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.
For their commencement issue, The Harvard Gazette chose Micaela as the featured alumni from Harvard Kennedy School: Making Disability-Forward Housing Scalable and Sustainable
Avoiding being institutional isn’t enough. Defining rules of what people can’t do isn’t enough. Limiting the size, activities, or structures of a home isn’t enough. Stripping away “institutional-alities” does not a meaningful home make.
Micaela Connery investigates the challenges adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities face when searching for a suitable home. Hundreds of thousands of adults with disabilities across the U.S. sit on housing “wait lists” for home and community-based services.
Individuals with disabilities and advocates have been fighting for thoughtful supports, inclusion in communities, and independent living since the 1960s “based on the premise that people with even the most severe disabilities should have the choice of living in the community.” The challenge isn’t new, but the solutions will need to be.