Aging in Place Service Areas Around Tucson, AZ

Aging-in-place requests are matched by address, because the work is decided by the house: how wide the bathroom door is, whether the tub can come out, what is behind the wall for grab-bar blocking, and how much rise there is at the front door for a ramp. Every community on this list sits in Pima County, and the housing stock splits three ways. The 1947-1975 concrete-block and brick-veneer houses inside Tucson and South Tucson, and in the older blocks of Flowing Wells, Drexel Heights, Marana and Sahuarita, are single storey on a slab, with a 28 to 30 inch bathroom door, a five-by-eight hall bath and a 14 inch tub apron. The 1980s-2000s stucco tract housing through Catalina Foothills, Casas Adobes, Oro Valley, Vail and Rita Ranch was built with slightly wider doors and a garden tub plus a separate shower, so the work there is usually the shower rather than the doorway. Green Valley, Sahuarita, Oro Valley and Marana hold most of the metro's active-adult and retirement housing, where the same work is asked for at a larger scale. Two other things change what a contractor can do and when: the permit comes from a city or town building department at some addresses and from Pima County Development Services at others, and in a condominium, villa or gated community a second approval sits behind the permit. Southern Arizona's own conditions set the rest of it - slab-on-grade construction with no basements, caliche and expansive clay that move foundations, exterior steps and ramps that get dangerously hot in an unshaded summer sun, monsoon rain from July to September, dust, evaporative coolers that raise the indoor humidity through those weeks, and tile floors that turn slick when they are wet. Tell us what is hard now - stepping into the tub, the doorway width, a fall that has happened, a veteran in the household, or a step at the door - and we route the request to licensed accessibility contractors whose crews already work your part of the county.