ErikatharsisAug 5, 2023

Anyone know of any interesting resources about autistic/neurodiverse intentional communities or cohousing? And how do we feel about this movement?

On a quick search, I found [this Forbes article](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelbernick/2019/06/26/the-autism-city-part-1-the-intentional-community/) and [this article from Autism Housing Network](https://www.autismhousingnetwork.org/neurodiverse-cohousing-matter/). The Autism Housing Network appears to be a treasure trove...

https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]ld/t/301305

The Autism City (Part 1): The Intentional Community

A movement of autism-focused communities is emerging in 2019, offering new models for mixing safety, independence and inclusion. They are built on twenty-first century sensibilities, but also harken back to the utopian communities of America's past.

Forbes
Show threadMoegle

My instinctive response is that it’s a terrible idea. While having no expectation to mask is great, it seems to me that gathering a group of people who generally struggle to take care of themselves and their environment and who have very low tolerance for certain environmental stimuli and a deep need for other environmental stimuli is a recipe for chaos.

I attend a local autistic adults zoom group every other week, and it’s great for support and understanding, but if I had to be in the same room as one of the other members their stims would give me a meltdown. I over-empathise emotionally, an autistic friend has almost no emotional empathy, as a result some of our interactions do not go as intended.

Aug 5, 2023 at 7:29amWeb
Show threadthepianistfroggollumAug 5, 2023
Agreed. As someone who’s probably not on the spectrum (but still ND) married to someone who is, I can’t see it going any other way than failing spectacularly.
Show threadErikatharsisAug 5, 2023

It seems like it goes more or less fine in practice, and I reckon this is probably because these communities end up being self-selecting to some extent. That the type of autistic person who thinks this sounds like a great idea would also be the type who'd have an easier time in this type of community, while the type who thinks this sounds like a terrible idea wouldn't move to that type of community to begin with. And that even of the former group, that different intentional communities would end up dominated by different types of autistic people who tend to get along better. You wouldn't just move in without any idea of who your neighbors are.

Speaking for myself, I've attended a monthly local autistic adults group in person, I've lived with my autistic brother for most of my life, in my time in public school I had special classes with other ND students and had a few ND friends, and I even spent a year at a dorm school that teaches independent living for ND folks. So for me the idea of living with other autistic people of a diverse variety seems pretty doable. There would obviously still be a number of problems that I'd need to solve with regard to interpersonal interactions or hypersensitivities, but that would still be the case if I lived in a predominantly NT community anyways.