Season 2 is off and running with a partnership with Hospitality.FM and an episode that should resonate with all.

Lorrain Woodward from Becoming rentABLE joins us dropping knowledge and numbers that are both devastating and reassuring.

Did you know that 61 million people in the United States live with a disability? Did you also know that on a weekly basis 70,000 unique inquiries come through Airbnb searching for homes that cater to the disabled? #mindblown

The answer to the number of homes that are on Airbnb that meet four basic criteria for mobility disabled people will shock you… you’ll have to listen.

Lorraine is AMAZING and the positivity and action she is bringing to the short-term rental space are needed and welcomed.

This episode is powerful and will pull on your heartstrings. Of all the must-listens we have promoted this must-listen is right up there!

The No BS Short Term Rental Podcast brings the right people to the table at the right time giving their audience an inside view and real take on the industry like no other.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

—

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Listen on Google PodcastsListen on Amazon MusicListen on PandoraListen on iHeartRadioRSS FeedListen on StitcherListen on Pocket CastsListen on Podcast AddictListen on Castbox

Accessibility Is A Win For Everyone With Featured Guest Lorraine Woodward

Mateo, how are you?

John, as usual. Fantastic. How are you?

I’m good. How was your long weekend? Did you enjoy it and relax and unplug a bit?

I did. It was good. Lots of self-care. I’m a little fatter. It was a good weekend and a couple of weeks, giving thanks. For me, it’s always the time of year to sit back and think about the things you’re grateful for and thankful for. I spend time doing that, especially through all this craziness and everything going on. It couldn’t come at a better time pushing into the holidays.

It was needed. I know what you’re alluding to and thank goodness for that. For those that are reading, we’re talking about some different things that happened in the news that we’re happy with the outcomes. With that said, I took four days off, which I never do. I didn’t even work, which was good. I went and saw my in-laws in Pennsylvania. I spent some time rebuilding a staircase with them for some accessibility things.

I thought you were going to say you built a barn and I was going to die.

It wasn’t a barn raising. They do live in Amish country.

I know. That’s what I was saying.

It was not a barn raising. It was a stair tear-down and rebuild. For those that are reading, we’re excited. This is season 2 episode 1. We have exciting news. The announcement would’ve been dropped hopefully, you’ve already heard it. We are part of the Hospitality.FM network. Huge shout-out to Wil Slickers and that team there. We’re so excited to be part of that we’re in to promote that and be part of them.

We have an amazing guest who happens to know Wil. I’m not sure to the extent, but it ties into accessibility and disability. She is newer to the short-term rental spaces but has been working on this for a long time. Let me introduce Lorraine Woodward. Thank you so much for joining us. She’s on rentABLE. Is that right, Lorraine?

It’s Becoming rentAble. It’s the rent with a focus on the able.

Thanks so much for joining us.

I am so excited. Thank you for having me.

Season two, you’re our first.

I like being the first.

You’re a pioneer.

I don’t know if that’s age or activity, but yes. We’re trying to trailblaze a new area of awareness and focusing on the short-term rental space.

For those here, I pronounce it rentABLE because if you look at it in how it’s printed, it’s rent and then ABLE in caps. That is why the emphasis is on being able. Can you tell us about rentABLE? Start at the beginning. You told us that you’ve been doing this forever.

I am forever. I’m 59 years old in 2021 and I’m okay with that.

We’re both in our 40s. We’re not spring chickens anymore.

Don’t speak for yourself, John. I don’t know what he’s talking about.

Mateo is forever 39.

27. I got to get it right. It’s all about how you feel.

I’m chronologically 59, but I’m still a kid at heart.

Same here.

I have muscular dystrophy diagnosed. Having a disability has been a way of life. I can’t wish MD on anybody, but I’m grateful for my experiences of having MD. It’s led me to where I am, which has been a career in disability. I started advocating in elementary school back in the day before accessibility was even thought of. I then went to college and I remember before I started classes, I was already doing a little protest.

The board of directors was having a meeting and I couldn’t get in the building, so I made sure I greeted every board of directors at the foot of the steps, welcoming them to their meeting and wishing that I could be there. I couldn’t because there was no access to the building. I haven’t stopped since.

