In a Pocket Neighborhood your disability doesn’t make you stand out—it makes you fit in.

Pocket Neighborhood Foundation Walla Walla is raising funds in order to design and construct an innovative pocket neighborhood, allowing adults with developmental and intellectual disabilities to live together in a safe, welcoming environment. Families in our neighborhood own their homes and their adult children own their futures.

Unlike other housing options for adults with disabilities, our pocket neighborhood provides a long-term, permanent solution, outside of an institutionalized setting, where families hold title to their child’s home.

Our mission is to create long-term, affordable housing options for adults with disabilities in our community, focusing on building community, social engagement and independence.

Our Values

Finding affordable, long-term housing is difficult at best. For those with disabilities, whether intellectual or developmental, it’s almost impossible.

Knowing this, we set out to find a way to create not only more housing for adults with disabilities but to create small communities for them. Our research revealed how this problem is being successfully handled in other areas of the world – a solution referred to as “Pocket Neighborhoods”. 

Pocket Neighborhoods are a way to encourage building community ties with your neighbors that traditional neighborhoods no longer provide. It’s a progressive way of thinking about our broader community development, by folding pockets of smaller neighborhoods into the fabric of our larger, established neighborhoods.

Pocket neighborhoods are small clusters of smaller scale homes, placed around a shared common area or garden space. Typically, there is a shared community building where residents can come together to take part in group activities. The homes face each other and boast large front porches, encouraging residents to interact with neighbors in an informal setting. There are no streets running through a pocket neighborhood, only green space, and pathways. Streets and parking are built on the exterior of the development, making the housing and green space an inviting space for resident interaction.

Pocket Neighborhood Foundation of Walla Walla

On our 1.6-acre parcel in Walla Walla, we will build 10-12 small homes and a community building, and it will be the first Pocket Neighborhood for adults with disabilities in Walla Walla. Homes will be purchased by those caring for an adult with disabilities (family, special needs trust, estate, etc.) so that each home is individually owned.

An adult with disabilities may live here independently, with a roommate, with a loved one, family member(s), or caregiver. They will not have to worry about rent increases, being priced out of their current living situation, not being able to pick their housemates or caregivers, or feeling like they don’t belong in the neighborhood where they live.