The Disability Community will not be overlooked, or left behind.

9/20/05

(WASHINGTON DC) The federal government generally looks at people with disabilities as “problems,” their policies treat the disability community as a bunch of square pegs that will not fit the round holes government services provide. ADAPT today forced two of the most controlling federal bureaucracies in the lives of people with disabilities to make a more human and personal view of the disability community.

Secretary Alphonso Jackson, the Director of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, received the demands of ADAPT shortly after they visited his office. The response from Jackson was negative, he refused to meet with ADAPT. HUD obviously deals with a host of individuals and the Director had different priorities.

ADAPT activists had demonstrated their anger yesterday by refusing to leave seven Congressional Leaders offices and 104 were arrested. They are angry that government targets the low-income disability community for program cuts, while that community is suffering an arduous and disproportionate blow from hurricane Katrina.

The Secretary is distant from the concept of someone losing their home, or being forced out of their own home to live in an institution. ADAPT stepped in at this point to make Secretary Jackson personally reflect on the importance of his home.

While hundreds surrounded the massive HUD office in Washington DC, a second smaller group of about 60 visited the Secretary’s home in Alexandria Virginia. Bringing Jackson’s own home into the picture made him reevaluate his priorities.

“The Secretary appeared shortly after we got word the group had reached his house,” said Mark Johnson an organizer from Atlanta. “We were chanting: who do you want? – Jackson; when do you want him? – Now, and the next thing you know, he is standing right there. I don’t think ADAPT has ever gotten a US Cabinet Member to come down for a face-to-face so quickly.” 

More than 300,000 people in the nation's nursing homes want to move back into the community according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The lack of accessible, affordable, integrated housing however, remains the greatest barrier to rejoining the community. 

"I've been waiting for a long time for my name to get to the top of the Section 8 waiting list in Atlanta," said Susan Edwards, a Georgia ADAPT member. Before Katrina, Section 8 told me I was number 100 on the list. Since Katrina they told me that I am now number 300, and unless both my parents die it will be a long, long time before I get Section 8. I'm really glad that Secretary Jackson is going to work with ADAPT on voucher implementation for people leaving nursing homes, but what about me? Will I die before my name gets to the top of the list and I finally get a chance to have my own home, too?" 

Before the visit to HUD and Secretary Jackson’s home ADAPT had made the short march to the US Department of Health and Human Services where in March of 2004 the direct action group had blocked the entrances at 7:00 am, interrupting the workday from the start. Tension was high as security guards closed and locked entrances, standing vigil at the main entrance of HHS while ADAPT held a press conference outside in courtyard.

In front of the behemoth agency, ADAPT related personal stories on a human scale. They expressed how it felt as the disability community to be ignored, overlooked and forgotten. ADAPT members expressed their fear that emergency short-term hospitalization and institutionalization could become the long-term solution, locking away people with disabilities rather than returning them to the community.

Many people with disabilities were turned away from shelters because of medical or personal assistance requirements; square pegs not fitting in the holes. Hospitals and nursing homes became the evacuation shelters for many people with disabilities yet they are not being served by the FEMA Super Service Centers. Now is the time to take an accounting of this and not let people with disabilities disappear into long-term institutionalization.

“This is no time to cut $ 10 billion from Medicaid,” said Cassie James to the crowd of about four hundred in front of the HHS office building, “this is a time for America to pull together.”

"We have an opportunity to address the problems revealed in the aftermath of this tragedy,” said Howard Dean in a written statement from the Democratic National Committee. “Americans need real leadership that includes a reconstruction effort that includes the needs of Americans with disabilities, one that provides a model for a system in which Americans with disabilities are integrated into their homes and communities and not forced into nursing homes and institutions.”

- Tim Wheat