In a local writing workshop, I wrote despite all my failed endeavors, I’m starting Able Community to redefine independence by building co-housing for people with and without disabilities. Feedback: “I want to know why this screw up is doing this.”
Here’s why:
Most of my highly educated friends with disabilities are unemployed or underemployed, and still live with their parents. It’s disempowering when it’s because you can’t find and afford accessible housing and/or care, instead of just saving money.
Helping people with disabilities find individualized solutions to accessible housing, self-directed personal care, and community will enable equal access to meaningful opportunities, including paid full-time employment.
Able Community is a solution, but still has a long way to go. We seek to equip people with disabilities with tools that will empower them, instead of facing failed endeavors, like I have. We provided three young adults with disabilities with housing since we moved into a house in 2017, and need your help to make room for more people with and without disabilities to live in our house!
We’re not asking for monetary donations today, although you can still donate online.
BIG ASKs:
Can you or anyone you know donate unique stuff (artwork, recipes, sharing season tickets/airline miles, etc.) or services (tutoring, tours of your town, harmonica lessons, etc.)? Able Community plans to crowdfund (think Kickstarter, etc.) and use your pledged donations as rewards or auction items.
If you shop Amazon on Prime Day on July 15 & 16, or on any other day, please shop via http://smile.amazon.com/ch/47-1913272. AmazonSmile donates part of your purchase to Able Community! Every cent makes a difference!!!
Picture of Esther: a woman in a wheelchair is in front of the Christmas tree at Millennium Park in downtown Chicago.
It’s been a remarkable year. I’m making progress improving my pain and right foot. Disability Law Collective, my law practice, started earning more than its expenses with clients and I am finishing my reasonable housing accommodations and modifications guidebook collaboration with Access Living and the Illinois Department of Human Rights. My former Access Living supervising attorney asked me to work with them because I write well. Let’s hope they still think that!
It was also a momentous year for Able Community, my non-profit housing cooperative for people with and without disabilities. We officially received our 501(c)3 status, found a house to live in together, and moved in last month!
Group picture from Able Community’s housewarming party: some guests with and without disabilities gathered in Able Community’s living room.
I have a great housemate, Thomas. We met through a mutual friend, T.J., who I played boccia with when I was in high school. I discovered after we moved in together that Thomas knew of me for years. Apparently, T.J. talked me up regarding my boccia abilities. I could’ve been a contender, but instead, I chose to be studious so I could be an attorney. Thomas regrets not being able to compete against me while we were both in our primes. It’s funny how much we have in common, including having the same doctors… a CP connection.
Thomas and Esther’s first meal together at Able Community’s house! Fish and chicken tacos.
Despite all of these accomplishments, I can’t help feeling discouraged because I am still struggling to find personal care assistants. We had a number of applicants with disabilities needing personal care and planned to select another resident needing care after I established my own care, so we can share this care. This is why the delay in finding enough assistants is particularly hard for me.
We found a solution. We will renovate the basement so that it can attract personal care assistants to live there, or be rented out to offset our care costs. We are raising $16,000 to enlarge 2 basement windows as fire escapes.
Here’s my housewarming speech, in case you missed it:
We raised $2,799 from Giving Tuesday and our housewarming party, thanks to our generous friends! Able Community sure has come a long way from our first fundraiser for $800 for our website and incorporation expenses. Here’s a blast from the past fundraising video:
We definitely have a ways to go before we reach our $16,000 basement window repair goal, so we can provide exceptional housing for people needing and providing care. If you haven’t donated, please donate to Able Community on www.ablecommunitychicago.org/donate/! It’s not too late to make your tax deductible donation count towards your 2017 taxes!
I’m also continuing to look for personal care assistants. If you know anyone who might be interested, please send them my e-mail address below.
I first started my annual holiday updates during my first year of law school. That was a very challenging year for me having to establish my personal care in California during the pressures of 1L classes and being horribly homesick for Illinois. I guess I have come a long way, but I still have a long way to go. Please drop me a line. It always brightens my day to hear from you!
Happy Holidays,
Esther S. Lee,
Attorney at Law
Disability Law Collective: affordable legal advocacy for people with disabilities’ everyday legal needs.
