Statements
Mission
Our Place Nashville empowers adults with developmental disabilities ("friends") by providing homes that are affordable, work that is meaningful, and inclusive communities in which to live. We partner with other non-profit organizations to provide brick-and-mortar housing, called Friendship Houses. We create a rich and rewarding interdependent living environment by placing friends alongside graduate students from Vanderbilt University Divinity School and other graduate programs, and beginning in 2019, also alongside older adults. We help our Friendship House residents find employment and volunteer opportunities that give them a sense of accomplishment, independence and community. We are advocates for them and for their families, serving as a resource for information about the benefits and services available to them, and involving them in the transition and acclimation process experienced by their differently abled loved one. We believe adults with developmental disabilities deserve a sense of community comprised of home, work, and friendships that will sustain them as independently and affordably as possible. We believe Our Place Nashville can become a model through the city and the country for providing community for adults with developmental disabilities.
Background
WHAT WE DO
People with developmental disabilities ("friends") deserve the opportunity to live full and rich lives in an inclusive environment where they are accepted, respected and belong. With the help of our housing partners, Our Place Nashville provides these friends with opportunities to live interdependently in a community that houses both able and disabled residents. Our resident friends live alongside graduate students and older adults ("companions"), also in need of affordable housing, who provide them with natural supports. We are the only private pay provider of affordable housing for adults with developmental disabilities in middle Tennessee.
WHY WE DO WHAT WE DO
Our Place Nashville fills the critical need for affordable and supportive housing for individuals with developmental disabilities. Given the rising costs of housing and the challenge of securing direct services, parents and families are hard pressed to financially afford and oversee independent living in the community for their loved ones. Without Our Place, the individuals we serve would be limited to insular lives at home with minimal opportunities to engage with others or enjoy the rich panoply of options independent living offers. We provide the missing piece of the puzzle - creating supportive communities where our friends can thrive and exceed their - and their families' -- expectations. m
OUR RESIDENTS
Our resident friends, who are our priority population, come to us with a variety of disabilities, including Autism Spectrum Disorder, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, ADHD, and learning/developmental delays. Our resident companions are either graduate students, primarily from Vanderbilt University, or older adults with non-cognitive disabilities. These two populations also are in need of affordable housing. Our residents are diverse . . . and are a wonderful example of communities where people accept and value differences.
FRIENDSHIP HOUSES
We currently have four Friendship Houses, where residents create a supportive, integrated environment, one in which individuals become more like family members than housemates over time. We will be opening nine additional houses in 2023, more than doubling in size from 72 to 160 residents.
Impact
7 Years at a Glance
2014
Vanderbilt Divinity School Professor Jaco Hamman and Pujols Family Foundation Regional Director Carolyn Naifeh start meeting with parents and community members to brainstorm possibility of developing a private pay, affordable housing opportunity for adults with developmental disabilities in middle Tennessee.
2015
Hamman and Naifeh begin a non-profit organization called the Nashville IDD Housing Group on
June 2 and open their first Friendship House in partnership with Urban Housing Solutions. This first house is an apartment building with four 2-BR and four 1-BR apartments, accommodating eight Vanderbilt Divinity School students ("companions") and four young adults with developmental disabilities ("friends").
2016
Our second Friendship House opens in partnership with Urban Housing Solutions. This FH is two apartment buildings facing each other across a courtyard. Each building has ten 1-BR apartments, accommodating a total of eleven Vanderbilt Divinity School students and nine friends.
2017
100% of Our Place Nashville's resident friends are employed - more than 5x the national average for individuals with developmental disabilities.
2018
Awarded $1M Barnes grant from the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County earmarked toward construction of two Friendship Houses in partnership with Woodbine Community Organization.
2019
Changed name to Our Place Nashville. Opened third Friendship House: a shared living house where residents each have a private BR/BA and share a living room, kitchen/dining areas, laundry and back decks. For the first time, we integrate older adults into our housing model. This third FH, a three-story duplex, accommodates four students, seven older adults and nine friends. Awarded a six-figure grant to build a community building for communal dinners and other gatherings for FH's 20 residents.
2020
Awarded second Barnes grant, from the city this one for $2M, earmarked for construction of two new clusters of Friendship Houses to open in 2023.
