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Emma Farrell gives a room tour at her new apartment in the Soaring Heights community in Conyers, Ga., in January 2025.
Credit: Sofi Gratas/GPB News
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Affordable housing is hard to find. For people with disabilities, solutions can feel like a miracle
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LISTEN: A 1999 federal court was supposed to pave the way for Georgians with intellectual and developmental disabilities to live more independently, and outside of hospitals. But years later, people with IDD still face major challenges in finding a place to live. GPB's Sofi Gratas reports.
On a windy weekday, 35-year-old Bethany Beech leads the way across a parking lot and up some stairs to her new apartment.
Inside, a back porch looks into some tall pine trees. It’s two bedrooms, and everything feels brand new.
The apartment is in the Lighthouse Village community of Conyers, on the same land as a shelter for unhoused women and kids and respite home for caregivers.
It opened late last year, under the name Soaring Heights. For Beech and her family, it represents an opportunity.
“Bethany can be a very independent person, and we are excited to see how she thrives in this environment,” said Great Beech, Bethany’s mom.
Bethany has Down syndrome, and this is her first time living apart from her family. Alongside roommate Emma Farrell, who also has not lived alone before, Bethany said she plans to get a lot of use out of the kitchen.
“'Cause we want to do a lot of baking and cooking,” Bethany said shortly after moving in.
“Me, I'm a bakery person, and I also love cooking breakfast every day,” Farrell follows up.
The girls met at their part-time job, an electronic waste disposal employment program. During a tour of their new place in January, they said they both have pets at home whom they’ll miss, but the women are excited to get to know each other better.
Greta Beech said having Bethany move out has been a long time coming, as her other kids have also grown up and found their own places. But finding a place where Bethany could live independently isn’t as easy as just logging on to a rental site.
The family considered supportive living facilities, but Greta said the ones they toured were either too far away, or didn’t feel like the right fit.
“Everything was strictly one population,” she said.
In addition, rent in Conyers is far more than the monthly Social Security income Bethany receives.
So, about six years ago, the Beech family decided to invest in the development of this building.
Here, rents are capped at below $1,000 a month. Half the apartments at Soaring Heights were built for people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, and, through a partnership with the city, the other half were set aside for local public service workers.
Several teachers, firefighters, paramedics and law enforcement officers have moved in.
“It checked all the boxes, even boxes we didn't know that we had yet,” said Martha Henley, roommate Emma’s mom.
Henley said she views the opening of this apartment as somewhat of a miracle. Ever since Emma was young, they wanted her to be able to live in a community that was inclusive.
“I've been hearing about and talking about natural supports all of Emma’s life,” she said. “And these are natural supports, and this is them living in the community. And it's not easy to make that happen.”
Now it is happening, after Henley has spent years advocating and educating herself on her daughter’s needs.
Barriers to entry for a place to live
Affordable housing in and around Atlanta is in short stock. The latest statewide housing needs assessment from the Georgia Department of Community Affairs illustrates “a deeply inadequate supply” of affordable housing, especially for low-income renters who have to navigate an already narrow market squeezed by people with higher incomes.
People with disabilities and on fixed incomes, such as the $900 maximum most can get a month from Social Security, have even fewer options, said Shelly Simmons with the Statewide Independent Living Council of Georgia
“And I honestly believe that that is one of the biggest barriers that people who want to live independently face,” Simmons said.
Rents go higher, but social benefits don't rise to meet them.
Simmons said she questions the large investments made toward the construction of residences such as nursing homes. Instead, she would like to see more housing built in existing communities with both accessibility and affordability in mind, and said her organization is trying to work with developers to encourage that. But there aren’t many financial incentives.
At the state level, Kevin Tanner, director of the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities (DBHDD), said the agency will only help with housing for people whose disability or mental health concern mean they need 'round-the-clock care.
“If someone is capable of living independently, then we're not directly involved in finding housing for that individual,” Tanner said. “We are currently exploring ideas.”
According to one analysis by the University of Kansas of IDD services and spending, by 2021, most individuals in Georgia with an intellectual or developmental disability were in a supported living situation, which the study defines as any housing arrangement that in part relies on state-funded supports and that gives the person autonomy in where and who they live with.
That’s an improvement from before a landmark legal case was decided.
But some people are still housed at state institutions and hospitals. Focus on who Tanner describes as people with the “highest level of need” is at core of the state’s agreement with the federal government under Olmstead v. L.C., a 1999 case in which two Georgia women with disabilities, Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson, sued the then behavioral health commissioner over their experience being housed in medical institutions and shelters from an early age.
The case made it up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices ruled in Curtis and Wilson’s favor, stating in their decision that the "isolation and segregation" of people with disabilities in psychiatric hospitals who, with support, could otherwise live in communities, is discrimination.
Through the Georgia Housing Voucher Program, people with severe and persistent mental illness who are unhoused are funneled into permanent supportive housing, and have access to financial support for start-up costs, like first-month's rent and moving expenses.
Many people who benefit from the voucher often cycle in and out of emergency rooms as a result of their condition. Some also have intellectual or developmental disabilities. The Georgia legislature approved $25.9 million for the program in its fiscal year 2026 budget, about the same as last year.
But even that program faces barriers to success.
“It's very challenging for us to find enough affordable housing, enough apartments, enough homes for those people to rent,” Tanner said.
Any ideas to ease the affordable housing problem will likely not include building an apartment like Soaring Heights. Tanner said a stipulation in the state’s Olmstead agreement prevents the agency from funding “congregate community living,” or any housing arrangement where more than four people receiving state assistance live.
Federal support for independent living
Meanwhile, Simmons said the promises made since Olmstead to offer people with disabilities "a new lease on life” through “the chance to live in a community" have not been met.
Those who do find housing are left to figure out how they can manage costs for rent, on top of health care and any additional support they may need.
“What do you do when all of your money is going towards housing?” she said.
Tanner would direct people to federally funded Medicaid waivers.
The New Options Waiver (NOW) and Comprehensive Supports Waiver Program (COMP), provide what’s called home and community-based services, helping people afford medical care in their preferred residence.
For example, with the waiver, Bethany Beech can pay to attend a day program at the local Community Service Board in Conyers, and can get speech or physical therapy if she needs it.
Susan Walker Goico, attorney and director of Atlanta Legal Aid Society's Disability Integration Project, said those waivers are “lifelines.”
But those lifelines are scarce.
“Unfortunately, there is a 7,000-person waiting list,” she said.
The Georgia legislature has made efforts to ease the barrier to entry for NOW and COMP, by budgeting for hundreds of additional spots and adjusting provider pay rates to address a longtime shortage of caregivers.
But getting all the help NOW/COMP waivers offer can still take years, meaning thousands promised a chance at integration by the federal court often can’t take those first steps.
Back in Conyers, a few months after her move in, Bethany Beech says she misses her parents' home but has enjoyed meeting neighbors.
“I'm just happy where I am and enjoying my time, even on my own,” she said.
She hopes more of her friends apply to move here. Meanwhile, the board of the Soaring Heights community hope to pitch the housing model elsewhere and to other developers.
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