Many of Ian Smith’s neighbors in Oakland go to bed each evening confident in the knowledge that while they may pay some of the highest rents in the country, those monthly bills aren’t going to skyrocket overnight.

Smith, who works as a software engineer in San Francisco, isn’t so lucky.

The 32-year-old uses a wheelchair to get around and needs an apartment with wide hallways, low power outlets and other features. But most apartments built before the country passed laws protecting people with disabilities from discrimination in the early 1990s are not accessible. And apartments that are accessible are too new to be covered by the city’s rent control program, which exempts complexes built after 1983. So while many of his friends and acquaintances lease older places where landlords can’t raise the rent more than a few percentage points any given year, Smith’s rent on a newer, unregulated place has ballooned by more than 70 percent since he moved in in 2012.

In Oakland and elsewhere, Smith said, “a majority of my peer group is covered.” But, people with disabilities “are on the outside.”

Now, Smith and two other renters are suing Oakland on behalf of others with disabilities for excluding them from the city’s rent control program, demanding changes to the system even if they go against the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, the state law that puts limits on city rent control ordinances.

The suit comes amid a regional housing crisis that has sent rents across the Bay Area soaring — nearly doubling in Oakland in the last decade to well above $2,000 for a one-bedroom apartment. While the city’s rent-control program applies to more than 60 percent of Oakland’s private rental housing, the suit alleges, few if any residents with disabilities are covered, leaving them especially susceptible to huge rent hikes.

Oakland did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Renters with disabilities across Oakland are harmed by the lack of accessible units covered by the city’s rent stabilization program,” said Sean Betouliere, a staff attorney at Disability Rights Advocates, one of two nonprofits handling the class-action case. “I worry that many have already been forced out of the City because they need to live in accessible units and, as a result, have no opportunity to access rent stabilization.”

Disability Rights Advocates and the Public Interest Law Project say they have no hard data for how many people the suit might cover, but they estimate that as of 2017, around 16,000 Oakland renters had disabilities that made walking or navigating stairs difficult or impossible.

And Oakland is not alone.

“This is absolutely an issue in other cities,” Betouliere said, adding that he hopes the suit will prompt other places to review their own policies.

The suit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court, alleges that the city puts people with disabilities “in a discriminatory double-bind.” They can rent an apartment outside rent control protections or live in an inaccessible, potentially dangerous unit covered by rent control provisions.

“In either circumstance, people with disabilities are denied the same opportunity to participate in and benefit from Oakland’s Rent Adjustment Program that the city’s non-disabled tenants enjoy,” the suit says.

According to the suit, Sunday Parker, another plaintiff and Oakland resident who uses a wheelchair, has been displaced multiple times from newer apartments that fit her needs because rents have risen to unaffordable levels.

Plaintiff Mitch Jeserich also uses a wheelchair and has opted to live in a rent-controlled apartment, but that’s come with daily challenges, the suit alleges. His bathroom is too small to accommodate a wheelchair and the design of the kitchen doesn’t allow him full access to his refrigerator.

“I used to live in a more accessible apartment, but I had to leave when the rent started to go up faster than I could afford,” Jeserich said in a statement. “I was fortunate to find an inaccessible rent-stabilized unit that I could work with — more or less — but it’s not always easy, and I worry that I’m only one injury away from not being able to do it at all.”

Smith, the software engineer, now pays some $1,200 more a month than he did when he moved out from Washington, DC, in 2012. Had the unit been rent controlled, his rent would have gone up by no more than $233.

According to the suit, the plaintiffs sent a letter in June asking Oakland to tweak its rent control program to include accessible units, but that hasn’t happen, prompting the lawsuit. Oakland residents with disabilities, the suit argues, should be able to access the same rent-control benefits as other residents.

“For many tenants, rent stabilization is the difference between having or not having a place to live in Oakland and in other communities with rent control,” Michael Rawson, director of the Public Interest Law Project, said in a statement. “The blanket exclusion from Oakland’s rent stabilization program of all units built less than 36 years ago effectively denies a person needing to live in an accessible unit from protections of the program. We hope that this litigation will make Oakland’s rent control program more accessible to tenants with disabilities.”

And while Costa-Hawkins offers protections to some Oakland landlords who want to increase rents to market rates, the filers of the suit say the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, which protects people with disabilities from discrimination, supersedes the state law.

The timing of the suit is not random. More people are struggling to find accessible housing, Betouliere said.

“Displacement is becoming a bigger and bigger issue,” Betouliere said, adding that while it’s been a problem for people with disabilities for a long time, “right now, it is particularly acute.”