Landlord says no to handicap ramp

NAUGATUCK, Conn. (WTNH) -- A Naugatuck couple needs a handicap ramp to get out of their home to go to doctor's appointments and run errands but their landlord won't let them.

The husband was brought to tears explaining they spend four thousand dollars to get the ramp installed and they keep getting told no.  While the company they paid is fighting for them, they asked News 8 to get some answers too.

Last year's Christmas wish is much different than this year's.

"Just a ramp please," Robin Paul's husband said crying.

Since 1999, it was just Robin Paul in a wheelchair, now so is her husband after having a stroke in February.

"We have to go to doctor's appointments," Paul said.

It's kind of difficult to even leave their Naugatuck mobile home without a ramp.

They've been having problems with the landlord and the next door neighbor.

"She's not even willing to push her car back a foot," Paul said.

"We all have two spots...turn that off. We all have two spots and she's got the nerve to tell me I've got to move," the neighbor said.

"They're handicap," News 8's Erin Logan said.

The woman claims they're not the only ones.

"I am too," the neighbor said.

In June, the couple tried to put a ramp outside an entrance but were told the septic tank could interfere.

When that attempt failed, the Pauls hired Collins Medical equipment to install a ramp going down the stairs and around the corner but the landlord said that would interfere with snow plowing. Collins says the landlord even got a little nasty.

"He said it's not my fault that she's sick or disabled or in a wheelchair," Paul said. 

"How did that make you feel," News 8's Erin Logan asked. 

"Awful," Paul said. "We also told him we'd rip out the whole deck just so we could have the ramp and put it on the cement platform and he said all we needed was a foot more cement on the lawn and Gerry goes no."

All we really got from Gerry Gendron was that it could interfere with the street. We asked him to explain because Collins tells us it would not interfere.

"They got their way of thinking and the park rules and stuff are different than they think," Gerry Gendron the property owner said.

"What can we do to make it possible," News 8's Logan asked.

"I don't know, talk to my attorney," Gendron said.

"God forbid there's a fire and I can't get out of the house," Paul said.