I have two boys that are young men. 24 and 26 who also have muscular dystrophy and they are our mobile outstanding young men. One is finishing his PhD in Electrical Engineering. The other one is to finish his degree in Industrial Design. I couldn’t be more proud of them. We didn’t vacation. This whole vacation craze wasn’t a part of our life because it wigged out my husband, first of all. We got to New York City, my boys are in scooters and I’m in a wheelchair.

It’s Times Square and the Today’s Show is off. Now it’s off to the next. We’re bee-lining it across Broadway and my husband is freaking out on the corner. It’s like, “They’re not going to hit us. There are three of us.” He couldn’t handle it, so we didn’t vacation. Finding places, heavens forbid, was hard. When the boys left high school, I thought, “What am I going to do?” I had “retired” which lasted for about a week.

I think retirement is overrated personally. I had an opportunity to build a vacation home, and it was for our family. It’s like, “Where can we get away? Where can we go?” The boys are like, “Mom, are you crazy? A beach? You’re in a wheelchair, we can’t walk on sand. Why are you building a beach house?” I was like, “Chill out. It’s going to be good.” I built this place, but I knew I needed money to come in to support it. I was like, “How can I do this?” I did what I know. It’s a three-story house. It’s 90 feet long so I have a 90-foot art studio downstairs, which is the best in the whole wide world.

You take the elevator to the second floor. That’s the rental property and it was designed for somebody with the least amount of mobility. I wanted it also designed for the last stages of life, thinking about where people want to be at their last stages of life. Some people want to be at home. Some people may want to be at the beach. There are crazy ideas in my head. I needed to build a bathroom that would accommodate somebody on a gurney and three attendants. Now, I don’t know why I came up with the idea of a gurney and three attendants. We built this massive bathroom that’s 14×14 and it’s got an incredible shower.

My boys hated it. It’s too big. They’re like, “Mom, we need a shower curtain.” I was like, “You got a door. Nobody is going to peek in and look at you. Enjoy the space.” We have the hospital bed and extra outlets for oxygen. The wheel under sinks is fully accessible. The third floor is what I call the private residence where the boys and I can always hang out. I’m at the beach as much as I humanly possibly can.

As I turned 59 in 2021, I said, “Lorraine, you’ve got to do one more thing. The beach house is built. We now have renters full-time. Ninety percent of our renters are people with disability.” My joy in life is being at the beach house and getting to know my renters. My renters are renters who have vacationed for the first time in many years because there hasn’t been a property that they could access. Our renters are from Canada, California, and Maine.

Where is this located, Lorraine?

Carolina Beach, North Carolina. It’s a little Island called Pleasure Island. It’s 5 miles long and 3 miles wide. It’s a little slice of heaven. I’m asking these families, “Why are you traveling from California to Carolina Beach, North Carolina?” They said there’s nothing else like it. I was like, “No. That can’t be true. There’s got to be more accessible properties.” They’re like, “No, Lorraine. It’s not.” I’d ask the next family and everybody is telling me the same story. That’s how the idea came.

I was taking a shower and for whatever reason, a shower is a happy place where my creativity explodes. After Christmas in 2020, I said, “We’re going to do a TV show.” Again, like the gurney and the three attendants, why am I thinking of a TV show? Come on, Lorraine. What brings you joy is making a difference in people’s lives, making a difference where there is a niche that needs to be filled, and how I can get this information out.

I was like, “You can get it out by having a TV show.” I called a friend of mine who is in that space and I said, “Valerie, what do you think?” She’s a producer. She said, “I love it.” An hour later, she calls me, “You’ve got to do this.” The next day, she calls me and she’s like, “This is brilliant.” I started working with a team of volunteers and that’s who we are now. We’re a volunteer-based effort at Becoming rentABLE. We came up with our script and idea and everything that we’re doing is all about that TV show.

That TV show, Lorraine, hasn’t aired yet, has it?

It hasn’t, but that’s what part of this is all about. I was like, “What do we need producers to see?” Producers want people to watch their show. How do we show that we’ve got support in this? I thought, “We’ve got to do a survey. These ideas of what needs to be in an accessible property are our ideas. Now we need validation. How do we get validation?” We get it by doing a national survey. We got to get this survey out to people. How do you do that? You call your friends at Easter Seals and say, “Easter Seals, this is what I’m doing. Can you help me?” “Sure, no problem.”

