Audubon's Aging-in-Place Home Modification Experts

Audubon’s Working-Class Roots and the Homes That Shaped a Borough

Audubon is a borough that does not pretend to be something it is not. Covering less than one square mile in central Camden County, Audubon is a tightly packed residential community of approximately 8,700 people whose homes, streets, and institutions reflect a straightforward working-class identity established nearly a century ago. The borough was built out primarily during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s — decades when developers filled the blocks between the White Horse Pike and Merchant Street with affordable homes sized for families earning hourly wages at the nearby Camden industrial plants, the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and the RCA factory.

Those homes define Audubon today: two-story colonials and twins on 30-to-40-foot-wide lots, story-and-a-half Cape Cods, and a handful of single-story bungalows, all built with the materials and methods standard to their era — plaster walls, hardwood floors, coal-converted-to-gas heating systems, and compact floor plans that prioritized shelter over spaciousness. The streets are close together. The houses are close together. The front yards are small, the side yards narrower, and the backyards modest. Nothing about Audubon’s physical layout was designed with excess space in mind.

The residents who fill these homes include a significant population of older adults who have lived in the borough for decades. They raised families here, retired here, and have no interest in leaving for a facility in a township where they know no one. But the homes they occupy — solidly built, warmly familiar, and thoroughly inaccessible by modern standards — present barriers that compound with every year of aging. Accessible Solutions serves Audubon with practical, space-efficient home modifications that address the specific challenges of the borough’s interwar housing stock.

Twin Homes and the Shared-Wall Modification Challenge

A distinctive feature of Audubon’s housing inventory is the prevalence of twin homes — semi-detached pairs that share a center party wall, with each unit occupying half of the structure. These homes were a cost-effective solution during the building boom of the 1920s and 1930s, allowing developers to house two families in the footprint that a single detached home would occupy.

For aging-in-place modifications, twin home construction introduces a constraint that detached homes do not have: the shared wall. Every modification must be planned and executed with awareness that the party wall is a structural and legal boundary. Grab bars can be installed on the shared wall if framing members are accessible from the unit’s side, but anchoring methods must not penetrate through to the neighboring unit. Bathroom conversions adjacent to the party wall require waterproofing that protects both sides. Doorway widenings near the shared wall demand structural evaluation to confirm that the modification does not affect the load path that both units depend on.

Exterior modifications on twin homes are similarly constrained. Ramps can only be routed along the unit’s open side — typically the side with the driveway or the side yard that is not shared. In Audubon’s tight lot configurations, this often means the ramp approaches from the driveway side and connects to a side entry or wraps to the front porch from that direction. Our modular aluminum systems accommodate these constrained geometries through angled sections and compact landings that fit within narrow side yards.

Bathrooms Built for Speed, Not Safety

The bathrooms in Audubon’s interwar homes were designed to be functional, not comfortable, and certainly not safe for aging bodies. A typical Audubon bathroom from the 1930s places a 60-inch cast-iron tub along one wall, a wall-mounted sink opposite, and a toilet at the end, all in a room that measures approximately five by six feet. The doorway is 28 inches wide. The floor is small hexagonal mosaic tile, original and worn smooth by decades of foot traffic. There are no grab bars. The tub has a threshold of 14 to 16 inches that requires a high step-over to enter and exit.

This bathroom layout — essentially unchanged in thousands of Audubon homes — is the setting for more falls among older adults than any other room in the house. Wet tile, high thresholds, nothing to hold onto, and tight quarters that leave no room for error or recovery. A stumble in this bathroom means contact with hard, unyielding surfaces — cast iron, ceramic, porcelain — with no buffer.

Our conversion process transforms these bathrooms within their existing dimensions. The cast-iron tub is removed — a physically demanding task in these tight spaces, as a five-foot cast-iron tub can weigh over 300 pounds. In its place, we install a barrier-free shower base with a low or zero threshold, eliminating the step-over that causes falls. A fold-down bench provides seated bathing. A handheld showerhead on an adjustable slide bar allows bathing from a seated or standing position. Grab bars are installed at the shower entry, along the shower wall, beside the toilet, and at any other point where a resident needs a handhold during transfers.

The doorway widens to at least 32 inches, providing clearance for walkers and narrow wheelchairs. Slip-resistant flooring replaces the original tile. The bathroom becomes a space where an older adult can bathe, toilet, and groom safely and independently — the most fundamental requirements for remaining at home.

Navigating Audubon’s Compact Lots for Ramp Installations

Audubon’s lot dimensions present a spatial puzzle for ramp installations that requires experience to solve efficiently. Typical front yards in the borough offer 15 to 20 feet of depth between the porch and the sidewalk. Front entries are raised three to five steps — roughly 24 to 40 inches above grade. A code-compliant ramp at a 1:12 slope requires 24 to 40 feet of ramp run, plus landings at the top and bottom. The math does not work in a straight line on most Audubon lots.

The solution is configuration. Our modular aluminum ramp systems allow L-shaped, U-shaped, and switchback layouts that fit the available footprint. A common Audubon configuration runs the ramp along the front of the house from the porch to the corner, turns 90 degrees, and descends along the side of the house to ground level near the driveway. Another approach uses a switchback with an intermediate landing, folding the ramp run back on itself to reduce the overall footprint. Each configuration is designed during the initial assessment based on the specific lot dimensions, entry orientation, and the homeowner’s preferences for which side of the property the ramp occupies.

For temporary needs — recovery from surgery, rehabilitation, or a trial period before committing to a permanent installation — we offer ramp rentals starting at $300 per month. The ramp is installed, used for the needed duration, and removed with no permanent modification to the property.

Medicaid as the Financial Bridge for Audubon’s Fixed-Income Residents

Audubon’s economic character has always been working-class, and for the borough’s older residents, that translates to fixed incomes — Social Security, modest pensions, and limited savings. The cost of home modifications, even at reasonable prices, can exceed what a fixed monthly budget allows. A bathroom conversion, a ramp installation, a stairlift — these are not elective upgrades. They are the infrastructure required to avoid a nursing home that costs Medicaid far more in the long run.

NJ MLTSS Medicaid provides Audubon’s qualifying residents with a lifetime benefit for home accessibility modifications. This amount covers the core modifications most residents need — a ramp, a bathroom conversion, grab bars, doorway widenings — and in many cases funds the complete set of changes that makes a home livable for someone with mobility limitations.

We are a certified NJ Medicaid provider and handle the entire process for Audubon families. The initial assessment identifies what the home needs and what Medicaid will cover. We prepare the documentation, submit it to the managed care organization, coordinate the authorization, complete the installation, and submit billing. The resident and their family do not manage paperwork, make phone calls to insurance, or navigate the Medicaid bureaucracy. We carry that responsibility so they can focus on living safely at home.

Complete Accessibility Services for Audubon Homes

Accessible Solutions provides every aging-in-place modification Audubon residents require. Modular aluminum ramp systems configured for compact borough lots and twin-home layouts. Ramp rentals at $300 per month. Bathtub-to-shower conversions and barrier-free roll-in showers for interwar bathrooms. Grab bars anchored with appropriate techniques for plaster-and-lath and shared-wall construction. Stairlifts for steep two-story stairways. Doorway widenings to 32- or 36-inch clearance. First-floor living conversions. Durable medical equipment including hospital beds, wheelchairs, rollators, and commodes. Licensed New Jersey contractor. Certified NJ MLTSS Medicaid provider. Serving Audubon and all of Camden County.