FAQs About Our Home, Inclusive Community Collaborative

Our Home, Inclusive Community Collaborative (Our Home, ICC) is a 501c3 nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon, whose mission is to “promote, support and develop inclusive and diverse communities”.

Beginning in early 2002 with the birth of her daughter Neva, who experiences a rare and complex genetic disorder and will require complex support needs throughout her life, Founding Neighbor Alicia DeLashmutt has been a staunch supporter and active advocate of inclusive education and communities for people that experience disability. In 2013 she, began looking into existing examples of inclusive, community-rich home and housing options for people with disabilities as well as our aging population. Believing deeply in the importance of reciprocal community and choice for everyone, and understanding that segregating people based on deficit and need has unforeseen personal, societal, and financial costs, Alicia set out to find examples of communities that were inclusive and strength-based. Her research on housing options for people with disabilities, for the elderly, and for low-income populations, primarily turned up examples of segregated, deficit-based, and systems-dependent housing. Additionally, it was challenging to find opportunities for home ownership for those groups in supportive communities.

Not finding existing options that fit her family’s needs or the needs of the families that she had been advocating for over the last decade, Alicia became determined to create a scalable and replicable model for integrated, diverse, inclusive communities where people could purchase homes and come together around strengths, mutual support, and common interests, rather than around need and deficits. Combining concepts from the co-housing community and best-practices for community integration, Our Home, ICC was built to support the desires and dreams of families and individuals across the country.

Our Home, Inclusive Community Collaborative started as an LLC, and quickly found that we could have a broader and deeper effect as a 501c3, working with foundations, donors and granting organizations to move the Our Home, ICC mission, “to promote, support and develop inclusive and diverse communities” forward.

Our Home, Inclusive Community Collaborative is working toward its first development in the Cathedral Park neighborhood in Portland, Oregon. Located in beautiful North Portland,
Our Home-Cathedral Park will feature approximately 28 condo units, as well as indoor and outdoor community spaces. Based on the cohousing model, all units will be available for home ownership. We are working with several community partners to bring this into being, and are excited for our growing community.

Additionally, Founding Neighbor Alicia DeLashmutt has been a speaker at both disability advocacy and cohousing conferences, and works to bring the unique Our Home, ICC model to developers and housing providers across the US.

There are several ways you can get in on the fun with Our Home, Inclusive Community Collaborative. You could become a neighbor, donate needed funding, donate your time and expertise by volunteering, help spread the word, or come to one of our virtual or in-person events.

Our Home, Inclusive Community Collaborative builds community intentionally by gathering together neighbors of a wide range of incomes, abilities, and ages in neighbor-owned communities. Rather than building housing for groups of people to live in monoculture, Our Home, ICC strives to build community collaboratively and inclusively.

While all co-housing communities are built on the premise that humans do best when living in supportive communities, in our research of co-housing communities across the region and across the country, we have not found another example that does what Our Home, Inclusive Community Collaborative is doing by including a percentage of people that experience disability or below median income as a part of our community, intentionally and at the outset. By building in housing subsidies for a number of qualified low-income buyers, we are ensuring a diversity of income levels. By building every unit in accordance with Universal Design, we are ensuring that each unit has a baseline of accessibility and will be a home where the owners can age in place comfortably in a supportive community. By building a deliberately inclusive and interdependent community, we are recognizing upfront that every neighbor will bring different strengths and gifts to the table regardless of abilities. We believe our community will be richer and more robust because of this. Too often, the structures and financial pressures on cohousing developments inadvertently create relatively homogeneous communities. We are working from the outset to build neighborhoods that reflect a broad demographic, and explicitly make room for everyone.

Our Home, Inclusive Community Collaborative is a 501c3 nonprofit organization that receives funding from a variety of sources. We attract funding from public and private foundations, granting organizations, individual donors, and hold regular fundraising events. Our communities are built through a combination of donor funding, foundation funding, and buy-in of our neighbor-owners.

Our Home, Inclusive Community Collaborative is designed to serve the community at large by not leaving people who experience disability, are below median income or are aging out of the community discussion. We all benefit from the gifts and strengths of each other. We serve people of a wide range of ages, abilities, and incomes, and build inclusive communities collaboratively.

Our Home, Inclusive Community Collaborative is headquartered in Portland, Oregon. Our Home, ICC intends to partner with communities and organizations throughout the country (and eventually around the world) to spread its model wherever it can do the most good for neighbors of a wide range of ages, abilities, and incomes.

Our Home, Inclusive Community Collaborative is currently working on its first development project in Portland, Oregon. Throughout the development process and into Our Home – Cathedral Park’s early years as a community, Our Home, ICC will be developing a curriculum that will allow interested organizations in other locations to build developments of their own after the Our Home, ICC model. Alicia is also available for consultation both in-person and virtually to help communities, developers, and housing providers think more inclusively as they seek housing solutions in their area.

Currently Our Home, Inclusive Community Collaborative partners with a variety of non- and for-profit organizations in Portland, Oregon. Many organizations have helped us along the way both, informally and formally. A partial list of people we owe thanks to are Community Vision, Inc, the Kuni Foundation, Metro, Proud Ground, Habitat for Humanity, Urban Development + Partners, SPOON, and many other organizations and individuals.

You can click through to our resource pages (Link to a link page) or check out CoHousing Solutions.