They help get the survey out to their group, Muscular Dystrophy Association. They say, “United Cerebral Palsy is a great idea. We’ll help you out.” We started building this network of supporters to get our survey out so that we could get validation and we’re right on the mark of what people are looking for and needing.

I was like, “That’s good. Now we’re going to create this TV show. What are you going to film? What’s going to be on the show?” It’s a 30-minute and 13 episodes. It’s like a Property Brothers show. You deal with the scenario upfront, show the construction and renovation, carry a story throughout, and have the big reveal at the end. Our first show is about a family from Durham, North Carolina. Mateo, I know you’re from Atlanta so you might get some of our ACC vibes.

I’m a more house guy. That’s as far as it goes living in Atlanta for the rest of my life.

We won’t talk about any basketball because we’ve got you covered there. Anyway, he’s a family gentleman at 34. He has cerebral palsy and an intellectual disability and he’s blind. His caregiver Wendy has been with him for 28 years and Sloan loves to travel. He wants to come to the beach but they can’t find a place. They look for two years before they find our place. We tell their story about how they found the place and what are their needs. We build that room. In the show, you have two pullouts. One, what is cerebral palsy, or what is that disability that we’re focusing on?

The second pullout in the show is about construction. What do you need to make a room wheelchair-accessible? What do you need to do to make a bedroom walker-friendly? At the end of the show, we have a link that people can go to. That’s behind-the-scenes and shop to look. What paint color did you use?

Where did that Hoyer lift come from? What was the name of that group that Sloan has that condition called so that people can use this as a resource, learn from it, make their rental property accessible and bring in more revenue for families? You can see that everything that we’re doing goes back to the TV show.

We’re doing a lot of different things. With the TV show, you have to have these properties. We’ve got a condo and our geographic area for the show is vacation destinations and college and university environments. Again, thinking about short-term rentals. Instead of making this every short-term rental everywhere, we want to be very targeted to where we’re going.

Those are the two areas. Every house and property that we feature is either in a vacation destination location or a college and university environment. We have our vacation destination property at Carolina Beach. That’s episodes 1 and 2. Our next property is a condo on the NC State Centennial Campus.

It’s being built for a young man with muscular dystrophy who will be making it an accessible short-term rental. All of our properties are accessible. We have an executive property on the banks of the Tennessee River in Knoxville. As we’re looking at this, it’s like, “Where is this property that people can go to see and learn from?”

We’re building a model property because for us at Becoming rentABLE, we believe accessibility is not mobility and being in a wheelchair. I am happy to say on this show that we are going to be featuring and looking at accessible properties for short-term rental that include mobility, walker-friendly, intellectual and developmental disabilities on autism, vision, and hearing. You will be able to go to our site and look for a property that is autism-friendly and walker-friendly. Nobody globally is doing what we’re doing. We are the first anywhere that will have the depth of accessibility. We are looking at changing the way people look at accessible short-term rentals.

I love this. It’s amazing. You’re tapping into something that has been needed for a long time. Again, we talk about this stuff all the time as far as inclusion. This is a big part of inclusion. Inclusion is not just race or sexual orientation. It’s everything. In this day and age, this is overlooked because it doesn’t get the media’s attention. The media attention drives a lot to injustices that are out in front of them, on social, on the news, and whatever.

Unfortunately, the injustices of accessibility to those with disabilities are important. I don’t know the numbers. I’m sure you can go ahead and rattle the numbers off much more quickly. This is a website for a listing site. Let’s say a property management company comes to you and says, “We have XYZ homes.” If they meet the criteria, is there going to be a way that they could go to your website and say, “All the doors are 36 inches wide? All the thresholds are flat. I’m not sure about the means of grass or whatever. Is there going to be a way that you can get certified as rentable?

