National ADAPT, the grassroots, activist, disability justice organization enthusiastically endorses the housing infrastructure bill drafted by Chairwoman Waters and her Committee. ADAPT has fought for over 30 years for disabled people to be able to live in their own homes and communities; marching, protesting, even being arrested. Lack of affordable, accessible, integrated housing remains one of the biggest barriers to independence for the disability community. This bill supports disabled people in an unprecedented and historic manner; greatly expanding vouchers for rent subsidies and for relocating from institutions, doubling accessibility requirements in public housing and adding basic accessibility called “visitability” in all federally funded housing.
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Continue Contacting Your Senators To Fund HCBS In Next COVID Package
OUR MESSAGE TO SENATORS: PEOPLE ARE DYING SHAME ON YOU!
For years we have told policymakers that Institutions are where we send people to die.
Now we know it is true.
Over 53,000 of our siblings have died in nursing facilities. We don’t even know how many more have died in all other types of institutions, including group homes, and state hospitals.
While our people are dying, Congress is at home on legislative break. Our Senators need to hear from us NOW. They returned to work on July 21st, they will ACT within the next 2 weeks.
ADAPT calls on advocates across the country to call, write, and where safe, visit our Senators in their home offices and in DC to tell them:
FUND HOME AND COMMUNITY BASED SERVICES NOW. $20 Billion should be dedicated to support people living in the community by making sure programs remain in place, workers are paid for their services, and personal protective equipment is available for disabled people and their workers.
MAKE MONEY FOLLOWS THE PERSON a permanent program, or extend the program for 3-5 years. Short-term funding extensions are not keeping the program running and people need a way to get to the safety of their own homes.
Take action by contacting your Senators and these suggested action activities, sample press release, script, and talking points are also available HERE.
To find the home office locations for your Senators’ Home Offices, enter your address at: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/map
The Senators for your state will be listed, and a link to their official website is available.
ADAPT Talking Points To #ADAPTandSurvive
ADAPT DEMANDS Congress support our right to live in the community by funding home and community based services, supporting our Community Workforce, making personal protective equipment available, and ensuring we have affordable, accessible, integrated housing.
ADAPT has sent an Open Letter to Congress demanding action. We must ensure Congress pays attention and responds to our needs!
Post on social media, write an email, organize a car parade around your Congressmembers Offices! In any way you can, tell Congress:
- Unnecessary institutionalization has been illegal since at least 1990. Now the COVID pandemic has exposed further dangers of congregate living.
- Forcing people into institutions is not only a violation of our rights, it is a DANGER to our safety, well-being, and our LIVES.
- We need the services and supports that allow us to safely shelter-in-place in the community.
- Community services must be available to keep people from being institutionalized in congregate settings.
- Programs, services, and supports must be available to allow people to move back into the community to live in the most integrated setting.
- Direct Service and Support Workers are essential to keeping us alive, safe and healthy. They deserve to be recognized and protected by receiving increased wages, overtime pay, hazard pay, and protective gear.
- The number one barrier to home and community living is lack of affordable, accessible, integrated housing. Housing must be developed. The shortage of housing that is affordable, accessible and integrated is past the critical stage. Likewise rental subsidies must be vastly increased.
National ADAPT Condemns Violence Against AAPI Community
National ADAPT condemns the attacks against Asian American and Pacific Islanders across the United States. National ADAPT believes that every human being has the right to be safe and to be treated with respect.
Our hearts go out to those who lost loved ones as well as to the survivors of these brutal attacks. Nearly 4,000 hate related incidents have been reported against the AAPI community since the Coronavirus was first detected in the United States last year. Many of those attacks were against elderly and disabled Asians and Pacific Islanders, and over half occurred in the state of California.
National ADAPT is committed to anti-racism. We will continue to do the work required to be both inclusive of all people, and an active and responsible ally. We look forward to working with our siblings in the Asian American and Pacific Islander Community to build a more just and equitable society, while continuing to work to end the institutional bias that exists in the United States.
COVID Relief MUST Include Disability Community Needs: Take Action Today!
Negotiations continue in Congress on a COVID relief package.
The House has passed two different COVID relief packages since May. The Senate and the White House offers fail to meet the urgent needs of the disability community. The “Skinny” Bills offered to date do not include ANY of the priorities we have been urging our members of Congress to address, like targeted funding for home and community based services (HCBS). HCBS keeps disabled people out of congregate settings where COVID-19 is deadly.
