A Brief But Spectacular take on building inclusive communities

Amna Nawaz:

Inspired by her cousin's experiences, Micaela Connery co-founded a movement led by people with and without disabilities to reimagine housing for all.

Here now is her Brief But Spectacular take on creating inclusive, disability-forward community.

Micaela Connery, Co-Founder And CEO, The Kelsey:

Kelsey was my first cousin and she lived with multiple significant disabilities. She used 24-hour care and used modified sign language to communicate and used a wheelchair to get around. So much of my life is through a frame of going through life milestones together.

Most of the time, when she faced barriers and lack of opportunity, it wasn't anything to do with her. It was to do with the way places and spaces and experiences were designed without a consideration of her.

Throughout, my life it was interesting to see how kind of every system at some level wasn't designed to include people like Kelsey. And where it became the most apparent to me and, frankly, the stickiest and hardest to change happened when we were in adulthood around the system of housing and community living.

When Kelsey was in her 20s, both her sisters had moved out and she made it very clear that she too was interested in moving out on her own. And there were really no options available to her. I at first thought that Kelsey's needs were unique to her and learned very quickly that actually, no, what Kelsey experienced was an example of a much larger issue where disabled people had little to no options when it came to housing, and the solutions weren't available in any community, not just in the community where she was.

The Kelsey builds and advocates for housing that is disability-forward, housing that's affordable, accessible and inclusive. We also then go upstream and say, how do we change the systems, field resources and policies so that the kinds of communities we build are not just made by The Kelsey, but are possible to be created everywhere?

Historically, the housing that has been provided to people with disabilities has been in institutional and facility-based settings, often where services and daily life are prescribed to all individuals with not a lot of choice and control. We really ask people, if you could create any kind of housing intervention, what would that be?

And people really talked about the need for affordability, accessibility and inclusivity. People talked about the idea for community and connection, for choice and control. And so let's redesign something from the ground up with those in mind and not continue to iterate on decades of institutionalization.

Kelsey passed away about a month after we got our first round of funding to launch the organization named after her. And it's incredibly hard to not have her here as part of this work. But it's incredibly powerful to know that so much of her identity, her legacy and her approach to life has been embedded in the work that we do.

My name is Micaela Connery, and this is my Brief But Spectacular take on building inclusive communities.

Amna Nawaz:

And you can watch more Brief But Spectacular videos online at PBS.org/NewsHour/Brief.