I know, I know. It’s not December, when I usually send my annual holiday update. But I have such exciting news that I couldn’t wait. I’ll save it for the end to escalate the anticipation. Hopefully, you’ll make it that far down. There’s a surprise; so don’t miss it.
Quick health update since I mentioned it in December and friends keep asking why I am not coming out to play: I have cerebral palsy, a physical disability. It’s hard to explain CP because everyone’s CP is different and I ironically don’t know that much about it. Yes, that guy on the Speechless show has it. My CP makes the me spastic, basically, I have too much movement I can’t control, as some of you who have walked up from behind me may have noticed my startle reflex with me jumping five feet out of my wheelchair.
Anyway, I’m having too much tone in my right foot. It feels like I have a lot of trapped energy and movement, which is making it harder to walk on, even assisted. I’m working with doctors to find the right treatment. Don’t worry; I guess this happens to many people with my type of CP, especially as we age. I am doing a lot better than before, when I even had difficulty sitting in my wheelchair from the tone; funny how just a foot can make a big impact. Doctors never seem to know what to do with me, but they are trying. I’m a bit of an anomaly across the board, including in medicine too… they don’t know why it’s only one side, but I am thankful that it is not both feet.
Despite my tone, I was able to hit the slopes. Unfortunately, not with my Midwest friends this year, but out West, during our family’s spring break. Yes, they were very annoyed and I am not sure that they will ever take me again since we almost didn’t make it back. It started snowing while we were coming down the mountain and my dad insisted on driving down. We skidded off the detour and got stuck on the edge of a cliff until someone towed us out. I thought it was humorous, but no one else did. It was one in a series of many unfortunate travel events during that road trip.
I tried the world’s only joystick operated ski through the University of Utah’s TRAILS program. Dr. Jeff Rosenbluth envisioned it for people with spinal cord injury (SCI), having been an adaptive ski instructor before medical school. Why can’t I have a cool doctor like that? He even came to ski with me on the first day.
Picture of me skiing in a joystick operated kart ski in Utah on a snowy mountain. There is a man behind me holding on to a rope connected to my ski for good measure.
They were excited because I was the first person with a disability besides SCI to try it. I also discovered that I was the first woman (go girl power!), so they let me go faster than they let anyone else before (being short finally paid off!). It was the fastest I’ve ever skied, so of course, I loved it! I surprisingly didn’t crash; I almost did at least twice misjudging a snowbank on a turn. But Dr. Rosenbluth was strong enough to stop me. Apparently, it hurts more than wiping out on a regular sit ski, which I have done. I’m glad that I didn’t find out how much more it hurts.
So the real exciting news… Drum roll please. Able Community, the housing cooperative for people with and without disabilities that my friends and I have been working on, has finally received our 501(c)(3) status!
We were waiting to tell everyone formally until we got the green light from our Perkins Coie pro bono attorneys to officially solicit tax deductible donations. And guess what? We made a video to say that your donations will now be tax deductible; and if you filed an extension, you can deduct any donations you made in 2016!
It is fitting that we send out this update in July. We had our first Able Community meeting in July, before we even had a name for it. I really wanted to have that meeting on the 4th of July, since we’re working to improve people with disabilities’ independence. But we settled on July 6th instead.
For you Amazon.com shoppers, 0.5% of your purchases can be donated to Able Community at no additional cost to you. You have to set your donation preferences on smile.amazon.com and remember to make your purchases through smile.amazon.com. Here’s the link: https://smile.amazon.com/ch/47-1913272
More exciting news… Able Community is this year’s recipient of the Berkeley Student Cooperative co-op development grant!
And extremely exciting news. Able Community found a house to rent in downtown Arlington Heights (a Chicago suburb) to start living in together!!! We are looking for more housemates with and without disabilities, and personal care assistants (both live-in and hourly PAs) if you or anyone you know are interested. Please forward this application link to anyone who may be interested: http://bit.ly/apply2AC
Picture of Able Community’s red brick house with a ramp being built for the front door.
We are currently waiting for the renovations to make it accessible before we move in. We plan to host an open house hopefully at the end of August and many get-togethers there that we would love to see you at. Let me know if you are interested in attending.