Senate Republicans have been insistent that COVID relief include a dangerous provision that would give businesses – including schools and medical providers – immunity from being held liable for harm they cause in almost all circumstances. They want provisions that shield employers and people who own, lease, or operate public accommodations from violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Liability relief provisions such as these remove accountability. These demands are about protecting businesses and profits over people.
Congress needs to hear from us again. They need to hear from advocates about the importance of including the needs of the disability community in their COVID-response.
COVID Relief must contain:
Funding and support for Home and Community Based Services.
Extension of Money Follows the Person demonstration project grants.
Resources to help people living in the community with personal protective equipment and sanitation supplies for them and their workers.
Support for Direct Support Workers through sick leave, benefits, and wage enhancements, including hazard, retainer, and overtime pay.
Support for people to maintain and secure affordable, accessible, integrated housing.
Take Action!
Contact your Members of Congress today! It is critical our Members of Congress hear from us while they are negotiating a final package. Even if you have called your Members before, they need to hear from you again. Make sure to tell them why HCBS funding is critical, and that it MUST be included in the next COVID-19 package! Disability Priorities CANNOT be negotiated out of this next package.
-You can find your Senators’ contact forms at senate.gov and your Representative’s contact form at house.gov/representatives.
-You can find your Members’ phone numbers, Twitter handles, Facebook pages, and other contact information on Contacting Congress.
-You can also tweet at Congressional leadership – Mitch McConnell (@SenateMajLdr), Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer), Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi), and Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader).
Here is a sample script for calling or emailing. Please personalize it and put it in your own words if you can:
Hi, my name is (NAME), and I’m from (CITY, STATE).
I am (calling / writing) to ask you to include funding for home and community based services in the COVID-19 relief bill. The need for dedicated HCBS funding is more urgent than ever. We have seen alarming rates of death in nursing facilities and other congregate settings. Many disabled people use HCBS to live in their own homes, but people are struggling to stay in the community. Without more funding, many more people will be forced into congregate settings, where they will be at much greater risk of catching COVID-19.
HCBS funding is desperately needed to ensure we can stay safe in our own homes. The House included funding for HCBS in the HEROES and HEROES 2 Acts. It is critical that this funding be included in the final Congressional package.
I also ask that you oppose efforts to shield businesses from liability for harm they cause related to COVID-19. This threatens the rights and safety of disabled people.
Thank you for your time, and I hope I can count on you to protect your disabled constituents during the COVID-19 pandemic.
(Your name)
October 14, 2020 Press Release: ADAPT Protests Around The Country Re: SCOTUS Hearings In DC
For Immediate Release
For Information Contact:
Ami Hyten (DC) (785) 220-6460
Jodie Baney (Williamsport) (570) 477-0777
Latoya Chivon(Philadelphia) (267) 815-2050
Rhoda Gibson (Boston) (617) 504-1792
Heiwa Salovitz (Austin) (512)966-3666 & Sophia Donnelly (512)924-8449
ADAPT Protests Around The Country Re: SCOTUS Hearings In DC
Washington, DC—-ADAPT is in Washington, DC, again this week as part of a coalition of civil rights groups in opposition to the Republican attempts to ram through Congress the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court of the United States. In addition, several local ADAPT chapters will be staging local actions in opposition to a Barrett confirmation that threatens the Affordable Care Act (ACA) protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
Should Barrett be confirmed, the rights of women and the LGBTQIA+ community will be at risk, along with the health care that millions of Americans gained under the ACA. Opposition to Barrett’s appointment is based on her published positions and opinions in all of these areas and more.
Local ADAPT actions include one on Wednesday, October 14, in Austin, Texas, where ADAPT and allies will gather outside the offices of Sen. John Cornyn, 221 6th Street W., from 11 am to 2 pm to demand that the senator value the lives of disabled people, and vote no on Judge Barrett.
“According to the United States Health and Human Services Department, half of all Americans have a pre-existing condition of some kind,” said Texas ADAPT organizer Heiwa Salovitz. “ Everyone knows someone who is impacted by the issue. Before the legal protection of the ACA, insurance companies were allowed to deny people with disabilities and pre-existing conditions life saving and life sustaining coverage.”
In Boston, Mass ADAPT will protest in front of their statehouse from 12 noon to 2pm, demanding their Senators vote not to confirm Barrett.