I love you because this is our plan for 2022. Everything that we offer is at no charge for anybody. It’s all about education and making a difference. That’s where we’ve started and that’s where we will continue. As we look at growth, we want to provide educational information so that we can see this industry grow. We talk about living your best life. How can you live that best life if you’re not given opportunities? We are creating a certification program and your home can be certified as a wheelchair-accessible home, a walker-friendly home, or an IDD autism home for the visually impaired.

There are going to be multiple certifications. We will provide consulting services. You are an investor and you want to build 1, 2, or 5 rental properties. You want us to consult on what we need to make this, like, “What does this look like?” The property in Arkansas is called The Little Yellow House because it’s a cute little bungalow. I couldn’t come up with a better name and it rolls off the tongue easily. In the little yellow house, we gutted and extended it. This day, we’re filming where the outlets are because outlets are a lot easier when they’re elevated eighteen inches off the floor for everybody.

It’s easier for mobility when the light switches are lowered by six inches. What does that look like in a construction phase? We are doing that so we can consult people from the very beginning. A lot of properties, believe it or not, on the marketplace are not labeled as such, particularly in larger homes where the doors are wider.

There is a hard surface that’s not carpet. There are a lot of rugs and I call wheelchairs rug-eating machines because that’s what we do. We get near a rug of any size in our wheelchairs, and before you know it, you’ve got a rug underneath your chair. Rolling showers are the spa shower these days. It’s also a wheelchair-accessible shower. It’s a rolling shower so we can consult on your language. My favorite is mirrors. If you go and start looking at short-term rentals, VRBO has two filters. That is wheelchair access and elevator. VRBO has added thirteen. We can talk about some of those.

Lorraine, just for clarification, you said VRBO for both ones. Which one has thirteen? Which one has two?

VRBO has two filters for accessibility. Airbnb has thirteen. Becoming rentABLE will have 33. We are going to that degree of accessibility. We want to educate these property managers to say, “Let’s look at your inventory. What words are you using? What photographs are you taking?” Again, mirrors are my favorite because you have this whole great, beautiful rolling shower and a mirror that’s six feet in the air.

That’s great for somebody standing, but you can have a tilted mirror that would work for both people. You can have an elongated mirror to meet that need. We will provide those services. We’re going to do educational seminars and webinars. We will work our best to get this information out there. We’ll populate our map. Our focus is the continental US. We’ve had people from all over the world that said, “We want to do a model property in London. Will you come to Europe and do this? Will you do this in Spain?” No. We’re staying in the US.

You have to start someplace and build it out. Scaling is hard. You have to start, refine it and build it. Once you have that model and foundation, then you can go from there. I agree to keep it in one place. The interest from overseas is fantastic. Maybe someone overseas will want to go ahead and do something as well.

Thinking about what you’re doing in looking at it in terms of two lanes that are running side by side but are also very different, I’m very much intrigued by this purposefully, deliberately built property versus retrofitting. I have a whole lot of questions.

Bring them on.

When you retrofit, sometimes there are restrictions in terms of what you can build. In seeing the gap that you’re filling in all of these vacation rental communities, there’s nothing like what you’ve built for yourself. My mind has blown in that space because a lot of this is out of sight, out of mind. You’ve said multiple things. Who didn’t think you can’t go to the beach, walk, enjoy the sand and all of these things? I won’t even get into the hospice care that you brought in, which is completely brilliant in a business sense. It’s also from a humanitarian sense of myself.

I’d rather pass looking at the ocean as opposed to looking at the picture on a TV in some bland hospital. Talk to me about that part because there are so many different opportunities that you seem to be at the forefront of. Part of deliberately building these entities separates you from hotels, hospitals, and hospice care now, and puts you in an entirely different space of hospitality that no one’s scratched the surface.

We’ve had two ends of life. I’ll try not to cry. It’s the hardest thing ever emotionally.

You can cry on the show.

What a privilege. We had one this summer of a young man. He was in a coma two days before their vacation. He’s been in hospice. He wanted to pass away and be at the beach but they couldn’t find anything. They found us and mom and dad are the coolest family ever. We now have a beach wheelchair too, so they could go down to the beach. They sat on the ground. They had their legs spread out. Their son was between their legs. He was holding them and he was smiling as the water would rush up over his leg. You could see him smile. He woke up out of his coma after two days.

