Bruce C. Higgins, Assoc. AIA, NYC Rehabilitation

CURRENT NEED AND REASONS FOR IT:
My profession is architecture.  For the last fifteen years vascular disease ravaged my lower legs and feet even as I battled in and out of the hospital to save them with numerous surgeries.  In 2015 I lost my battle to save my right lower leg. In 2018, I lost my left lower leg.  While learning to balance my body on two prosthetic legs, progress has halted due to a deformity that formed in my amputated lower left leg as a result of poor post-operative rehabilitation.  I now require more surgery to correct that deformity so I can regain my balance standing up.  Then I'll be able to walk again independent of supporting devices or aids, thereby regaining a complete life.

During these difficult fifteen years I endured many financial adversities, including the loss of about $100,000 in unreimbursed medical expenses, as well as the theft of much of my personal and business property.  That included my design portfolio of fifty years
of multi-discipline design and architecture work, which I need to produce new income. My entire portfolio of design work was stolen by the property manager of my former residence, who first stole my home from me at gunpoint.  I was forced out into a
brutal winter day without a coat.  Following that robbery, I had to go for a hospital stay. During my stay, the property management stole all my clothes, food, valuable personal items, and all business equipment and design work necessary for my livelihood. 

I am now rehabilitating my body and my life, including creating a new portfolio of work for my profession.  While doing so, I would greatly appreciate any donation to this GoFundMe campaign to help in my rehabilitation.  I am the architect of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.   I dedicated considerable effort to help Congress bring this Act into fruition to forever improve the lives of 60 million disabled Americans.
I now need your financial assistance to gain my independence once again.  My history as advocate for disabled people is as follows:

HISTORY OF WORK FOR THE DISABLED:
In 1975, while on a leave of absence from my studies in my architecture degree program, I was the graphic designer in the Public Information department of the American Foundation for the Blind, Inc., where half my salary was paid by the Library
of Congress.  The federal department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) asked me to be the designer/specifier of urban environmental devices such as curb cuts in sidewalks, as well as architectural standards for all disabled people.  The Library of
Congress had spent close to one million dollars on research into what all disabled people needed to aid their mobility and accessibility within, into, and exiting all types of buildings and transportation systems, and turned that research over to me.  I added
my own research into necessary building parts measurements synchronized with those of the human body used by twentieth century European architects and industrial designers, and I interviewed scores of disabled Americans to discern their needs in all building types and public places.

In 1976, I submitted my designs, specifications, and recommendations to federal agents of the department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and to members of Congress. All  my work was drafted into the federal statute known as the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, Title 42, U. S. Code Section 12101 et seq., which was signed into law on July 26, 1990 by President George H. W. Bush.

In 1993 in an interview in my home with an FBI Special Agent of the Civil Rights Squad of the New York, NY Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the agent confirmed for me that the United States Department of Justice had a record of my work for the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Bruce C. Higgins, Assoc. AIA, The American Institute of Architects