April Newsletter 2023

The Next Wave in Housing

April 2023 Newsletter

Greetings,

This is not an April Fools joke!!

I want to introduce our new board member: Charles Wigle, LMFT, LPCC from Chula Vista, CA. He has a Master's Degree in Psychology and has two clinical licenses in California (Marriage and Family Therapy, Professional Clinical Counseling). He has been the Associated Director of Motiva Associates (www.motivaassociates.com) since 2010. They are a behavioral health organization specializing in serving children with autism and other developmental disabilities,incorporated for over 20 years and serving two counties in Southern California with over 100 staff members. Charles is an old highschool friend of mine, who has agreed to work with us to get going.

I guess I should introduce myself as well. My name is Denis McFadden, I am the father of Laura McFadden. I have previously worked in the sign trade for 20 years, and the last 12 years until, I retired in 2018, I worked in the Lake Stevens School district as a Speech Language Pathologist Assistant. I worked mostly with kids with special needs and assistive technology. My experience with people with disabilities started when we found out that my daughter was intellectually disabled at 9 months in 1996. It has been an interesting experience and continues to this day. I have no experience in starting a non-profit, but I have taken on the challenge to make a place where I would like for my daughter to live out the rest of her life.

We still need one more board member to go on to our next step of applying for tax exemption status. If you are leery about being a board member, but want to help, we are opening up committees to work on our ongoing challenges. The committees will start with: grant writing and research on finding grants; land acquisitions, research on funding and more if you have a passion for anything special.

I interviewed Frank van Dillen of Holland from DVA Dementia Village Associates who helped design The Hogeweyk Dementia Village. I am interested in this design as it does not have to be just for people with dementia. It is a universal design to make everybody's life better, and could be used for people with disabilities. If we decide to use them, it would eliminate the need to try and design our one community. It is based on outdoor spaces with a micro business for hairstyle stores and a movie theater built within the community. It is built around 6-7 people living in their own cottages, to mimic a household, compared to a retirement facility where they have everybody grouped together. It is constructed to facilitate everybody to function by eliminating barriers: such as no checkerboards floors, natural lighting, glass doors on cabinets.

When you watch this video replace dementia with people with special needs. The Hogeweyk

They designed the building for Hogeweky in the Netherlands and other locations around the world. They integrate hardware and software design to build communities for people with dementia and could be used for people with disabilities a well. "By software we mean the mission, vision and values of the operator, the business concept, the operational processes and the organization. By hardware we mean the urban planning and the physical design of the facility and how sustainable the facility must be. This means that the functional program integrates the software and hardware".

They are a consulting firm that helps nonprofits and for profits build villages for people with dementia, but the idea can be used for any population.

They have Our Roadmap© established process to help.

PHASE 1: Business Creation PHASE 2: Business Assessment PHASE 3: Business Planning PHASE 4: Prototyping PHASE 5: Testing & Optimizing

These guys have been doing this a long time. There is a cost associated with the help, but they are well established, and they should have clout to help us. It may be in our interest once we get our tax exemption to go after grants to pay for services such as this. Why reinvent the wheel.

DVA-"We Believe… One cannot isolate the living environment for vulnerable people from society. In our belief the whole world is a socially inclusive living environment and we are all inhabitants thereof. All comes down to designing and developing a universal environment not exclusive to people with physical or mental limitations but for all of us. Living, working, recreation and social inclusion is paramount".

DVA pamphlet

Here are a few articles that warn us about the future, if we don't do something now to make changes.