They believed in their hearts that he knew. They kept telling him, “We were going to the beach.” He came to the beach and they were on the beach. The water goes up. They put him back in the chair, come back to the house, rest, and go back to the beach. Every day, they went to the beach. What a gift. That’s why I love being at the beach with my renters. What incredible love. Our first end of lifer was a man from Maine who came down to the beach for four months. His wife said after his passing that this was the happiest time of his life.

To be able to offer that to him have so much joy. He went fishing and bought oysters. He calls me and he says, “Lorainne, I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to put oyster shells in your disposal boobs. What do you do? I’m going to kill you.” It’s a gift. That’s another thing about all of this. I’m a property owner and investing this revenue to build The Yellow House. We use that revenue which is an important revenue piece for us. We have had success financially because of our niché, but it’s not about that. What property owners will find is the emotional benefit of satisfaction and gratitude that they have a part in playing in families’ lives. I know it’s all about the dollar.

This is significant. It is about the dollar, but the reality is the focus has to be brought forward that it can be. They don’t have to be mutually exclusive. It can be about the dollar and be for good too if it’s deliberately designed that way. Oftentimes, it works out. When people don’t see, understand or know that there’s a huge portion of people that are not being served, and we’re uncovering all.

We’re lucky, John, because we get to see all these niché spaces. I call them niché because they haven’t been popularized. Most people haven’t found them, and they’re very specific to a certain demographic. They’re huge and their value is very much significant. It’s great to see them coming to the forefront as it is now. I hope it’s lucrative for everybody so it can expand.

I have some questions about that lucrativeness. I know it’s not the focus but for some reading, there needs to be an ROI when you’re going in front of a board. Also, if you’re a property management company that’s got 500 units and you’re looking to go ahead and purpose-build some more units. You said that people are coming from California and Maine to North Carolina because you’re one of a handful in all of the US.

What are the numbers behind that? Do you have those numbers that you could share with us? Say a company was to go ahead and spend $500,000 or $1 million building one of these purpose-built homes on the beach, what is the ROI of something like that? Do you charge more for accessibility? I know that morally, you don’t want to but you know you could.

That is something my husband and I talk about. I charge on the lower end because I know personally the expense. We have an electric hospital bed in Raleigh at our family home. We have two at the beach. One for the second floor and one for the third floor. There are a lot of ancillary costs involved when you have different types of disabilities and expenses. I am below the market average at the beach. We could be more, but I’m comfortable and happy with the amount of money that we’re getting. We’re making a substantial profit. I’m fine with that. My husband, of course, would like to see more. I was like, “Why? Do we really need that money?”

If that money were then used to build more homes or make them more accessible to more people, then you could justify the needs.

Here’s where the numbers lay out. When I told you we did that survey, at the same time from February to June 2021, we have a team of researchers. Our researchers took Airbnb and VRBO. We went through every property on the Airbnb site for four months. We go through every one of the properties that were listed as accessible, and we went through some very minor areas of recognition.

Do you have wide doorways that are wider than 32 inches? This is a visual look because we only know what we see. Do you have a roll-in shower? We looked at mobility only and four areas of access to the front door, access to get into the front door, a roll-in shower, and a roll under sink somewhere in the house. Those were the four things we looked at. In our first area with Airbnb, we found that 23 states in the United States had zero accessible properties with that criteria. With the balance, we found 85 properties. I don’t know how many thousands they have, but we found 85.

 In the whole US across VRBO and Airbnb, 85 properties total.

Airbnb alone because there was no validation. People self-populate what they’re going to put on their website. It says, “Are you wheelchair accessible?” “We are wheelchair accessible. You can get through this door, maybe sideways, but we’re good.” A lot of people don’t know the language. They don’t know what it means because they may not have a disability, a friend, or a family member. They have their ideas but what we were looking for, they didn’t have. Not to say that they didn’t have other things, but what we were looking for.

I’m looking for myself. I’m in a wheelchair to travel, which I don’t. I have to have a roll-in shower. I have to have a roll under sink. I have to get into that space. We looked at that. We started with VRBO. That’s been a greater challenge because they have two filters. They have a wheelchair accessible and an elevator. You click those filters and it says 700,000 properties. You click it to the United States and we’re at 350,000 properties. We have found minimal properties that meet our criteria on VRBO. We’re looking, at the most, 85 properties. Now here’s the crazy thing with Airbnb.

