July 2022 Newsletter

The Next Wave in Housing

July 2022 Newsletter

Greetings,   

It is the end of 6 months of this journey. I hope you all are not getting bored. I’m not and am learning new things all the time. It is a great exercise in looking for housing. We have 13 people on the newsletter list, and the website is slowly filling up. 

I have added a few communities to explore on the website: Camphill, Sweetwater, Noah Homes. And a few advocacy groups for design and building info: Bellwether, Green Home Institute and Intentional Environment on the website.

I would like to contract with a company before we design the building and get their input to minimize any kind of stimuli: such as radio waves or sound. How to build a healthy building for everybody. 

Please also check out the article that Lynn Virgo wrote back in 2013:  Designing a Community for Families Living with Autism. It is a great article and similar to Luna Azul of individual houses and mine. 

I would like to start by reaffirming as to why we should get this done. I am not doing this for myself. There is way too much work just for personal gain. I am doing this only for one reason and that is my daughter, who will need lifelong help.  The choices of living places are very limited and do not include the values I would like to have for my daughter after I am not able to help.

So this leads to what those values are. These are my ideas of what I would like to see  for her to live. 

1. Total inclusion- most places I have found have residents and caregivers, {very few, Luna Azul and The Big Wave) allow for anybody to live there. This means people with disabilities, older people, their family and friends and or caregivers.

       Most places are very exclusive and do not adhere to the “Least restrictive model”. 

2. 24/7 care or supervision 

3. Individual rooms with their own bathrooms

4. Owner occupied to control future cost. Or at least a long term control for the rest of their lives. 

5. Affordable-So this is the main thing we as a group will have to work on. My daughter receives SSA, work and DSHS for caregiving. If my daughter cannot live in a community we build then I am not willing to go forward. It has to be affordable for her. So how do we do this? One idea is to have a commercial grade kitchen that cooks food for the community and sells to the community. This will provide work opportunities and food. I like my idea if we have a larger piece of land we can have businesses that can generate rent monthly. If we have extra rooms available we can work together to generate more income by making micro businesses as well. The only way this will be affordable is if we utilize all the resources we can to figure out how to generate money. Just paying a monthly rent or mortgage will not be sufficient for some folks, especially when they get older. 

6. Location: it needs to be in the local Lynnwood/ SW Snohomish area to retain the community that Laura has made over the past years. 

What core values do you need for your loved one? 

So where are we at now? I have filed for the Article of Incorporation for “The Next Wave in Housing” to register as a nonprofit. You will be able to look at the Articles of Incorporation on the website.  I want to go forward sooner than later to get the paperwork going. We can always amend these and the bylaws later. The bylaws are not something you have to file; it is considered an internal document. In my commitment for transparency I will post all my legal work on the website. Once we have a legal nonprofit, but not tax exempt, we can then look for a fiscal sponsor, such as Community Homes, Partners4housing or Bellwether to piggyback on for the tax exempt part. I’m not sure how that works. I will still pursue getting tax exemption after we get two more board members. It would be ideal if we could piggy off of a nonprofit that shares our core values as well. 

Action: I will continue writing the bylaws, and looking for fiscal sponsors. Some of these local projects such as 192 Shoreline and one in Kenmore work with developers to get these places built. So if we concentrate on possible developers it is possible we could walk into a situation where there is an interested developer that needs or wants a project like ours.

Christine is going to look into 192 Shoreline and Alpha and see what they are planning. It sounded at first that Community Homes was going to build a place too, but something happened with that. Maybe Christine can look into this as well. 

There is a lot to do, so if you have the time drop me a line and I can point you in the right direction.  Most of what I have been doing Is internet searches. 

Another big project is figuring out how to provide supervision/care. My thinking is to have cottages of 10-5 people in each, with one room for a live-in caregiver, like a student that wants free housing. I don’t think my original thought of AFH’s will work so I believe it needs to be licensed as a residential facility.  I am going to look into this further. 

My thinking is that we need to have a great unique plan so a foundation or developer will be interested in joining us. Something like:

“We have a unique opportunity to live in a building with people with all disabilities, the elderly and their family and friends to support them in a truly inclusive environment; a place where the design of the building we minimize stimuli for all residents, from open floor plans, to no step up’s, to control of radio waves and sounds, where everybody’s disabilities will be respected. A unique place where residents will be able to live, work and have fun for the rest of their lives in dignity and in a stable place without the fear of moving. ”  etc.…. something in this line. We need great unique ideas to catch developers and foundation attention. What do you think might be unique?

So I hope you are all healthy and happy on this Fourth of July. 

Denis McFadden

LIFE IS EASIER WHEN YOU DO IT TOGETHER