheelchair, has faced many challenges while trying to find accessible housing both on and off campus in Corvallis, Ore.

Before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bonin lived in a residence hall on the OSU campus, though according to Bonin, this was largely out of necessity rather than wanting to live there.

“I lived on campus in one of the accessible spaces because there’s not a whole lot of other options in Corvallis in terms of accessible housing, so I was kind of forced to deal with the limited number of spaces on campus that worked for me,” Bonin said.

Bonin explained that, based on where his friends were living off campus, he had realized that Corvallis had many old homes that were not accessible for people who used wheelchairs, so he didn’t even really try to search for housing off campus.

The University Housing and Dining Services also has similar issues with their older buildings on campus. Kathryn Krieger, the assistant director of operations at UHDS, said newer buildings are made to comply with the campus accessibility standards. These standards, according to her, are actually better than what the Americans with Disabilities Act requires and provides living environments accessible for all.

Older buildings, however, are a different story because they were built when ADA or other accessibility standards were not in place, since the act became law in 1990.

“Buildings designed in the last century did not take a universal design approach like we do now, so we engage in a lot of conversations on a campus level when approaching our renovation projects to do our best to try and meet students’ needs,” Krieger said.

While Bonin had been able to find something that worked for him on campus, he was given limited options of rooms that already were or could be made accessible to him.

“When I was looking for housing my first year, I was basically given three options of places to live…” Bonin said. “My situation was pretty lucky because that room was available, but there’s really not very many accessible spaces, so I would say that that’s definitely… it’s more inaccessible than accessible at Oregon State.”

Krieger said other students face similar issues.

“Sometimes having to actually make a request for an accommodation is a challenging hurdle to overcome,” Krieger said via email. “I

RAMZY AL-MULLA | ORANGE MEDIA NETWORK ARCHIVES

ALLEN BARNARD | ORANGE MEDIA NETWORK

Above and below: The office of Disability Access Services is located in the Kerr Administration building and oversees all accessibility on the Oregon State campus. Due to COVID-19, all work has been moved to a virtual setting.

talk to a number of students (and even more parents) each year who express that making a request for accommodation makes them feel like they can’t have a ‘normal’ college experience, which we strive to not be the case for our students.”

Krieger said UHDS tries to help these students and work with them to remove any barriers so they can have the same experiences as students who don’t need accommodations.

“I try to give the student as much control over their housing placement as possible,” Krieger said. “No two students with accommodations—even for the same disability—have the same needs, so it is up to me to engage in conversations with the students to see what we as a department need to do to provide the accommodation that supports them.”

The housing offered to students off campus tends to also have issues of accessibility. Like the older buildings on the OSU campus, many homes in the surrounding community were built when ADA standards did not exist.

“Off-campus accessible housing is very, very limited in Corvallis and surrounding areas. So it’s not just Corvallis but Albany, Lebanon, Tangent [and] Philomath,” said Earlee KerekesMishra, the assistant director of Disability Access Services at OSU. “Not many houses have ramps up to the doors. There’s usually steps. A lot of the newer buildings, they go multiple levels, so two or three levels high and there’s not an elevator necessarily in a townhouse that’s two or three levels.”

Because many houses in the Corvallis area are not built with the disabled community in mind, students who are seeking housing often require many accommodations, but accessible spaces can remove many barriers for students with disabilities.

“I think [accessible housing is] important because… when my needs are met, my disability doesn’t really impact my life very much,” Bonin said. “If I have an accessible space, it’s just so much easier than having to constantly have small barriers to accessibility.”

Despite efforts made by OSU and UHDS, students with disabilities may still face housing challenges both on and off campus.

“Oregon State prides itself on being a community school, and there are members of that community currently being left out,” Bonin said. “By making campus more accessible, it allows people like me and others to join into that community and bring our perspective into the mix of student perspectives and strengthen the community as a whole. And, in my experience, I think a lot of Oregon State students care about building their community around themselves.”

halls. People had the freedom to watch movies in the lounges and study together which they still can, but it is a little more limited because we try and monitor to make sure there aren’t a ton of students gathering.”

Alva said a major change for the students in her department is that the majority of her students are located outside of the United States. Those students have been unable to come to Oregon for their academic programs due to pandemic travel restrictions.

This causes these students to take their courses either really early in the morning or very late at night, according to Alva.

The time difference poses a challenge to taking a course at these times since it may not work with their daily schedules. Because of this, students and instructors have had to make adjustments.

“I can imagine how different it was here on campus then compared to right now during the pandemic. Just from what I’ve heard from other students and staff members, it used to be so lively in the residence halls.”

- Emily Garcia, Honors College Student Engagement Coordinator

“While in a face-to-face class, I might have seen this and tried to get the student to reengage in the lesson, now I can’t really do that, so students do have to check themselves and see if they are following along or getting distracted,” Alva said. “For the students at INTO OSU, I also think that the expectation was to have a fully-immersed English language learning experience in the U.S., so the fact that they are not even able to be in the U.S. is probably a disappointing one that has made online learning more of a challenge.”

The experience depends on the individual student with how some prefer this mode of learning while others prefer in person. One reason students have had a hard time has been because they are suddenly expected to have more responsibility for their learning, Alva said. Professors cannot always determine whether a student is focused on the lesson.

“Again, I don’t really know what it would normally look like since I am used to things being online, but I’ve noticed that it is harder to actually understand and comprehend the material with this kind of learning,” Sharma said. “Being able to roll right out of bed to get to class is kind of nice though!”

Garcia said her department tries to measure how well students are doing with remote learning. Students usually prefer to be more hands-on with their classes especially for labs and group projects. She said she imagines big lecture classes to have more of a challenge than some of the smaller-sized ones the Honors College has.

“I suppose the positive side of that is that learners are simultaneously developing their digital literacy skills, so it is more of a challenge in some ways, but there are benefits of the online learning experience,” Alva said.

HAILEY THOMAS | ORANGE MEDIA NETWORK

HOUSING INITIATIVE Continued from page 6

using the CampusGroups app, which allows OSU-Cascades faculty and students to connect with one another.

“On our CampusGroups app, we’ll have an application just like any other [program], like the child care subsidy or food pantry. It’ll be available in a form just like those,” Tornatta said.

The application will also be available on OSU-Cascades’ website and asks for information like the applicant’s self-reported income.

Moving forward, Tornatta will be part of the Housing Subsidy Committee.

“Right now we’ve only had one meeting so far. All the folks on that committee are just awesome. All student leaders. I know that moving forward, that will be a really solid group,” Tornatta said.

For now, the next big step for the housing subsidy is fundraising money in summer term in order to expand the project. This money would be an addition to the money that is allocated by the Student Fee Committee at OSU-Cascades.

According to Tornatta, the housing subsidy project will be long term that the current student government can leave behind for future students.

“Moving forward we are hoping to leave this [project] as a legacy,” Tornatta said.