Harvard Gazette: When Housing Becomes a Community

Micaela Featured in Harvard Gazette

For their commencement issue, The Harvard Gazette chose Micaela as the featured alumni from Harvard Kennedy School:

The At HKS, Connery has focused on issues of employment and housing for adults with disabilities, particularly the latter. “The experience of home is so fundamental to human existence,” she said. “I want to think about inclusive housing for people with disabilities that’s integrated into urban communities. How can we make it scalable and sustainable, so we can start to change the system?”

Connery said she dreams of — and is working on a business plan for — an inclusive residential community for people with and without disabilities, which would employ trained disability services workers to support residents who need those services. But the facility would also provide programming to help build community among all its residents. “I want it to be the opposite of ‘Bowling Alone,’” Connery says, referring to the 2000 book by Robert Putnam, the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at HKS. “Can you use community to enrich everyone’s lives, and ultimately to change the way we think about disability in this country?”

Read the full story here.