We hope you enjoy our video and consider donating to Able Community, a 501(c)(3) housing cooperative for people with and without disabilities, so we can really start doing amazing work. You have donate through the link on the video or through our link here: http://www.ablecommunitychicago.org/donate/ or if you want to send a check, I’ll give you our address. Your donations will help us furnish our empty house and other household needs.
The following is from my annual holiday update to my friends.
A blue postcard says “Happy Holidays” in the center with white snowflake stars. This image is from this e-card link.
I dreaded writing this year’s update. Although I was appointed as co-chair for the Women’s Bar Association of Illinois’ Attorneys with Disabilities Committee and a member of the Statewide Independent Living Council of Illinois (SILC), I haven’t been as productive as I would like to have been this year. I’m so used to doing everything at 90 mph that my slower pace is hard for me to get used to.
Another SILC member I just met worked at the University of Illinois when I was a freshman. When I asked her why we never met before this year, she replied that she saw me but she could never catch me because I was too fast. So perhaps there are benefits to living a slower pace. Please forgive me if I was going too fast to be there for you. I’m definitely here now if you need me.
Last December, I was just ending my pro bono work with the Legal Council for Health Justice, or the organization formerly known as Aids Legal Council of Chicago, which was a fantastic six months of hands on experience with Social Security matters directly from the Executive Director. I was enthusiastic to launch my own law practice, the Disability Law Collective, with the assistance from my legal incubator program. I soon realized that successful self-employment requires more than shared office space, particularly as a person with a disability. I did get my first case through Access Living and am eager to grow my practice.
I see improving independence and employment for myself and others with disabilities as the reoccurring theme of my work and my ultimate life goal. Able Community is the non-profit housing cooperative for people with and without disabilities that I have been working on with a fantastic group of people, who all happen to have disabilities and are all graduates from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Our Able Community members are working towards improving independence for people with disabilities, personal assistants, and their families.
Able Community is not having a fundraiser this year because we are working on our 501(c)3 incorporation; we are extremely close to filing the application. I realize that I’ve been saying this for a while, but we have just submitted our materials to our non-profit pro bono attorneys and our next step is filing the application. We will have more fundraisers once we file for our 501(c)3 status, so we can provide tax deductions. If you still want to donate to Able Community anyway, we would of course gratefully accept your generosity; here is a link to our PayPal info on the bottom of this hyperlinked page. We are incredibly grateful for everything our supporters have done for us already.
(In case you missed it, above is our fundraiser video from last year. It explains what Able Community is and who the members are better.)
I consider myself so blessed to be back home in Illinois, near the city I love and to be closer to the other Able Community members. As someone who pursued a legal career to practice civil rights and fight racial injustices, I am appalled by the recent police brutality incidents. I am conscious that the systematic violence and racial inequalities deeply rooted in our nation’s history call for even greater collective systematic change at the city and national level. I have also come to realize that the everyday injustices are just as important to advocate for as the systematic ones and I hope that my law practice, the Disability Law Collective, will meet the everyday legal needs of the disability community.
(A sneak preview of Disability Law Collective’s animated promotional video.)
I also feel blessed to be back, closer to my friends in Illinois, to celebrate life’s happy and sad moments together. I lost 3 friends this year. While this comes with being a part of the disability community and I have lost schoolmates from an early age, I don’t think I will ever get used to it. I’m sure that my losses do not remotely measure up to what the families who lost their loved ones with disabilities or the teachers and professionals who continuously loose people with disabilities they work with must go through.
Having said that, I believe it is wise to make legal preparations so your loved ones and family know what your final wishes are. This can be done through estate planning, including wills, and medical and financial powers of attorneys. I’d be happy to help you figure out what legal options meet your needs and if for some reason I cannot (I’m only licensed to practice law in Illinois and California), I’ll be happy to help find someone else who can. And please let me know if there is anything else I could help you with, legally or otherwise.
I have been enjoying Chicago. One of the Able Community members would marry football if he could, whereas I would definitely marry Chicago. My sister and I have been doing the touristy things that we never did before, like architecture tours. We’ve also been going to Broadway musicals. I’m really glad that my love of musical started in an early age (thanks to my elementary school music and art teachers). I did subject to my whole law school to this love by making many of the professors and students participate in my law school musical production during my last year.
