In the fifty years of the Independent Living Movement (ILM), Santa Fe, New Mexico’s New Vistas has had three executive directors. What started as a project led by the local women’s league in the early seventies, supporting youth in local schools, has grown to include 22 staff servicing over 800 consumers a year.
With a service area that spans nine counties and is 244 miles from north to south, current Executive Director Sarah Michaud says that the foundation of providing services in the area is understanding its linguistic and cultural diversity. There are frontier and Pueblo communities and a mix of cultures in New Mexico, which Michaud says adds tremendous benefit to their consumers.
“I love the fact that [if] we have a consumer who speaks Pashtu we can find an interpreter who helps, if we have a consumer who speaks French Creole, well, we're gonna find somebody who can do that, too. And it's just that fun uniqueness. I think the other thing that we have never lost is our understanding that disability is a lifelong journey.”
Like many Independent Living (IL) service providers across the country, New Vistas participated in a sheltered workshop model earlier on in its development. That has now shifted to a microbusiness program where the organization takes on small production contracts. For Michaud and her team, that change – with the program running for over thirty years – is about separating from the older paradigm and towards a “focus on these things that have a direct impact on the individuals.”
Like many CILs, providers in New Mexico are struggling with the increased costs of housing amid growing housing insecurity. For those in Santa Fe and the surrounding area, it’s not just that fully accessible housing is unavailable, it’s that those wanting to live independently are being forced to choose housing that may decrease their quality of life. That reality is something that bothers Michaud.
“God, there are no words for how frustrated we are with the housing situation. The city likes to say, ‘Hey, we have this great Housing Trust,’ and they do, but they also have a law on the books that allows housing developments to buy out their requirement to provide affordable housing in new construction through donations to said housing trust. So, while things start off going, Yes, we're going to have X number of affordable units. That doesn't seem to be the case historically.”
That lack of accessible housing, along with a donation policy that disincentivizes the building of new accessible units, leads to people moving away from core services like medical providers. New Vistas sees their consumers moving to other centers (though costs are rising there, too) or deciding to live with friends and family on the outskirts of the area. Combine that with what Michaud calls a “non-existent” accessible transit system across the state and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.
The latest area of focus for the CIL has been youth. They operate educational opportunities in collaboration with the public school system via a class called KIVA – Keeping Independent Visions Alive – where students (disabled and not) grow their knowledge base within IL. Despite the successes of one-off events, and the long-time presence of the organization in the public school system, Michaud says that youth programming is still slow to move.
"We are just barely getting our youth program off the ground, but I personally believe we've got to strengthen that because young people with disabilities are going to be the leaders in the field in the next 20 years. And we need to help them find their voice.”
That focus on youth is part of New Vistas' mission to keep moving forward, even as one of the oldest independent living centers in the country, and the first in the state.
“We recognize even though we've been around for 50 years that IL still sometimes feels like that best-kept secret you never know about until you need it,” says Michaud, “so, we're looking at ways to continually build awareness and we're always looking for ways to collaborate.”
Related: 2022 Marks the 50th Anniversary of the Independent Living Movement.
Comments