Blog
Featuring: Dana Hooper, LSA’s Executive Director, and Heidi Cartan, Founding Executive Director at Common Roots Farm.
Hadiyah: I’m really excited about introducing one of our panelists which will be Dana Hooper. He’s been our executive Director since 2007 and he’s also been a force in this community. He’s been with LSA for the past 16 years, but his journey hasn’t started there. His journey started many years ago when his son Brent was diagnosed with an intellectual disability. Over the years he’s become more involved in many areas of the ID world. He became a leader in our community working with the government and nonprofits such as Branch Services. He’s also a past board president of Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired and he’s on the state department of developmental services. He was a past board president of the San Andreas Regional Center, which also let him to his leadership role at Lizet where he can make a difference in the lives of individuals LSA serves. Dana, thanks for being here tonight.
Dana: I’m very excited to be here and we have an incredible guest, Heidi, joining us tonight. Heidi is the founder and Executive Director of Common Roots Farm, an inclusive urban farm in Santa Cruz, California, established in 2016. She has a background and human services and a passion for gardening. Heidi was driven to create this unique space after experiencing firsthand the lack of opportunities for her son Noah, who has cerebral palsy. Once he graduated from high school, determined to provide meaningful and fulfilling activities for Noah and others with intellectual and physical disabilities, Heidi and her husband Philippe built Common Roots Farm. Heidi’s dedication to fostering an inclusive environment, where people with disabilities are recognized for their abilities, and their contributions has transformed Common Roots Farm into a model of community engagement and sustainable agriculture. Her vision ensures that everyone, regardless of ability can participate in growing healthy food and building a supportive interconnected community.
Heidi: Thank you again for the chance to talk about this. I think as a parent, my husband, and I both appreciate the chance to share what we’ve learned and what we’ve done. We particularly are proud of having joined with other parents to do this particular venture. About eight years ago now about 10 families came together, all of us raising adult children with intellectual or developmental disabilities – we came together and purchased a almost 7 acre property, very close to downtown Santa Cruz and it happened to be the largest remaining agricultural parcel within the city limits. Our vision was really to create lifelong housing for our adult children, that would outlast us and hopefully last for generations of people with disabilities. But also to create a working farm, small scale, agriculture, where they could have opportunities if they choose to be able to participate. As you mentioned — in growing healthy food, and in our case, also beautiful flowers, and having a place as adults to hang out and be together. And hopefully to have a good life and meaning and purpose. Fast-forward now, we’ve had about almost 3 years now of our residence, our adult children, living here and what we call a pocket neighborhood. So we built nine homes and a common garage and guest unit. Six of our nine homes are occupied by our adult children, and three of the homes we have are rented to a family, to UCF students and to our children — the primary tenants and the reason that our project exists. Adjacent to the housing community, with no fences separating them, is about a 4 and 1/2 acre parcel — that is where Common Roots Farm is. It’s essentially the front yard of the folks who are living in our pocket neighborhood, but it’s also open and has been intended to be available as a larger community resource here in Santa Cruz for anybody with an intellectual or developmental disability who would like to participate… as well as people without disabilities. Our mission is to bring those two groups together to farm this land. That’s sort of the overall picture.
Dana: Fantastic. What an achievement.
