Author Archives: Isha Snow

There’s a story urban planners like to tell about curb cuts, those small ramped slopes carved into sidewalks at intersections. They were fought for by disability activists in the 1970s, designed for wheelchair users who had no way to cross a street without being lifted over a six-inch ledge. Cities resisted for years, treating theContinue reading “The Curb Cut and the Key: What Finland Can Teach Us About Housing”

Society keeps autistic nervous systems in a near-constant state of fight or flight, and NeuroHomes exists to treat that damage, the wear a body takes on from being asked, every day, to meet demands it was never built to meet. That’s not a metaphor. It’s the actual mechanism, and until we start treating it asContinue reading “Regulation Isn’t a Crisis Response. It’s Maintenance.”

A recent op-ed from Ford Foundation’s Lane Sugata and Disability & Philanthropy Forum’s Sandy Ho lays out a pattern that’s familiar to anyone who has spent time inside systems built for someone else’s body and someone else’s pace. Their core argument is simple and a little uncomfortable: philanthropy tends to fund disabled artists as artistsContinue reading “Autism as Artism: Why Our Makerspace and Creator Grants Fund Start With Disability, Not Around It”

On Play Street, NeuroBloom, and why NeuroHomes is building the therapy layer to travel This week, five mothers in Humboldt County opened Play Street, the region’s first curated multi-sensory environment for kids with autism, sensory processing differences, and developmental disabilities. No agency built it. No institution funded it into existence. Five parents looked at whatContinue reading “Five Mothers, One Room, and a Pattern”

Something is changing in the way this country thinks about housing for neurodivergent and disabled adults. This week, Disability Scoop reported on the quiet but growing emergence of neuroinclusive neighborhoods across the United States, communities where people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) live in their own homes, alongside neurotypical neighbors who have chosen toContinue reading “A National Movement Is Taking Shape, and NeuroHomes Is Part of It”

A Texas mother watches her son deteriorate in a county jail. He has the cognitive capacity of a child. He has not been convicted of anything, and he is waiting for a bed that may not come for another year. Shawn Fraraccio is 26 years old. He has an intellectual disability. He has been sittingContinue reading “When There Is No Door to Open”

Autistic people are dramatically overrepresented in homeless populations by at least 6 times the general population rate, and by some estimates considerably more. Research screening homeless outreach caseloads found 12.3% met DSM-5 autism criteria, against a general population prevalence of roughly 1-2%. A 2022 systematic review spanning 17 studies found prevalence estimates of autistic traitsContinue reading “Autistics experiencing homelessness”