How do we fix housing shortages for adults with disabilities in the US?

Sarah Tuberty

A news article published earlier this year helps bring to light the major problems we have with housing for our aging adult populations with intellectual disabilities. This article features voices of parents of adults with IDDs and their concerns for what happens when the parents age or pass on and are unable to care for their adult children. The parents complain that services for their children stop at 21 with no continuing plan or infrastructure.

A national study estimates that 8.38 million people in the US have IDD and the Developmental Disabilities Project found that 75% of adults with IDD live with their parents and of that 75%, 30% have parents that are over 60 years old.

Parents report that there is a lack of services to support this community in general, and of the services, residential housing is rarely on the list. Complains include- residential housing is not set up to meet the needs of adults with IDD, low inventory of housing, limited number of direct care providers, and wages are too low to keep + attract direct care providers.

Is there a community or a system where this has worked well? What can we do collectively to help address this need? Is this a policy change or a grass roots change or both?

https://whyy.org/articles/delaware-adults-intellectual-developmental-disabilities-housing/