Caroline Bas

Pronouns: She/Her

Caroline leads housing programs at The Kelsey overseeing both our direct development and technical assistance projects. She joined The Kelsey in 2019 with over fifteen years of business leadership experience across the non-profit, corporate, startup, and philanthropic sectors, most recently as a management consultant where she led corporate finance and enterprise transformation projects for technology companies. Caroline came to this work after supporting her mother, who has disabilities, navigate evictions, health crises and housing instability. Through witnessing first-hand how housing insecurity has become wide-spread, she saw that by centering solutions on people with disabilities we can create better outcomes for all residents. 

Caroline is a lifelong Californianian growing up in Hayward, going to undergraduate at California Polytechnic State University, and receiving an MBA from UC Berkeley. She lives in San Francisco with her family

The housing affordability crisis in California has disproportionately affected people with disabilities and I am proud that we are focused on the production of more housing that is affordable, accessible, and inclusive. Witnessing my own mother who has disabilities experience housing instability in the area she grew up in, I saw that we need a multifaceted approach to the housing crisis and treat it with the sense of urgency it deserves.

To me, disability-forward means we are designing for people with disabilities first, and enabling others to benefit from that design. As a stroller user, I love curb cuts and couldn’t imagine a world without them. The Kelsey strives to shift the conversation from ‘designing places for people with disabilities because it is required by code’ to ‘designing places for people with disabilities because it creates a better experience for all users”.