I’ve also taken up some inherently dangerous adaptive activities, including water skiing and alpine skiing (I’m sure some of you would love to throw me off a mountain). It feeds my rebellious-defying-what-people-say-I-cannot-do-because-of-my-disability spirit. Similar to the teams of people assisting people with disabilities find independence through sports traditionally meant for able-bodied people, I am excited to be a part of teams advocating for the independence for people with disabilities through the Disability Law Collective and Able Community.
(Photo with the crew of volunteers who made sure that I didn’t kill myself my first time skiing.)
I am taking better care of my health with adaptive yoga and horseback riding. I look forward to adding adaptive scuba diving to the list of my inherently dangerous adaptive adventures. Perhaps I am training to be the next James Bond… I know that I am not an attractive British able-bodied man. But how cool would it be if there was a movie with a female spy with a disability who is a person of color?!?
Happy Holidays, but especially a very Merry Christmas and a Happy Hanukkah (showing my Judeo-Christian biases)!
I wanted to share about the non-profit I’m starting, Able Community. Watch this video, then read the e-mail below to find out more!
Able Community is building the first fully accessible, affordable, and intentionally inclusive cooperative housing for people with and without disabilities in the United States. Beginning this holiday season, we are asking for your help! Please consider donating to Able Community’s Every Dollar Counts campaign, our very first fundraiser.
It is extremely difficult for people with disabilities to find affordable and accessible housing, and personal care, which affects our independence and employability. Able Community is creating an alternative to institutions and living with family for people with disabilities, while improving personal assistants’ quality of life and compensation. Our members will run and operate this collaborative housing cooperative and personal care services to meet these unmet independent living needs. We will be located in Chicago, because of its employment potential and accessible public transit, with approximately 20 various sized apartment units, some offices, and shared common space for people with disabilities, personal care assistants, and their families.
All of Able Community members have disabilities and/or work with persons with disabilities, so we are passionate about the need for this innovative solution and we have creative ideas about how to accomplish it. We have been meeting weekly, investigated the lack of other living situations, drafted our founding documents, and are in the process of incorporating.
In order to make the Able Community a reality, we are raising $800 to incorporate as a non-profit and for our website. We need YOUR help; a donation of $10, $25, or $50 will help us get there. With your support, Able Community’s housing co-op will become a reality.
Every dollar will have a meaningful impact on our work doing—redefining independence for people with disabilities. Able Community believes that Every Dollar Counts. Instead of sending a Christmas card or buying us a cup of coffee, contribute a few dollars to our cause and contribute to changing lives – and ultimately the disability community – forever.
To find out more and donate online, go to AbleCommunityChicago.Org, click on the donate link below, or make a check payable to Able Community. It would be helpful if you have a PayPal account, but we welcome donations in any method.
Thank you in advance for your support of Able Community!
After 9 years of living in California, I moved back home to Illinois. I’m in an incubator program that incubates new attorneys into solo practitioners. Yes, my life has been full of detours, twisting and turning my intended direct path. When I was in Pasadena, I met up with my law school friend and mock trial competition co-counsel. As I shared my job search frustrations, she jokingly asked if I was upset that I haven’t changed the world yet. She was right. I remember writing in my law school applications that I’m not naive enough to think I can change the world, but I want to be a catalyst for everyday change. I’ve come to realize that I do want to change the world. Or at the very least, be part of that change.
This mass email will probably be my last update from this address. I plan to launch my law practice for people with disabilities and their families on January 2, 2015! I keep pushing back my launch date, so perhaps sharing my exciting news of my second wind at my legal career will motivate me to stick to this date.
In other fantastic news, Able Community, the soon-to-be nonprofit housing cooperative I’m starting with friends with and without disabilities filed its articles with the Illinois Secretary of State. We’ve been working on it for the past two years and are progressing towards our goal of becoming a 501(c)3. If I am able to leave a legacy, I believe it will be for my work on Able Community, redefining independence for people with disabilities, personal assistants, and their families by improving accessible housing and the dynamics of care to enable reaching our full personhood potential and employment. To find out more about Able Community, please visit: ablecommunitychicago.org.
Stay tuned for more exciting news to come!
This was an e-mail update to my friends. If you would like to receive e-mail updates from me, please leave me a comment below.
Picture of the “at” symbol emerging from an envelope with a blue arrow circling the envelope, representing an e-mail, from this link.
Gimpy Law 
