The Kelsey Co-Founder Micaela Connery’s podcast interview with Kim Albrecht, the founder of advocacy organization LOMAH discussing disability-forward housing for families with children with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
What a year it’s been — fun and challenging, and full of ideas and questions. Every day brings us closer to our goal of building a new model of inclusive community and permanently changing the housing sector to be a more inclusive one across ability and income.
The Kelsey is one of several organizations committed to new solutions to the housing crisis adults with disabilities face in Santa Clara and beyond. We’re grateful for the advocacy of Housing Choices, the Lanterman Housing Alliance, and others who work to create more housing for this community.
At The Kelsey, we talk a lot about inclusive communities and the type of people who would want to live in them. We often use the term “Inclusion Natives” to describe people with and without disabilities who grew up in inclusive settings. We want to take a moment to explain what we mean when we talk about Inclusion Natives and why they are so important to our work.
Micaela Connery discusses Harvard Kennedy School’s support of the first Social Innovation and Change Initiative workshops with people of all abilities across the country.
The work the Center for American Progress and their partners are doing to ensure disability policy has a permanent home in progressive politics is fundamental to ensuring people with disabilities have access to the protections, supports, and services they need. We’re excited to fight for access, inclusion, and equity alongside them.
Growing up in San Francisco, it was impossible and has become even more impossible, to ignore the issue of homelessness. As a child and teenager, I volunteered with various nonprofits in the Bay Area that worked with homeless individuals.
We’ve looked at stats around disability and homelessness, disability and poverty, and disability and housing discrimination. We’ve researched service and support issues, drivers of isolation, the importance of inclusion, and the changing preferences of individuals and families.
“My work feels like a really wonderful combination of something that I have a personal connection to while fulfilling a need that not a lot of people are working to address,” she said. According to Connery, one in five people has a disability – a large portion of our population.
Roughly one out of every five people in the United States has a disability, making it the largest minority group in the country. But even with the sheer numbers, the population is regularly overlooked and rarely talked about. Learn how you can be part of the solution by creating more inclusive neighborhoods, workforces, and communities.