> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Accessing the dream - URL: https://www.smdp.com/accessing-the-dream/ - Published: 2007-08-18T15:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-24T02:36:24.000Z - Author: Melody Hanatani - Tags: Community, Santa Monica, #archive-import, Homeless *People with disabilities say the city is friendly* CITYWIDE Homeless and wheelchair-bound for the past few months, Donald Rynder is a man on a mission to find a motel to call home each night. After calling close to 28 motels in Santa Monica, visions of a comfortable night’s sleep are looking slim. A Vietnam vet, Rynder has been disabled since the helicopter in which he was riding was shot down in 1968\. On Friday, he said he was fine from the accident, his injured leg supported by a metal plate, until about eight months ago, when it became infected and had to be amputated. Life soon changed for Rynder, who said he became homeless a few months ago after selling his house and has since been looking for suitable temporary digs. The only problem is that nearly every single Santa Monica motel he contacted is not handicap accessible — the bathroom doors too narrow for his wheelchair, the shower and toilet devoid of handicapped bars. One motel, he contends, even lied to him about the bathroom being handicap-accessible. After Rynder paid and realized the bathroom was anything but, he demanded his money back, but the motel refused to refund, Rynder said Friday. The daily obstacles in the life of a person living with a disability are those the average person typically takes for granted. The simple day-to-day activities of riding the bus, using the restroom and even knowing when the coast is clear to cross the street can pose a daunting challenge for people with disabilities. It’s been more than 17 years since the Americans with Disabilities Act was enacted, securing civil rights protections for people living with disabilities, prohibiting such discrimination in the workplace and mandating handicap accessibility to public services, such as installing a wheelchair ramp at City Hall. Aside from his differences with the motels, Rynder believes the city and its residents are fairly handicap friendly. Rynder is a common fixture in one of the Third Street Promenade’s tunnels. Each day, he sits in his wheelchair reading a book, surrounded by empty Starbucks coffee cups. He occasionally pops his head up to flash a smile to passersby, waving hello to those he sees every day. “The cops are excellent,” Rynder said. “They’re always looking out for me if someone is trying to mess with me. “They do it for my own protection.” Some who live with disabilities say the city is a friendly place to live, from the speakers on the Big Blue Buses announcing stops to the curb cuts on every corner, allowing people confined to wheelchairs and scooters to maneuver their way through the city streets. But there are still improvements to be made, according to Christopher Knauf, chairman of the Disabilities Access Commission, an advisory board to the City Council regarding accessibility issues. One of the primary issues the commission is currently addressing is attitude, labeling it as the real disability that plagues modern society. “Congress can pass a law and that mere passage of a law doesn’t translate into people changing their perceptions and attitudes that have developed over a lifetime,” he said. “We’ve been conditioned as a society to approach people with disabilities in particular ways.” City Hall is starting to implement a new awareness program, whereby all city staff will receive sensitivity training on how to accommodate customers with disabilities, Knauf said. The Disabilities Access Commission has identified certain areas in which city government can improve in its implementation of ADA and making the city a friendly place for people living with disabilities. One suggestion the commission has made is to improve the guidelines for permitted events, providing easy-to-follow rules for planning an event that is handicap accessible. “I think with the general mindset of city staff wanting to be helpful... that is a good start,” Knauf said. The commission is also advocating for a universally accessible playground. “We would love to see a playground in Santa Monica that is accessible to all children,” said Commissioner Glenda Berg. City Hall seems to be doing well in complying with ADA provisions, having been almost sued just once in the past decade for possible violations, said Barbara Greenstein, deputy city attorney. A woman filed suit against the city-hired operators of the downtown parking structures about five years ago, arguing that the structure was not handicap accessible. The woman was told that the company had no authority in modifying the structure to be handicap accessible, and by the time she had attempted to name City Hall in the lawsuit, the statute of limitations had expired, Greenstein said. The lawsuit was never decided on the merits. After dodging the bullet, City Hall altered routing of cars in the parking structure, opening the back of four downtown garages and placing accessible parking so a person in a wheelchair could enter the garage from the alley. “We were not compelled by the court, but it’s something we felt we could do to make access better,” Greenstein said. TROUBLE SEEING Don Kiger, a care coordinator at The Center for the Partially Sighted in West Los Angeles, seldom visits Santa Monica. But when he does, he finds the Big Blue Bus to be one of the best modes of public transportation for people living with vision impairment. The coordinator is visually impaired and cannot drive, depending upon public transportation. He heads the peer volunteer program at the Center for the Partially Sighted, a resource center that assists people with vision complications. The Big Blue Bus has a system that automatically announces each stop, which Kiger finds helpful because he no longer has to constantly be on guard for his stop. “It just makes the trip much more relaxing and it just works out really well,” he said. THE HARD OF HEARING Santa Monica resident Nancy Linke- Ellis was born into a healthy hearing family, the one child in the family with hearing problems. “I grew up without Disney and grew up before videotape and Blockbuster,” Linke- Ellis said. “I know what it’s like to have your friends talk about something like high school musicals and not understand who they’re talking about or what the characters’ names are and totally be excluded from the experience.” While she finds the city to be friendly to people with disabilities, accommodating those who are hard of hearing, Linke- Ellis has a hard time finding a movie theater in town where she can enjoy a film, each theater lacking a captioning system. Hoping to give all people the same movie-going experience, Linke-Ellis founded a grassroots organization, creating awareness for the availability of open and closed caption movies for the hearing impaired. In 2002, she launched InSight Cinema in Santa Monica. Its motto: “The audience is reading.” The nearest theater that has a captioning screen is the United Artist theater in Marina del Rey, Linke-Ellis said. “Because the theaters are so small and because the promenade is so crowded, it’s difficult to get a screen here,” she said. LIFE ON WHEELS Berg is always surprised by how helpful people can be when she’s shopping at the grocery store in her scooter — the smiling faces pulling items off shelves, opening freezer doors for the Santa Monican. Berg has been confined to a scooter since she sustained a spinal cord injury after breaking her neck in a car accident 12 years ago. For the most part, it’s fairly easy navigating the city in a scooter, though visiting the renowned Santa Monica Pier can present challenges. “Those planks on the pier are just impossible,” Berg said. Some of the biggest challenges Berg faces involves opening doors. Sometimes the automatic doors don’t work and she has to pull it open. Other times the doors are too heavy. “I’ve taken classes (at Santa Monica College) and the computer lab room is always closed and I have to wait for people coming in and out,” she said. “Things like that are a little awkward.” *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 18, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/081807.pdf?ref=smdp.com)