We did two rollouts with Airbnb. We were on HGTV’s top ten most accessible properties in the United States. Guess who’s not on Airbnb’s filter system right now? Our property. I’m going, “What is going on? We did 2 of your 3 rollouts. We’ve got these credentials and it takes time.” Airbnb has a great big rollout that’s taking place. I call them and I write to them every single day since the rollout going, “I look at wheelchair-accessible rental properties in North Carolina. We’re not there. Let’s bring this down to Carolina Beach, North Carolina. We’re not there. Why aren’t we there?” Airbnb says, “It takes time.” “How much freaking time does it take for an existing property that you’ve worked with in 2 out of your 3 rollouts?” We’re talking no BS here.

I work for Hopper. We’re starting up our own, which is the number one travel app in the world. we haven’t gone live yet with vacation rentals, but this is important. I love hearing this because these are things that are going to be important for us that I’m going to make sure that we are prioritizing. At least, when it comes in and having it being on a questionnaire, they can go ahead and fill it out. I’m going to be reaching out to you to make sure that we are doing this correctly from the beginning. I want to continue with the numbers here. You talked about there are 85 properties in the US that meet the criteria based on mobility and accessibility.

Now I’m psyched. You’re not supposed to have favorite children. I have a new favorite child in my world of accessibility, and I’m so stoked about being able to reach out to the IDD and autism community. It’s such an incredible community. I feel personally that some of my very favorite people in the whole wide world have intellectual developmental disabilities and autism. Why is that? It’s because there are no filters. I have no filter. That’s a good thing and it’s a bad thing.

We have no filter. If you tune in to our show, you know that.

I’ll go to an event and somebody a mile away will go, “Miss Lorraine, you don’t have shoes on.” I’m like, “Why do I need to wear shoes? I’m in a wheelchair.” Being able to reach the autism IDD community is so exciting to me. We’re working with the executive director of Easterseals in Arkansas and they predominantly provide services to individuals with IDD and autism. I’m like, “John, work with me. What does it take to have inaccessible properties for individuals with autism and IDD? What does that look like?” I’ve learned so much and we’re going to be able to do these webinars and provide what we’re creating. It should be almost done. It’s a how to make your rental property accessible for somebody with IDD and autism.

Is it mostly sensory stuff?

It’s having soothing colors. My property at the beach is not a great place for somebody who needs soothing colors. I love the color i.e. a green sweater. It is having blackout somewhere that has dark blackout shades. You have to look at your lighting. Make sure you don’t have fluorescent lighting. You look at your lighting so it doesn’t have any strobing effects. There’s a list that we’re putting together that will allow you to look at it. When you go to our website at BecomingRentable.com, you can go, “I’m looking for a property in the United States that I need walker-friendly, wheel under sink and an autism focus.” We’ll populate that and tell you what it has. That’s where the certification program will be coming in.

We have six properties that will be populated when we go live in December 2022 that are autism-friendly. We have zero for vision and zero for hearing. The bottom line is there are no filters. People have not thought about it, so properties aren’t listed in that way. We’ll be able to give you a list of what is required and we are inviting people to come to us to say, “Our property is a great candidate for this.”

There are property managers that are tuning in to our show that have hundreds, if not thousands, of properties that are in their pool. If you have a property that is close to this and needs a little bit of modification, please reach out to us or Lorraine. Lorraine will be able to push you in the right direction. I want to get back to the numbers because you are excited but I didn’t forget. I want you to talk about 85 properties. How many potential renters are out there that aren’t able to go on vacation or aren’t able to do that? What’s the pool that these property managers and these homeowners are looking to be able to tap into that they don’t have access to? Do you know our approximation?

Sixty-two million Americans have disabilities. Airbnb has reported that they receive 70,000 unique visitors every week looking for an accessible property. That’s with 85 properties in America that we’ve identified as meeting our four criteria that are accessible. We’re looking at 25% of the country looking for properties. We know from one platform that they are identifying 70,000 visiting them and looking for these 85 properties. Unique visitors is key. It’s 2021 and we’re looking at accessibility beyond a wheelchair.

