The Model

A small village of paired homes, around a common heart.

1000 Villagers is a residential community where adults with profound autism and their aging parents live side by side. Each family has two connected homes, one for the parent, one for the adult child, sharing a garden and a threshold. The homes cluster around a central commons, on a rural site that is walkable, sensory-considered, and open to its surrounding hamlet.

The site

We are flexible on the site. A working pilot could begin on land a founding family already owns in Earlville, NY, and the community can grow across one or more nearby sites as families join. We are deliberately starting small.

Notional site plan of 1000 Villagers showing twelve family clusters around a central commons, with a pond, orchard, walking paths, and woods around the perimeter. — Notional site plan: a central Commons surrounded by twelve family clusters, walking paths, gardens, a pond, and woodland.

The family cluster

Each family in the community has two adjacent single-story homes, one for the parent (or parents), one for their adult child, with a shared garden between them and a walking path connecting their front porches.

This is the heart of the design. The parent home and adult-child home are separate but proximate: each has its own entry, its own kitchen, its own dignity. The shared garden is the threshold between them, close enough to share daily life, distant enough to honor the adult child's adulthood and the parent's right to a household of their own.

Plan view of a family cluster: parent home on the left with bedroom, bath, and living/kitchen; shared garden in the middle with a tree and bench; adult-child home on the right with bedroom, sensory room, and living/kitchen. — Family cluster plan: parent home, shared garden, adult-child home, domestic scale, shared threshold, separate but proximate.

Sample dimensions

We are still working with our architects, but our reference range, drawn from peer communities like SpeciallyAble, is:

Parent home: approximately 1,500 to 2,200 sq ft. One or two bedrooms, full kitchen, living, accessible bath, designed for aging in place.
Adult-child home: approximately 1,400 to 1,800 sq ft. One to three private suites depending on need, common living and kitchen, a dedicated sensory-considered support space, accessible bath.
Lot: approximately 6,000 to 7,500 sq ft per family cluster, including the shared garden between the two homes.

The Commons

At the center of the village is the Commons, a building larger than a home but still at domestic scale. It houses medical and therapeutic services, a shared dining and gathering room, programming and quiet spaces, and small offices for community staff. The Commons is what makes the village a community rather than a row of houses.

What surrounds the homes

Walkable paths. Every cluster connects to the Commons by a footpath. The village is small enough that no one needs a vehicle to participate.
Gardens and an orchard. Working land, vegetables, herbs, fruit trees, where residents who want to participate can.
A pond and woods. The site is shaped by its natural features rather than carved against them.
A single entry drive. Visible from the road. Not gated. Open to the wider community.

Out in the community

The village is a home base, not a world unto itself. Residents are out in the surrounding community as a matter of routine: the library, the parks, local shops and errands, museums and events, and the everyday life of the hamlet around us. Each adult chooses their own activities and providers, keeps their own schedule, and holds their own residency agreement, with real privacy and control over their own home and daily life. The point of living here is not to withdraw from the community; it is to take part in it, with the support to do that well.

How we grow

We will not arrive at the full vision overnight. We are planning in three stages, a small pilot, a founding village, and replication.

Three panels showing scale progression: Pilot of 3 families and 6 residents in Earlville NY; Founding village of 10 to 12 families and about 24 residents; and Replication of the documented model across multiple partner sites. — Pilot → Founding village → Replication. Our name signals the longer aim.

How it works financially

The community is funded through three streams, Medicaid (OPWDD) waiver services for the adult children, philanthropy for what public funding will not cover, and modest earned revenue from respite. A guiding rule runs underneath: the funding follows the person, not the building, so our homes stay family-controlled rather than becoming state-certified facilities. A small family of entities keeps housing, care, and the community's endowment cleanly separate. Public funding pays only for the adult children's services; the parents' homes, and any care they arrange for themselves, are entirely private and sit on the other side of a firm wall from those public dollars. Capital is assembled from affordable-housing tax credits and public housing programs. The full picture, including the budget framework and the entity structure, lives on its own page.

See The Math →

What we are not

We are not a group home. We are not a nursing facility. We are not a typical co-housing development. Our homes are not state-certified institutions, they stay family-controlled, with each adult child's supports self-directed by the people who know them best. We borrow from each model we have studied, but the combination of profound autism, co-resident parents, family-controlled homes, and lifespan security is, to our knowledge and to the knowledge of the autism professionals we have consulted, distinctive.

For a clearer picture of why we chose this combination, read our guiding principles.