Bear Woods & Lavender Fields in Connecticut
The Our Place Housing Committee has been exploring different options for housing in New Hampshire and beyond. They found out about Bear Woods and Lavender Fields in Connecticut which are large work-force housing projects with housing for adults with IDD mixed in. Both of these projects were created by Regan Development of New York who partnered with the local service agency, The Arc, to create this great model of supportive housing. We are now working with Ken Regan to find property in the seacoast area of New Hampshire to build a similar project.
The project will consist of about 40 units of work-force housing with 10 units reserved for adults with IDD. The apartments for the IDD folks are scattered throughout the building, although there may be two or three clustered together to promote socialization. There would be an office for 24/7 staff with smart technology linking the office to the apartments for monitoring. The project would have a community room for activities involving all the tenants in the building. This would help to promote inclusion of the IDD tenants with the rest of the tenants. Tenants would have their services based on their individual service agreement just like the Visions model.
To learn more about this project, please watch the video on our Youtube channel which describes the features in detail. Regan Development Video. Although we are in the beginning stages of exploring this project as a viable project for New Hampshire, we are very excited about this possibility for adults with IDD who would flourish in this type of housing. We understand that this is not for everyone and we are still moving ahead with our original version which is a building or buildings with apartments for 10 adults.