In Philadelphia, ADAPT will demand a no vote on Barrett because she is a distinct threat to the ACA and the over 8 million people who have contracted the virus, and who will now be identified as having a pre-existing condition. ADAPT will also highlight the unconscionable 85,000+ deaths of disabled people from Covid-19, a number that would have been much smaller if Congress supported home and community based services over institutional settings.
In Williamsport, North Central Pennsylvania, ADAPT will spend the day at the federal building, again demanding a no vote on Barrett, and pressing for the continuation of the Affordable Care Act. The ACA covers people with lower incomes, pre-existing conditions, and it created the Community First Choice program that makes it easier for states to support aging and disabled people in their own homes, instead of forcing them into institutional settings where Covid-19 has killed so many.
In the nation’s capitol groups protesting with ADAPT outside the Capitol during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings include the Women’s March, Housing Works, the Center for Popular Democracy, Planned Parenthood Action Fund, and local groups like SPACEs in Action, and Sunrise Movement, DC. Two ADAPTers were among those arrested at the sit-in outside the Capitol on Monday.
NationalADAPT.org @RealNatlADAPT on Twitter & Instagram, ADAPT National on Facebook and TikTok, National ADAPT on YouTube
ADAPTnational@gmail.com
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Open Letter To The Presidential Campaigns
ADAPT is a national grass-roots community that organizes disability rights activists to engage in nonviolent direct action, including civil disobedience, to assure the civil and human rights of people with disabilities to live in freedom. Formed by a collective of local ADAPT Chapters, National ADAPT has worked for the past 30 years to promote community living for aging and disabled people through reform of the long term service and support system. The undersigned represent the collective that constitutes ADAPT, as distinguished from other smaller, unofficial organizations representing themselves and their smaller, discrete groups and specific interests.
Current systems reinforce a “bias” in long term services and supports; Medicaid automatically pays for institutional placement. States have to build a parallel long term services and supports system to allow people to remain in their own homes and communities. Housing development has not kept pace with the need for accessible, usable units for people with disabilities. Wages and benefits for workers in homes are unequal to those offered to workers in facilities. Equipment as simple as shower benches or as essential as wheelchairs require users to navigate complicated payment and authorization systems.
The situation aging and disabled people have confronted with COVID-19 has exposed how the biases in our current system mean death to us. COVID-19 has pointed to an imperative to shore up existing long term services and support systems and community resources to keep out of and deliver from aging and disabled people from institutional settings. ADAPT activists are looking for Presidential leadership through aggressive and explicit immediate plans to address gaps in the current system for aging and disabled people that result in unnecessary institutionalization and create barriers for returning to the community.
National recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic will offer the opportunity and the imperative to re-build the long term services and supports system. We will have the opportunity to evaluate the gaps in the past system that placed aging and disabled people squarely at the center of the tempest. We will be able to clearly identify how systemic racism has meant that Black, Indigenous and People of Color suffered higher rates of exposure, infection, and death. We will value housing that offers safe harbor and security as we are able to control who comes in and out of our homes. As more people learn the reality of living with disability, we will place more value on physical and programmatic access in all areas of community life.
As we have for the past 30 years, ADAPT looks to the next Presidential Administration to lead the way toward building communities that support and fully include aging and disabled people. ADAPT challenges all systems and policymakers to promote community integration and aggressively dismantle the system of institutional bias that segregates, isolates, and discriminates against people with all types of disabilities, and compounds the discrimination and exclusion of disabled Black, Indigenous and People of Color. We have long embraced the reality that change does not happen in the absence of demand; social and political progress requires relentless advocacy and activism. ADAPT expects public servants and elected officials to share our commitment to the following and we look to the campaigns to provide concrete plans for moving these issues of our rights, our well-being, and our lives forward that include:
Ending the Institutional Bias in health care and long term services and supports
Money Follows the Person as a permanent program
Housing – stabilizing affordability and expanding accessibility for integrated housing
COVID-19 Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) Funding
Direct Support Workforce wages, benefits, recruitment and retention for self-directing aging and disabled people using community-based long term services and supports
Implementation of policies that keep people from going into institutions, rehabilitation facilities, group homes, state hospitals, detention and carceral centers, and any other type of congregate setting.
