Building accessibility: the improvements a board can champion

Three steps at the entrance are enough to cut a resident off from their building. And the subject almost always arrives too late.

Accessibility rarely comes up in advance. It arrives the day a resident breaks a leg, an ageing owner can no longer get out alone, or a family with a pram gives up on the main entrance. By then it is urgent, and handled in poor conditions.

A board that anticipates these adaptations does something considerable: it lets residents stay in their homes, and it durably improves how the building can be used.

The simple improvements, often overlooked

Everyone thinks of the lift, the heaviest project. Yet many improvements cost very little and change daily life:

• A continuous handrail on the stairs, on both sides where width allows.
• Adequate, sensor-controlled lighting in circulation areas — essential for older residents.
• Levelling a threshold or an isolated step with a fixed or removable ramp.
• A powered entrance door, or simply a door closer set less strongly.
• Non-slip finish on the first steps and the entrance landing.
• An adapted parking space, wider and close to the entrance.

Most of these show up during the annual walk-through, provided you make the trip with different eyes: pushing a pram, or imagining a walking stick.

What gets voted, and how

Accessibility works affect the common areas and go to the general meeting. Condo law nevertheless treats them more favourably than works of pure amenity: majority conditions for adaptations intended to ease access for people with disabilities or reduced mobility are lighter.

An individual owner may also, under conditions, carry out accessibility works affecting the common areas at their own expense, the meeting being able to object only on serious and legitimate grounds. Have the manager confirm the exact regime before drafting the resolution: approximation is expensive here.

The lift question

Installing a lift where there is none is the most ambitious project: it requires finding the space, often in the stairwell or on the façade, and it profoundly alters the common areas.

It also changes how charges are shared, since floors do not benefit equally. It is prepared over several years, as described in modernising a lift and funding major works.

Grants and timing

Grants exist, nationally and locally, for adapting homes and common areas to ageing and disability. As with energy renovation, they are applied for before works start and carry precise conditions.

Timing matters as much as the amount: an application filed after the quote is signed is lost. See the logic in the steps of a renovation.

Carrying the project at the meeting

The argument that works is not moral but concrete: an accessible building sells and lets better, and lets older owners stay — and so keep paying their charges rather than selling in a hurry.

Present the cost per unit, available grants and the schedule, as with any trade-off: see questions to ask about the budget.

A handrail and sensor lighting cost less than one year of charges, and can let a resident stay at home ten years longer.

Prepare the file with CoproHarmony

CoproHarmony lists the points to address with photos, gathers quotes and available grants, and tracks the project from one meeting to the next. Create your free space.

Many of these are handled alongside the stairwell refurbishment.