Why My Heart’s Home
By Lisa Wiederlight, M.P.P.
Board President and Founder, My Heart’s Home
I’m sitting here looking at my almost 24 year-old son sitting on the couch. It’s bittersweet. He’s loving, smart, well-behaved after some turbulent years, and social. Yet, despite my best advocating for over a decade, he has made the dreaded transition like so many others like him, “From the classroom to the couch.”
When a disabled person tuns 21, he/she/they are no longer required by Federal law to have any services and supports like they do before they reach this age. While some call this the “cliff",” I call it having the floor fall out from under you.
My son has autism and other related disabilities. Research shows that people with autism have between four to eight co-occurring conditions. He needs and wants to be out in the community, having fun, meeting friends, and working/volunteering. This sounds amazing, because I don’t know how it will come true without My Heart’s Home.
I started My Heart’s Home because I realized that there is a vast shortage of any housing, appropriate supports, and planned activities to promote socialization and self-actualization for adults with disabilities, and also with veterans. I’ll start with veterans—on any given night, according to widely-accepted sources, there are about 35,000 homeless veterans. Homeless. That is unquestionably shameful.
I’ve looked at available housing in my area for adults with developmental disabilities, and for the most part, even if it is available, it is just as isolating as living in my house, given the lack of planned activities in the community at large, and the national shortage of support professionals who keep our population engaged, safe, and productive. While some support professionals are paid inappropriately low wages, we just don’t recruit and maintain support professionals very well, either.
This is all to say that while we talk a good game policy-wise on community inclusion after closing all of the dreadful institutions, we have just “closed the jails” and put disabled people and their family caregivers on “home detention.” Close abusive institutions, yes. Throw people into the community with no plan or resources for doing so? Shameful again.
Do you know what happened in the 1970s and 80s when the United States closed the “mental institutions” and said these people would have wrap-around community services? Well, the services that actually existed at all could not meet the needs, there was no accountability, and surprise, that is when homelessness increased. I know because I was working for a U.S. Senator and was studying the homelessness crisis in the United States in 1989. Now, we’ve added adults with developmental disabilities and veterans to the streets.
Research estimates that 12% to 39% of the population experiencing homelessness has an intellectual disability, and 12% to 21% may be on the autism spectrum. Sources for this are below.
People with intellectual/developmental disabilities (I/DD), including those with autism, become homeless for many reasons. That’s another blog, so look out for it. This blog is about My Heart’s Home, and our mission and calling. We hope it calls to you. Suffice it to say that the streets are no place safe for people with developmental disabilities, who often have complex medical needs and neurological, social, and emotional differences that make being homeless more unsafe than it already is for those who do not have such challenges. For example, multiple peer-reviewed research studies confirm that people with I/DD are at much greater risk than the general population for both physical and sexual abuse in all environments.
We believe that there is an urgent need to build our communities in a thoughtful way so that they are safe, accessible, affordable, and will help to facilitate the kind of lives we all want our loved ones to live. Join us on this journey—please contact us today to see how you can help, and/or please make a generous donation of any amount.
Thank you.
Sources:
McKenzie, Karen, George Murray, Helen Wilson, and Lauren Delahunty. 2019. “Homelessness—‘It Will Crumble Men’: The Views of Staff and Service Users about Facilitating the Identification and Support of People with an Intellectual Disability in Homeless Services.” Health & Social Care in the Community 27 (4). https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.12750.
Kargas, Niko, Kathryn M. Harley, Amanda Roberts, and Stephen Sharman. 2019. “Prevalence of Clinical Autistic Traits within a Homeless Population: Barriers to Accessing Homeless Services.” Journal of Social Distress and the Homeless 28 (2): 90–95. https://doi.org/10.1080/10530 789.2019.1607139. 17
Rejie, Zelalem Tiruneh. 2017. “5 Things You Should Know about Autism and Homelessness.” Autism Housing Network (blog). November 13, 2017. https://www.autismhousingnetwork.org/5-things-know-autismhomelessness/.
Brown, Michael, and Edward McCann. 2020. “Homelessness and People with Intellectual Disabilities: A Systematic Review of the International Research Evidence.” Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities 34 (2). https://doi.org/10.1111/jar.12815.
Churchard, Alasdair, Morag Ryder, Andrew Greenhill, and William Mandy. 2018. “The Prevalence of Autistic Traits in a Homeless Population.” Autism 23 (3): 665–76. https://doi. org/10.1177/1362361318768484