It's no secret that care facilities are not safe places. People publicly talk about vulnerable clients being abused or neglected. Lonely clients are abusive and no prevention measures are taken. Laws are consistently broken, audits are illegally sparse. And this isn't something that happens in one place, it happens everywhere. It is infintesimaly rare for a place to be legal and supportive.
Solving this problem is not easy. Average costs for a facility are often between three-five thousand a month per person. Most people who work don't make that much; a person who can't work can't afford that.
Life expectancy from medical advancement is increasing, we have more elderly and disabled people. We have more people developing chronic illness as our society begins to collapse.
Systemic solutions are obvious and at times feel like they won't be achieved. Cut the military budget and use the money for social services. Prevent health issues with strong city planning, pollution eradication, universal healthcare, reformed healthcare and government systems, eradication of oppression.
We must fight for these things, and fight hard. But we need something to do in the meantime. It is our right to get assistance, and we cannot expect assistance from systems intentionally designed to remove our rights. How do we do it?
Create client-owned assisted living facilities, by disabled people, for disabled people.
This is a good concept we need to keep. Right now, able-bodied people control and make decisions in facilities. It's not right for them to control the space we live in. Here's a low-budget idea for how we can get this started now. It would be comparable to the structure of the non-profit Moishe House.
Moishe house is a Jewish organization that subsidizes rent for young Jewish people in exchange for organizing community-building events, of which a small budget is provided.
"Pods" of house members find a house they want to rent and create their own rules. Moishe house provides assistance getting organized and structured with roommate compatibility information and discussions.
We could do something similar by subsidizing rent of disabled people in exchange for building mutual aid networks.
A support-swapping network within the home would be a low-budget way for disabled people to support each other- people with different needs would pair up. As an example, neurodivergent people could assist those with mobility issues do physical tasks, and people with mobility issues could complete cognitive tasks for neurodivergent people such as body doubling and giving instructions. Rather than an inequal employee-client relationship, everyone could get help and give help. Additional support could be achieved by dedicating one room in the house for a work-stay traveler, such as through the workaway site (30 hours a week for a limited time) or home-share worker, such as through the site Silvernest (10 hours a week for extended time). People would also be connected to local community disability services. A small budget would be allotted for a caregiver perform to remaining tasks.
Clients would find their own house. Make their own rules. And hire their own caregivers.
In exchange for subsidized rent, the house would organize community networks. Potential examples could be:
1. A support swapping group, similar to the house but on a community level. House members could moderate and promote an online group for community members to match with each other.
2. A generic mutual aid network, for people to get and give assistance of any kind.
3. A Buy Nothing group, for people to give and get free items.
4. The house members design their own community building structure or events!
All of this would cost quite a bit of money. Judaism has strong cultural and religious values of community service and social responsibility; it's second nature for people to donate money to support their community. The disabled community is building momentum and attempting to build values, the deaf community and autistic community have their own cultures, and online communities are forming strong, however at this point we are not as united as organized religion and if we were, the government's systemic oppression of preventing wealth generation (and quite frankly, survival) using income caps would prevent a reliable source of donations.
Hopefully it would be possible to get government and corporate grants. Phone banking and building fundraisers would take work but could definitely help, as long as enough money was made that most went to the houses and not staffing and overhead. There could be a merch store for people to help support.
That's the low-budget idea! Contact me if you'd like to get it started.
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