Heidi: Talking about our oldest son, Noah… so he’s 28 now and as you mentioned in the intro, he has cerebral palsy. He’s actually a quadriplegic so he’s a wheelchair user. He does require a feeding tube for nutrition and he’s nonverbal. He’s extraordinarily social. He really loves to be with people and is just a happy person in general, but he has substantial needs and so it wasn’t entirely clear to be honest, early in his life if he would have a full lifespan, but as he got older and more medically stable, it became cleared to us that there was, hope… very high chance at that point that he would have a full life and we began to really think hard about what was that going to look like. Every other parent, I know in our shoes, all worry about what’s going to happen. we’re not here to provide the care support that we’ve been providing as parents and family. Prior to having Noah, and even after he was born, I was working toward community based solutions to nursing home level care for older adults, and so I was very aware of skilled nursing level support for people. Noah’s disability is not a common one to be at that level, but there are certainly plenty of Noah’s in the world and that became more and more my husband and I’s social circle, and our experience in the education system. I had a little bit of a view of what was ahead with institutional care, but that was typically supporting people 80+ and I wasn’t really sure what was going to be available to Noah and because he has so many physical needs, it was really critical that we find that would support him adequately but also really, I often how do you create a meaningful day and a meaningful life when you have that level of disability and it’s completely doable. I see families and friends and educators and therapists and so forth coming together doing it every day, but it’s not straightforward and simple. Our solution to that was to create a working farm and really think about that. There are so many jobs that need to be done on a farm and if your objective is not to do it quickly, but to be super efficient about it, but to be inclusive, there are many ways to adapt those jobs and those activities so that people with even significant physical impairments like my son — can be involved and so his journey is really the journey that led to this.
Dana: It certainly sounds like Noah is what inspired you.
Heidi: It certainly has changed a bit, but we really did a lot of homework in advance. We didn’t know it would take us that long. We were quite naïve about that and it’s probably better that we didn’t know what we didn’t know at the time because the project itself was building when the pandemic hit. We also had the CZU lightning complex fire which happened here in Santa Cruz within five or 6 miles of our property. While we were under construction and we had a number of things that were challenges to us going forward, but we did have the vision of the housing and the farm and we did have the vision of two separate entities that would be part of one cohesive whole experience and we did have a vision of the farm being a community asset and not just being available to folks who were able to live at Coastal Haven. We wanted it to serve them too, but we really wanted to bring the community here so that many more people could enjoy the farm. Also, our children who were living here would have some built-in networks and social opportunities because the farm could be a community hub which we’re beginning to see. That part of the vision is there while it took a lot of patience on our part, of our family partners and it took perseverance — particularly on the part of my husband to get the construction done. I had the fun part — which was the farm.
Heidi: Best thing would be to go to our website — commonrootsfarm.org — we are open five days a week and we hold a couple of volunteer sessions every other Saturday… on weekends to accommodate folks who can’t get here during the week. We are a small operation — just send me an email and I’m likely to get it and respond. We love to have visitors… we give tours… and it’s also a chance to see, for those who are interested in sustainable agriculture, a diversified market farm . This is a beautiful time of year to come and we’re at peak season and we have about 20 different food crops.
Heidi: First step would be to go to CoastalHavenFamiliesllc.com and we offer monthly tours, the first Saturday of every month. Step one is to see the project and housing and get your initial questions answered. It’s a chance to walk through the community, in the neighborhood and really talk about the design features — it is a private equity model and an SLS model. The best thing really is to come look at it and visit it and if folks are interested beyond that initial tool, then we hook you up with some of our family partners who make themselves available for lots of Q&A and really give people the chance to meet other members of the community.
Heidi: Yah, because we are a working farm and not a special needs farm — we’ve been able to employ young adults with IDD through an internship program with the state. We have a couple of different employees we’ve had on the farm who have had the farm work as their first paid job and they are doing groundskeeping work, farming work, animal care… it’s been exciting to watch them blossom and learn real skills for employment… we also have one young man who refuses direct deposit on his paycheck because he really enjoys the process of going to the bank and depositing his paycheck every couple of weeks. He takes a lot of pride in that. We also have three different day programs coming to the farm on three different mornings of the week — and what I’m especially proud of is when we got here, there was no day program that could serve our son. We wouldn’t take him because of his feeding tube but we also just didn’t have and still don’t really have enough day programs for the demand. But we’ve got programs who are coming to the farm and having the opportunity to be in nature and be able to participate throughout the season — whether it’s tasting food, caring for plants, interacting with our animals, and I feel that is a big success story because we get calls in the winter because we don’t have year round space yet. We are looking to build a barn this year… but we have to send folks home when the weather gets poor. We do get calls from those day programs saying our participants are eager to come back when we are reopening. I’m looking forward to the day when we don’t have to send you home — we can just take a holiday break and reopen.