Everything we go through in 2021 and diversity. This should have been addressed. A) It should never have been an issue. B) It should have been addressed forever ago. This is not new. These numbers are mind-blowing. I had no idea. Seventy thousand unique visitors a week looking to go ahead and rent 85 homes, are you kidding me?

Do you know how much disposable cash is left on the table?

This is one of our most powerful episodes to date. This is fantastic. Lorraine, are you involved with VRMA?

I’m on their LinkedIn. That’s it.

I’m on the membership committee. We are on different committees. We are on the diversity equity inclusion subcommittee. Mateo is a co-chair of that committee. You need to be involved with VRMA. You need to be at the Spring Forum that happens in Chicago in April 2022 and/or have a presence at VRMA in October 2022 at the International Show. These are important. We can introduce you to anyone and everybody that you need to be introduced to. We want you on our panel. We do different things with inclusion and accessibility.

We need your voice and we want you part of that 100%. We’re all going to be part of all these different things. Number one, you need to become a member of VRMA for 2022 and tap into that. We want you on our subcommittee for DEI. Let’s make that happen. It’s a huge step for you to get in front of the right people that are looking to go ahead and put their money in the right places. This is the right place and they don’t know about it yet. That’s a problem.

I’m not slamming Airbnb, VRBO, RedAwning or any of these groups. I’ve talked with Airbnb as we’re building this model property. I’m going, “Hello, people. One of the best business decisions you ever could make is to be a part of this little yellow house.” This is an educational opportunity here and that’s how we’re going to see growth and change. We went to school to learn 1 plus 1 is 2, and that’s what we’re taught, but we’re not taught in these accessibility areas. If we teach you, they will come. What I’m trying to do is to get the message out. I appreciate your support because we’ve only been doing this for ten months.

I’m stoked about how our volunteers have come together. I’ve got a team of eight that are dynamos who believe in what we’re all about. We’re ready for that next step. This is my first interview too so I’m happy and appreciate your support. We want to make a change and we’re going to see that change happen.

For homeowners, hosts or property managers, we stress this in almost every episode. It’s not tips and tricks. If there’s one thing that they could start someplace, what’s the best thing that they could do to go ahead and start the process of making their homes accessible?

You could go to BecomingRentable.com. On our website, we have a list of our filters. You can go through there. It has a threshold. What is a threshold? What does it look like? When you say zero threshold entry, that’s Greek for a lot of people. What the heck are they talking about? You can go to our website and you can see what a zero-threshold entry is and why we have it.

You can then see the door space. The best thing they can do is go to our website and look, do we have 36-inch doors? This is what we call a 36-inch door. Do you have a roll-in shower? Do you have a step-in shower? What is the difference between those? It’s understanding. You can go look and see what of these things you have, and you can always call us to say, “What does it take to have these things?” There are three things.

One is they can go to our website. They can look at the language and how they describe their properties. If they have 36 inches doors existing in their properties, say that in your description. If you have a hard surface driveway, say that in your description and follow it up with a photograph. You go to these sites and you see the beautiful waves, the birds and the amusement park. That’s lovely, but that’s what another search is for.

We want to know what your property’s like. Let’s see your door entry. Let me see your driveway and the front of your property. Those things matter. Let’s see your roll under sink. Many times, photographs in the bathroom are taken from the chest level up, so you never see the floor. We want to see the floor. If you’re reaching people that use a wheelchair, walker, or cane, they need to see the floor so let’s show pictures of the floor.

A big takeaway that I got out of this is if you’re going to click on one of these listing sites that you are accessible, go ahead and show the photos of that back then. Don’t just say you’re accessible because they’re going to allow whatever you click and whatever you are. Obviously, all those things are important, but back it with photo proof. I would assume there’s nothing worse than showing up to a rental that you were expecting to be accessible and you can’t get through the door or that threshold floor if you have one of the mobility scooters to get over it. It’s amazing. Mateo, what else do you get here?

