Housing
Responding to crisis with a model for change
Funding for autism services overwhelmingly supports children. Similarly, reporting on autism and media representations overwhelmingly center kids. That support and awareness is vital, but autism doesn’t end at age 18. It doesn’t end at age 30 or 50 or 75. Where do those children go when they grow up? Where do they live as they grow old?
The average income from Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is less than $10,000/year – 22% below the federal poverty level..
Priced Out: The Housing Crisis for People with Disabilities, 2017
There has always been and continues to be a crisis-level lack of housing for autistic adults. These individuals often need special accommodations, yet the need for even standard affordable housing far surpasses supply, especially considering the very limited income of most autistic adults.
The national average cost to rent just a typical studio apartment would consume 99% of the less than $10,000 that SSI provides annually, leaving nothing for food and basic expenses, let alone the long-term support services most autistics need to live independently.
As a result, roughly half of autistics in the U.S. live with their parents. Nearly one third are completely socially isolated, with no friends or community beyond immediate caregivers. And these numbers include everyone with autism. For nonspeakers specifically, the percentages are far worse.
FACT
The Department of Housing & Urban Development, the federal agency responsible for affordable and accessible housing through a variety of programs, has no programs for assistance to people with autism.
What will happen to my child when I’m gone?
Parents of autistic adults live in dread with this question every day – what happens when, inevitably, they can no longer provide a home and care for their child? Because adult autistics who don’t live with their parents typically end up in an institutional setting.
Nonspeakers in these facilities have no way to communicate. Today, the vast majority of nonspeakers still have no access to rich forms of communication because AAC training and education remains so inaccessible. For the tiny percentage who can communicate with AAC, being separated from a parent, who typically facilitates communication, means being silenced.
In short, most adults with autism live with their parents and, with no viable alternative, will eventually be institutionalized, completely cut off from communication, no say in or control over their daily lives.
People with disabilities experience poverty at twice the rate of people without disabilities, driven by lower education and employment and greater needs for home health care, medications and assistive technologies.
National Disability Policy: A Progress Report, 2017
A Model for Worldwide Change
Safe, affordable housing for autistic adults – particularly nonspeakers – is a pervasive and complex problem. We can help change that.
We believe Teva Community can be largely self-sustaining, with revenue from facility rentals and residential fees paid through SSI. We’ll also earn revenue through education, helping service professionals and families better support autistic people and spread the most effective methods for communication.
Of course, the direct housing we provide will be the proverbial drop in the bucket. But as a first-of-its-kind initiative, we also believe we can be a beacon to the world, a blueprint for others to follow. However far and fast the Teva Community model spreads, change needs to start somewhere. And that somewhere will be a beautiful 35 acres in the Prescott National Forest.