Heidi: For us at Common Roots, the first step was to create an infrastructure that was wheelchair accessible… If you say you are going to welcome everybody, everybody has to be able to get in and around. But simultaneously, we really wanted to create a culture of inclusion. We train staff and volunteers in the importance of allowing people to be who they are and allowing people to feel welcome. I have parents who frequently begin to apologize for their child’s behavior or sounds or various inattentiveness to whatever we’re talking about… and I like to say over and over again — this is the one place where you don’t have to apologize for that. We get it here. This is who we’re here to work with and participate with. Those relationships are really mutual. We have volunteers who don’t have disabilities, who speak to me about how much it means to them to be able to be here and get out of their office or their home and into a natural setting and learn how to grow food. I think some of the best inclusion happens when everybody is in the same space and they’re sharing tasks. We don’t rush people, we’re not in a hurry, it’s not about efficiency — it’s really about adaptation. We have created some sis e for wheelchair accessible roll into garden beds, we’ve got lots of different size tools and we’ve got potting tables at different heights to accommodate people of different heights. We have lots of different ways to approach what we do. And if your jam is just to walk around the farm and listen to the birds and look at what there is to see or take in the smells and sounds — you’re welcome to do that too. We also do a cooking class, and we have an art class. It’s about being in a space together and enjoying that space. For me, a high priority is placed on a natural setting — an environment that’s just naturally beautiful because it’s outside.
Dana: It sounds like you have created an amazing community and have had a tremendous, positive impact on everyone.
Heidi: Thanks to a grant from the Miranda Foundation, we were able to expand the number of numbers coming to us from postsecondary programs. My inspiration and my husband’s motivation was — what is Noah’s adulthood going to look like? What happens to him after he’s out of the postsecondary education? And if his life is indeed long, what fills his time? We’ve been able to work with postsecondary students who often come to us with very little confidence in being out in the world. They’ve been in a school environment, they’ve been supported and that environment and haven’t really been in an employment setting. Many of them have not been on a farm. It’s been really fun to watch them build their confidence interacting with our animals. For example, some sheep are trained to be able to be on a leash… we talk about rotational grazing lots of the practices on a farm. We also give them opportunities to do what we call, ‘seed to salad’ — learning how to plant seeds and learn to give them what they need, to care for them and to transplant them. They are able to take products and flowers home. They love it and the biggest mark of success is that I have teachers saying that students ask to come back for a second or even third year on the farm. We have people who are blind, people who use wheelchairs, people who are on the spectrum – we really see that diversity of the human experience around disability here. We’ve yet to know it doesn’t work perfectly all the time, but we have an attitude and expectation that people are competent and learn together and that environment seems to be really helping young adults thrive and head toward their adulthood. It feels like we’re onto something here.
Heidi: I’ve seen that we are not the only one to be doing this around the country. There’s research and resources available, but I think a lot of communities have community gardens and there are some basic things that can be done to include everyone. If this kind of endeavor interests you, get some experience yourself, and bring your child with you to do it together. I started out really by gardening in our backyard because it was my hobby and didn’t want to give it up in the course of caring for him. Getting to know your child in a setting like that and what do they like to do, what do they like to water, what do they like to have their hands in, do they like to be around animals, do they enjoy being in a greenhouse and being around a lot of plants. But we frequently see people kind of owning tasks. They really really enjoy and feel comfortable with and gravitating to doing that. There are lots of groups like master gardener programs that are beginning to look at how to make gardening and culture therapy more available in communities, particularly for seniors, and I think the intersection there in disability between seniors and younger adults with disabilities is a really fruitful one to use the farming metaphor, trying to find a therapist in your community or somebody that is interested in doing therapeutic gardening — I think gardening is therapeutic to me, but there are specific approaches, particularly for folks who have physical impairments that can allow them to garden. Actually inspiring me to get some resources to add to our website for that kind of thing.
