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It's not a straw-man, the ADA was passed 32 years ago, and Berkeley's financial situation is exactly as I described it. The only difference is that we talked ab

It's not a straw-man, the ADA was passed 32 years ago, and Berkeley's financial situation is exactly as I described it. The only difference is that we talked about race instead of disability, and it's less socially acceptable to discriminate on that basis. Do you know why she didn't have a single wheelchair-bound customer? Because disabled people can't go out to most restaurants due to lack of accessibility. If you think it's the broken-window fallacy, buy a 30$ wheelchair off craigslist and try to go have a date at a restaurant, make sure to call beforehand or you'll be stuck at the door, if you're lucky the accessible entrance won't be in the back-alley by the garbage bins. It's what I've been doing for 30 years and I didn't imagine it along with every other disabled person who relates the same exact experience. Also I assume she didn't complain about having to follow the health and safety code and the many stipulations it has with regards to her kitchen installation and the room it's built in. Maybe she should have made sure to rent a building that enables her business to follow the law, especially those passed years ago, rather than put her hands up when the landlord told her he'd do nothing.

db48x 4y ago
Nah, she’s always had a door opener that someone in a wheelchair could easily use to get in the building. It was probably installed by the prior tenant after the ADA was passed. In fact, the problem wasn’t even the ADA. The ADA is a Federal law, but California also has a similar accessibility law (the name of which I have forgotten). But while the ADA exempts old buildings from most of its requirements, the California law does not. This definitely makes the California law worse than the ADA; it destroys (and has destroyed) more valuable things than the ADA does. > Maybe she should have made sure to rent a building that enables her business to follow the law She thought she was! The building is decades older than the ADA, so she thought it was exempt. She wanted larger, more accessible restrooms, but if she had tried to remodel before opening the restaurant it would have bankrupted her. I’m surprised the recent remodel didn’t bankrupt the restaurant; I’m sure she had to take out a loan to cover it. Either way it’s destroyed at lot of value. Going back to the subject of Berkeley briefly, it doesn’t matter how much money they have. What matters is that they had a collection of educational videos that they were making available for free, but they had to take it down because they couldn’t make it accessible. It doesn’t matter why they were incapable of it; it could be internal politics, budgeting problems, or simply a lack of manpower in that department. What matters is that they couldn’t get it done. That’s a destruction of value that could have been avoided if the law had been better written.

db48x 4y ago

Nah, she’s always had a door opener that someone in a wheelchair could easily use to get in the building. It was probably installed by the prior tenant after the ADA was passed. In fact, the problem wasn’t even the ADA. The ADA is a Federal law, but California also has a similar accessibility law (the name of which I have forgotten). But while the ADA exempts old buildings from most of its requirements, the California law does not. This definitely makes the California law worse than the ADA; it destroys (and has destroyed) more valuable things than the ADA does. > Maybe she should have made sure to rent a building that enables her business to follow the law She thought she was! The building is decades older than the ADA, so she thought it was exempt. She wanted larger, more accessible restrooms, but if she had tried to remodel before opening the restaurant it would have bankrupted her. I’m surprised the recent remodel didn’t bankrupt the restaurant; I’m sure she had to take out a loan to cover it. Either way it’s destroyed at lot of value. Going back to the subject of Berkeley briefly, it doesn’t matter how much money they have. What matters is that they had a collection of educational videos that they were making available for free, but they had to take it down because they couldn’t make it accessible. It doesn’t matter why they were incapable of it; it could be internal politics, budgeting problems, or simply a lack of manpower in that department. What matters is that they couldn’t get it done. That’s a destruction of value that could have been avoided if the law had been better written.