FREE OUR PEOPLE,
Arizona ADAPT Florida ADAPT
Philadelphia ADAPT South Carolina ADAPT
Kansas ADAPT Southwest Pennsylvania ADAPT
Massachusetts ADAPT ADAPT of Texas
Montana ADAPT Desert ADAPT
ADAPT of Erie, Pennsylvania D.C. Metro ADAPT
North Central Pennsylvania ADAPT Washington ADAPT
Central Pennsylvania ADAPT Wisconsin ADAPT
Capitol Region ADAPT, NY Downstate NY ADAPT
ROC ADAPT, NY
#DisabledNotDisposable #ADAPTandSurvive #LivesWorthyOfLife
NationalADAPT.org @RealNatlADAPT on Twitter & Instagram, ADAPT National on Facebook and TikTok, National ADAPT on YouTube
ADAPTnational@gmail.com
ADAPT Holds Web Hearing in DC To Demand COVID Relief and Services for Aging and Disabled
For Immediate Release: Friday, October 2, 2020
For More information:
Erika Jones, erickatiff@hotmail.com, (585) 261-1594, www.nationaladapt.org
ADAPT Holds Web Hearing in DC To Demand COVID Relief and Services for Aging and Disabled
Washington DC—- ADAPT, the nation’s largest grassroots disability rights activist organization, is camped on the East lawn of the nation’s Capitol, where they will hold a hearing from 2pm to 4pm Friday to impress Congress and American voters with the vital importance of Medicaid funded Home and Community-based Services (HCBS). These services make it possible for disabled and aging people to remain in their own homes instead of being forced into nursing homes and institutions, and also are critical for moving people out of those nursing homes and institutions which have become literal death traps during the Covid pandemic.
“Our hearing will be available on ADAPT National Facebook Live, and speakers include Sen. Bob Casey, former Congressperson Beto O’Rourke, and people from Texas, to Pennsylvania, to Florida and states in between,” said Jennifer McPhail of ADAPT of Texas. “There will be testimony on how the loss of the Affordable Care Act would be devastating for people with pre-existing conditions, and why it is imperative that Congress pass a new COVID relief package that includes funding for HCBS, PPE, housing, and livable wages for those who provide our care.”
Disabled and aging people in nursing homes, institutions, and other congregate settings like jails, prisons, and detention camps, are dying of COVID at alarming rates, and in alarming numbers. COVID relief packages so far have pumped money into nursing facilities, but those funds have not prevented 40% of the COVID deaths, a total of over 70,000, from occurring in the nation’s nursing homes. Every day more and more nursing facilities and other congregate settings are becoming COVID cluster sites.
ADAPT’s hearing in DC will be echoed in communities across the nation, where testimony will be given locally and fed in to the online hearing.
“Of the measures passed to date by Congress to address the COVID pandemic, none has authorized funding to protect and support the 12 million disabled and aging people living in their own homes,” said Rhoda Gibson activist from MASS ADAPT. “Nor has any funding been authorized to provide a living wage, benefits, and hazard pay during the pandemic to support the attendant care workers who keep disabled and aging people living in their own homes. And none of the funding authorized so far has ensured that personal protective equipment and other necessary supplies are available to people living in the community and their workers.”
Confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett before the November elections will also be addressed in the hearing. Based on the record of her decisions to date, and the upcoming ACA case on the Supreme Court docket, her confirmation could have dire consequences for disabled, aging and low income people. ADAPT demands that the appointment should not be rushed, but should be made by the incoming president.
#ADAPTpplsHearing #DisabledNotDisposable #ADAPTandSurvive #LivesWorthyOfLife
NationalADAPT.org @RealNatlADAPT on Twitter & Instagram, ADAPT National on Facebook and TikTok, National ADAPT on YouTube
ADAPTnational@gmail.com
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National ADAPT Press Release October 1, 2020
For Immediate Release
October 1, 2020
For More information:
Erika Jones, erickatiff@hotmail.com, (585) 261-1594, www.nationaladapt.org
ADAPT Demands Congress Include Funding for HCBS to Stop COVID Nursing Home Deaths of Aging and Disabled
Washington DC—- ADAPT, the nation’s largest grassroots disability rights activist organization, is on the East lawn of the nation’s Capitol, demanding Congress include significant funding in a new COVID relief package to stem the flood of deaths that have occurred in congregate settings during the COVID -19 pandemic. The funding is vital for preventing the forced institutionalization that has led to thousands of deaths in these congregate settings, and for providing PPE and adequately paid caregivers to keep people safer in their own homes. Additional funding is also needed to provide affordable, accessible housing in the community. A second ADAPT demand is permanent reauthorization of the Money Follows the Person program. And a third demand is no Supreme Court appointment until after the November 3rd election.