I’m still mind-blown at the lack of opportunity here. I agree I would get involved with VRMA and our groups as soon as possible. That will be a megaphone in terms of allowing you to be a resource and pairing with managers that are willing and able to make changes that they need. We’re the largest community of professional managers within the space and they care about issues like this. You’ll find willing ears and active participants in terms of people that want this for their business and want to know how.

A lot of what they want to know is how. How can we do this? How can we get engaged? What does it take with all of the things you’re doing from? How can we help you build more of these purpose-built homes? There are 62 million people out here that need this as well as those who may or may not have homes that we can retrofit and make better. Maybe there are even little things that we can do within that space.

That will give you the willing audience plus the megaphone to let it be known as it’s been made known to us. We know these things on the periphery, but we don’t think about them when we’re traveling or when we’re talking about all of these things within the accessibility issues. We’re like, “That’s things hotels deal with.”

I’ll leave you with my last story here. I met with a team of investors and they said they had seventeen properties in a mountain community. We had a Zoom meeting and we all were a part of it. They said, “Did you go look at our properties?” I said, “I did.” “Did you see our accessible property?” “I did.” “Is it accessible?” “No, it’s not.” They were like, “We need to quit the Zoom meeting now. We’re done.” I was like, “What do you mean?” They’re like, “Lorraine, all of these properties are in mountains. There are steps.”

I’m like, “So? People with autism climb steps. People who are blind and visually impaired climb steps.” We started talking about it and I said, “There are a lot of ways that you can make your property accessible that are not mobility based. Let’s talk about that.” At the end of the meeting, one of the investors said, “I stand up. We’re going to make our property autism-friendly.” I’m like, “There you go.” When you think, “We can’t do it,” you can. You have to be open-minded and look at different aspects. For less than $1,000, you can now reach a percentage of the population that is not being reached.

That’s huge.

It’s amazing. I’m glad there needs to be more visibility on this. Whatever we can do to help, we’re 100% behind you and Becoming rentABLE. I’m going to reiterate that there are amazing communities, like VRMA and VRMB, that you should get involved with. We can introduce you to some great people that would help this springboard into the short-term metro vacation rental space here in North America and globally if that’s something you’re looking to do.

Do you know Mintel? The Women’s Summit would be fantastic to have you. They’d be elated to have you there and speak to other women business owners. You being at the helm of this, I don’t want to take that away. Everything that you’re doing is incredible. We want to make sure that’s highlighted. Your voice is a very clear lane here. That seems to be getting brought to the forefront. This is incredibly exciting.

It’s exciting to be the first one of the second season. Let’s come back again at the end of this season and let’s see where we are.

You are welcome. At that point, we’ll have bullied you into all different organizations.

Bring them on. I’m up for it.

Lorraine, thank you so much for joining us. My mind has been blown and some heartstrings were pulled. This was a powerful episode. We appreciate what you’re doing, who you’re doing it for, and the selflessness that’s behind what you’re doing. Let’s see how we can help. Let’s make a difference.

Thank you very much.

Important Links

• Hospitality.FM
• Wil Slickers – LinkedIn
• Lorraine Woodward – LinkedIn
• Becoming rentAble
• Muscular Dystrophy Association
• United Cerebral Palsy
• Hopper
• Easterseals
• VRMA
• VRMB
• Mintel
• Megahone.fm/adchoices

About Lorraine Woodward

A business owner and entrepreneur currently leading the way in accessible short-term rentals with Becoming rentABLE. Becoming rentABLE is designed to create and promote accessible short-term rental properties for people with a wide range of disabilities, reaching those with mobility, vision, hearing, and cognitive disabilities and for individuals on the autism spectrum. Lorraine also strives to educate property owners and the general public through this endeavor about what it truly means to have an accessible property.

Lorraine, a lifelong advocate for people with disabilities, has previously: created the National Barrier Awareness Foundation; created Realistic Reflections, a stock photography company specializing in taking and distributing photos of real people with real disabilities; created Lorraine’s Canes, a business creating and providing adults and children with custom, hand-painted wooden canes to meet their personality; and has created two short-term rental homes designed with accessibility at the forefront of mind.

Lorraine currently resides in Raleigh, NC with her husband and has two grown sons and two spoiled cats.