Heidi: If your child is in adulthood, I think, understanding, supported employment and the opportunities that exist to partner with an organization that does supported employment services. We have a number of people who work here at the farm and have worked in the past with us and they come with an employment specialist that assists them while they’re here. They work on specific skills and then they often get a letter of reference here. We are really fortunate here in Santa Cruz, we have a great organization called Shared Adventures that does a lot of different things recreationally for people with disabilities. They host their garden club every Thursday afternoon — not everybody has to recreate the wheel. There are also increasingly inclusive playgrounds being developed. Even starting in your child school, Gardening classrooms and gardening in schools. They are finding out how they can include their special ed students in that process. Get staff trained up a little bit so they can find ways to include people in their classrooms starting as young kids. It’s pretty non-controversial to have children learn where their food comes from, learn how to garden, and how to enjoy being outdoors. It’s really good for mental health and well-being so maybe starting at your school and seeing if you can encourage that.
Dana: I grew up on a farm – there’s a lot of lessons to be learned.
Heidi: Everything we do is on a hand scale so we have some power tools, but we’re small. We have just about 2 acres under cultivation… we sell our produce directly to customers.
Heidi: If you are local or it’s feasible for you — we rely heavily on volunteers, with or without disabilities. A lot of folks are working for companies now that give people release time to do volunteer work for other nonprofits. We would welcome that. We’ve been hosting a few groups here and there from corporations that want to have a team building day and we get them out there, and teach them what it’s like to really harvest and give them that experience. Bring a family down on a Saturday to get an experience of who we are and what we do and help us out on the farm directly. We can also be helped by any financial support that people can offer. People can become customers – we sell a variety of shelf stable products (jams, hot sauces, cocktail mixes). Purchasing those products, certainly you know, that revenue goes right back into our programming.
Heidi: The sidewalks that lead up to our farm have light poles right in the middle of them that make it possible for me to walk side-by-side with my son and a wheelchair while he’s in a power chair. The barrier is just to get to us to follow public policy and city planning — that makes it problematic. From my own experience, we had fabulous educators and really committed people who have taught us a lot and supported us and these endeavors. My son still has some lovely teachers back from elementary school who came to visit him and see the farm and see his new home. Those are people that were committed to inclusion before I even knew the word honestly. If we are talking about inclusion, it does mean everything and everywhere and everyone. That’s ultimately the goal and that’s what we are after and not letting a disability preclude someone. Nobody is at the home three nights a week now with Santa Cruz but he’s also out in the community hearing. Live music at various places for free concerts. He loves music. The public needs to be comfortable and OK with folks with disabilities wanting to enjoy the very same things because that’s the bottom line. People with disabilities want the same things people without disabilities want in many cases — Enjoyment of their environment, being able to participate, feeling included, enjoying music and culture and restaurants, whatever it is. Not being limited. So when you see or observe things you can advocate for someone with a disability to be included. This is very rare, but I’ve had it where someone complained that my son’s seat back was too high at a concert and that he was blocking their view. It was a big outdoor venue with no reserve seating and they didn’t want to scoot over. I can’t do anything about the height of his chair. You get folks like that, but for every one of those people in my experience, there are four or five people sitting around that will tell you right up front. I’m sorry that that just happened to you. Being one of those people that says I’m sorry that happened, sometimes that can make the difference for a parent.
Dana: I think Heidi said it so well when she said to encourage a culture of inclusivity and also to craft programs around that. In our community inclusion training program it’s all about getting out and doing meaningful volunteer work together. we all need to look for situations that exist that could use a little bit of a boost in the way of accessibility. Heidi, you talked about the idea of community gardens – I know here in Willow Glen next to the high school that’s where you can be a gardener. I know many of these programs can make an effort to be more inclusive and accessible. We’re always looking for those kinds of opportunities to be ambassadors.