2021
Fourth Friendship House opened, also in partnership with Woodbine Community Organization. This FH accommodates 16 residents in two ranch-style houses, one in front of the other: it accommodates nine companions (older adults and students) and seven friends. Each has a private BR/BA and each house has a living room, kitchen/dining area, laundry. The houses share a back deck.
2022
Plans are underway to open 9 new Friendship Houses in 2023 in partnership with Woodbine, more than doubling Our Place Nashville in size to 160 residents. One cluster will have four houses, each accommodating 10 residents; the other will have five houses, each also accommodating 10 residents.
Needs
Our most pressing needs are:
- operating expenses
- increasing awareness of the gifts of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their contributions to our community, and what good neighbors they are
- opening Friendship House(s) that can accommodate our friends with more challenges than our current residents
- make better inroads into Nashville's communities of color to increase the number of our resident friends who are African-American, Hispanic or Asian
- strengthening ties to the aging community so that the pipeline of older companion residents is health
- expanding our Board of Directors
CEO Statement
When I opened the regional office for the Pujols Family Foundation here in Nashville in April 2013, I worked exclusively with families who had loved ones with Down syndrome. Some had dual diagnoses of Down syndrome and something else, usually something to do with autism spectrum disorder. For families whose children were young, if there was no physical disability, there was much joy. However, for families whose sons and daughters and parents were all aging, a constant refrain on the part of parents seemed to be, "What's going to happen to Joey when I'm gone?" This wasn't a rhetorical question. This was a very real, very tangible fear. The more I looked into what resources were available to families here in middle Tennessee, I came to understand why these families were near panic.
When it comes to what matters most to families, TennesseeWorks, a statewide partnership of more than 40 state agencies and organizations, reports that 71% consider some type of community living to be important. 27% of families consider living in a group home to be important. 38% of families consider living with 1-2 other people is important. 62% of families consider living independently with supports to be important. Another study says nearly 75% of individuals (around 102,000 people) in Tennessee with intellectual and developmental disabilities lives with a family caregiver while 17% live alone or with a roommate. 9% live in a supervised residential setting. The need is huge, and the choices on what to do about it narrowed down to two: can you fix the problem? And if you can't, can you at least make a difference? Our co-founder, Vanderbilt Divinity School professor Jaco Hamman -- and I thought we could make a difference, and in seven years, we have made a difference. We currently have 72 residents -- 29 who are differently abled, having opened our fourth Friendship House in March 2021. We plan to open nine more houses in 2023, four in the Spring, five in the Winter. This will more than double our capacity to a total of 160 units, 70 for individuals with developmental disabilities, the others for graduate students and seniors who live alongside them as companions, providing support and friendship. As the mother of one of the young men on our waiting list puts it, 'You have made it possible for us to move farther, faster than [my son] has ever come before. You have given me something to hope for, when for years I have been nothing but desperate.
Board Chair Statement
Seeds planted in me near Cape Town (South Africa) in the 1980's?to enter into friendships with persons with disabilities?are bearing fruit in Nashville. This is both exciting and humbling! In less than a year of starting as a grass roots gathering of parents and families concerned about the housing needs of persons with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (friends), we have incorporated as a non-profit and populated two Divinity Friendship Houses at Vanderbilt. We have two more Friendship Houses planned; together they will accommodate 40 more individuals, bringing our total number of residents to 70. In a Friendship House, future pastors and societal leaders become change agents as our friends educate them about disability concerns and more. The success we have is due to significant partnerships across Nashville, both with other non-profits, corporations and employers. We are committed not to replicate services offered by another non-profit as we serve our families and friends, the vast majority not receiving any financial assistance from the state or federal government. Our success at placing our friends in interdependent housing fills us with gratitude and hope. Some of our biggest challenges are: Making visible the housing needs of persons with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities; Empowering families and educational systems to prepare our friends for interdependent living; Addressing the diverse service needs our friends bring; Procuring affordable housing in a vibrant real estate market; and, Raising the funds to coordinate the relationships, education and management that make a Friendship House possible. As board president I see hope being awakened in the lives of our families, friends and in our society. We are going to make Nashville a model for other cities. No longer would families contemplate leaving Nashville to seek better services for their loved one elsewhere.
Service Categories |
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| Primary Category: | Housing, Shelter - Independent Housing for People with Disabilities |
| Secondary Category: | Human Services - Developmentally Disabled Services/Centers |
| Tertiary Category: | Public & Societal Benefit - |
Areas Served
| TN - Davidson |
