Inspired by her cousin's experiences, Michaela 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 communities.

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 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 know 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.

...