Disabled and aging people in nursing homes, institutions, and other congregate settings like jails, prisons, and detention camps, are dying of COVID at alarming rates, and in alarming numbers. Covid relief packages so far have pumped money into nursing facilities, but those funds have not prevented 40% of the Covid deaths from occurring in the nation’s nursing homes. Every day more and more nursing facilities and other congregate settings are becoming Covid cluster sites.
Multiple chapters in ADAPT’s national network are joining the call to action in their own communities to demand that Congress provide funding for Home and Community Based Services to protect disabled and aging people living in the community; and to help disabled and aging people currently housed in institutions move to the safety of their own homes by reauthorizing the federal Money Follows the Person program.
“Of the measures passed to date by Congress to address the COVID pandemic, none has authorized funding to protect and support the 12 million disabled and aging people living in their own homes,” said Rhoda Gibson activist from MA ADAPT. “Nor has any funding been authorized to provide a living wage, benefits, and hazard pay during the pandemic to support the attendant care workers who keep disabled and aging people living in their own homes. And none of the funding authorized so far has ensured that personal protective equipment and other necessary supplies are available to people living in the community and their workers.”
The federal Money Follows the Person program has supported thousands of people to move from institutions into their own homes. In the absence of formal reauthorization since the program sunset in 2018, some states have had to end their programs, and all states have seen a sharp decline in the number of people who have been able to benefit from the program. Permanent reauthorization is necessary to ensure a safe way for people to get out of dangerous institutions and back to their own homes.
Confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett before the November elections could have dire consequences for disabled and aging people and their health care, based on the record of her decisions to date, and the upcoming cases on the Supreme Court docket. ADAPT demands that the appointment should not be rushed, but should be made by the incoming president.
#ADAPTpplsHearing #DisabledNotDisposable #ADAPTandSurvive #LivesWorthyOfLife
NationalADAPT.org @RealNatlADAPT on Twitter & Instagram, ADAPT National on Facebook and TikTok, National ADAPT on YouTube
ADAPTnational@gmail.com
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HCBS FUNDING IN COVID PACKAGE ACTION SAMPLE PRESS RELEASE
ADAPT Advocates from across the Country Demand Senators Fund Services to Keep Disabled and Aging People Safe and Living in their Own Homes
MM/DD/YY PRESS ALERT FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For More information:
(Contact Name & phone number and/or email)
WHO: (ADAPT Chapter)
WHAT: Disability Rights Activists Send Messages to Senators to fund Home and Community Based Services and make Money Follows the Person permanent
WHERE: (Address for the location)
WHEN: (Time if an event is happening)
Disabled and Aging people being held in institutions are dying of COVID at alarming rates. Congressional COVID Relief packages so far have pumped more money into institutions but people are still dying; more nursing facilities and other congregate settings are labeled as cluster sites every day.
(Local ADAPT Chapter), as part of ADAPT’s national network of grassroots disability activists, is participating in a call to action. The call to action has been organized to call upon Senators to protect disabled and aging people living in the community by providing additional funding for Home and Community Based Services and help disabled and aging people in institutions move to the safety of their own homes by reauthorizing the federal Money Follows the Person program.
Resources are needed to keep disabled and aging people in their homes safely. NONE of the laws Congress has passed to address the COVID pandemic have had funding to protect and support the 12 million disabled and aging people living in their own homes. None of the funding has supported the workers who keep disabled and aging people living in their own homes through better wages or benefits. None of the resources have ensured that personal protective equipment or other supplies are available to people living in the community and their workers.
The federal Money Follows the Person program has supported thousands of people in moving from institutions into their own homes. Since the program’s ending in 2018, Congress has provided extension funding, but the loss of the formal program has meant some states have ended the program, and in all states the number of people who have been able to benefit from the program has sharply dropped. Permanent reauthorization is necessary to ensure a safe way for people to get out of dangerous institutions and back to their own homes.
(Local ADAPT Chapter) will be (Describe what actions you will be doing on this day) to reach our Senators who returned to work in D.C. on July 21st. Funding Home and Community Based Services and re-authorizing Money Follows the Person must be first priorities for the next round of COVID relief.
Download Sample Press Release HERE
#DisabledNotDisposable #ADAPTandSurvive #LivesWorthyOfLife
NationalADAPT.org @RealNatlADAPT on Twitter & Instagram, ADAPT National on Facebook and TikTok, National ADAPT on YouTube
ADAPTnational@gmail.com