{"id":341,"date":"2023-12-13T16:38:40","date_gmt":"2023-12-13T17:38:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/codez.me\/?p=341"},"modified":"2023-12-14T22:42:19","modified_gmt":"2023-12-14T22:42:19","slug":"opinion-there-is-a-hidden-housing-crisis-in-colorado-for-adults-with-disabilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/codez.me\/index.php\/2023\/12\/13\/opinion-there-is-a-hidden-housing-crisis-in-colorado-for-adults-with-disabilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion: There is a hidden housing crisis in Colorado for adults with disabilities"},"content":{"rendered":"
Every week, I read yet another\u00a0news story\u00a0about energized efforts afoot to provide affordable housing for generalized low-income or no-income people so that they can have a place to call home and be part of their community.<\/p>\n
These are important endeavors, but there is a hidden community sorely missing from consideration, and they face a crisis that deserves equal attention.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m talking about people like my daughter \u2013 adults who have intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), such as severe autism, that render them our most vulnerable citizens. My daughter is just one of around 130,000 people with IDD in Colorado. Many of them cannot speak and require 24-7 support to get dressed, make a sandwich or cross the street. Adults with IDD also deserve to exist within their communities with the necessary support to live full and joyful lives.<\/p>\n
Starting as toddlers, the battle begins for families of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities to secure basic things that every child deserves.<\/p>\n
For example, we are now welcome into mainstream classrooms, but districts largely fail to provide the meaningful support required to learn. We don\u2019t sign up for activities like after-school swimming because our kids will sink, not swim, without skilled one-on-one instruction. Most maddening is that the special needs swim class disappeared at our local rec center in Boulder County in response to a societal move toward full integration, but no one seems to get that our kids need significant support; those with the highest needs have cruelly become the casualties of progress.<\/p>\n
As adults, the battlefront is finding supported, long-term housing. At least 75% of adults with IDD live with aging family caregivers. It\u2019s fantastic that a Family Caregiver program exists to pay a sibling once parents are too old or die. But siblings or nieces and nephews often don\u2019t exist or have other life plans.<\/p>\n
Our adult kids qualify for Section 8 vouchers handed out randomly in a lottery, but there is a years-long wait list just to get on the wait list along with thousands of others across the state.<\/p>\n
What sounds like a good bet are group homes, but openings are now rare because there are fewer group homes, with less staff. Those with significant IDD, like nighttime seizures \u2014 as many of our kids have \u2014 are even less qualified given a lack of nighttime awake staff.<\/p>\n
In Boulder County where I live, two of five existing group homes for highest needs individuals have shut their doors, and others will follow. Statewide, 40% of group homes have closed<\/a>.<\/p>\n The reasons depend on whom you ask. It\u2019s partly due to a lack of staff in a low-paid industry where daily workers earn an hourly wage of $20 and Medicaid reimbursements are shamefully low. It is also true that funding that used to support more group home options has been reallocated while maintaining the same regulations and unfunded mandates for group home services. This combination of forces has shuttered many group homes that organizations can no longer afford to operate. Group homes are disincentivized, too, as they fail to break even or make a profit and are considered too institutionalized in this civil-rights era of full integration for people with IDD.<\/p>\n This reminds me of a time not that long ago in our country when society deemed institutions for the mentally ill as inherently bad, and we liberated people with severe mental illness to sleep under bridges and die from neglect and severe cold.<\/p>\n What\u2019s left is a Host Home, where strangers get paid to take in our kids. Don\u2019t get me wrong, some providers are the best human beings in the world, but host homes last on average 1-2 years. Sexual, emotional, and physical abuse happens as well as neglect, as documented by an investigation by Rocky Mountain PBS in 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n The risks that exist behind closed doors at these Host Homes, which lack oversight, are unacceptable. Some parents have purchased a second home and pay to staff it, but not many of us can afford that path. Personal Care Alternatives allow beds for up to three people with IDD but run into the same anemic funding issues to keep a 24-7 awake staff and the lights on.<\/p>\n What all of these current models for people with the highest needs lack is the key ingredient found in safe, sustainable community living.<\/p>\n