Heidi: Coastal Haven is a supported living services model so an SLS model and we have three different agencies that provide support to residents in our neighborhood. Those three agencies have to hustle because there’s not enough people and we can talk about policy measures that can make that different but I think our governor has done a lot to raise wages to provide additional financial support in the supported living setting. I think that until we have career ladders, and that the career is respected for the value that it really brings and the expertise, people have to do it well. Our priority is for us to create an environment that is conducive to the worker. It’s not enough to be able to say to our children, have a safe and stable home if it’s not a place that people who replaced us as parents want to be and want to work. We don’t have providers working in isolation from one another. Our housing is shared so when individuals who need support are in a shared housing situation, that can add complexity. That can add difficulties and conflicts, but it also adds some opportunity for providers to have one another. I get a chance to talk to providers on the farm who are coming to support a person with a disability, who wants to volunteer here or work here and and it’s really important for them to have one another and have the chance to talk about their work and about what’s working or not working with this person. These like very simple things – they’re not going to solve the caregiver crisis, but within my power as a parent, I have tried and we have tried family partners here to create an environment. That is really healthy and happy for those providers. We do little stuff like this program called Blossoms of Thanks, where we give away bouquets. I think acknowledging people and recognizing what they do within the power that we have — I can use the farm in its resources to get back to people.
Dana: When we were trying to decide who we wanted to be when we grew up, it came to the conclusion that LSA had to be a great place to live and a great place to work. How do you do that? You have to create a culture. Ours aren’t houses, they’re homes and we’re not just people, we’re family. Today’s reality people have to have wages and benefits, and frankly, the states have been real slow on the uptake in terms of competitive wages, or allowing providers to pay competitive wages and increasing the minimum wage because we expect more out of the people that we hire to care and support. You have to do it the old-fashioned way and know how to make those jobs attractive and we have doubled down on training and recruiting. We work hard to return to a pre-pandemic kind of camaraderie is a tough and complex problem.
Heidi: Until we begin to prioritize people’s lives, and the quality of people’s lives over their accumulation of private wealth, I think we’re going to have this problem because we’re getting older as a society and more kids like mine are now living into adulthood and it’s creating an enormous demographic crisis. Our social policies and social priorities are not keeping up with that human reality.
Heidi: I don’t know, but I want to talk to Alenka about it. In all seriousness, sure it would be a possibility and I appreciate Alenka’s creativity so much. We’ve been pretty head down here just trying to get it made – we brought an empty field essentially and now we’ve got a working farm and now our sites are turning toward, how we can sustain our model and how do we bring in revenue sources because you can’t make it survive on the scale of tomatoes and cucumbers, you’ve got other methods. I am intrigued by that idea. My husband and I have talked about wanting to be the open source version of what we would do if we succeeded because I think parents in our situation, depending on their personal resources, and their stamina… It’s a long race caring for somebody who is a dependent adult — it’s so taxing. I don’t wanna make it harder on other people so they don’t have to recreate the wheel and they don’t have to learn everything I had to learn and that they could benefit from this. Do we care enough and do we want this enough and peoples lives? This is people with disabilities using their skills and they’re learning to feed their community. We donate food, we do contracts with Second Harvest Food Bank, we are a production farm and people with disabilities you know have a role in doing that.
Dana: My philosophy is already open and I’ve spoken many many times about what it takes to create a home. For most people it’s a huge dose of medicine that, ‘wow, I’m leaving that to you and I could not possibly do that — it’s too much time and too many resources.’ Internally, we’ve gone from 3 to 16 homes – so we’ve done it a couple times. We have what’s called a cookbook. The whole idea is that you are writing stuff down and making sure that you have some institutional memory because, if we all got run over, you’d lose a lot. I’m open to it, but it’s not like it’s going to be something that you could brand and charge money for. It takes a whole lot of resources and those resources are tough to find. It’s for the community and it’s done because of the community and you can’t do it unless people are involved. There’s really very little willingness to fund new homes or even to keep the rates competitive because they view that as not a priority.
Heidi: Right now there are 18 adults with disabilities living here. We have room for 20 and there are 38 people living on the coastal Haven property. No one is living on the farm but right next to it. So we have nine homes and a common garage and then next to that, a historic house that’s being renovated, and that will eventually be rented for additional family.
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