This week I’ve been thinking a lot about Wael Tarabishi. He was a member of our disabled community in Texas, and he passed away on January 23rd at the age of 30. His father, Maher, was his primary caretaker and had been for many years. In October, Maher was detained by ICE during a scheduled check-in.
ALERT: Do you know anyone who lives in Texas, Alaska, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, or South Dakota?
If so, please ask them to get in contact with their governor and attorney general.
These states are plaintiffs in a lawsuit attacking Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the integration mandate. The integration mandate states that people with disabilities should be supported in the community, rather than being relegated to institutions.
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The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has been working to find solutions–the Massachusetts State Independent Living Council has released their Accessible Affordable Housing Report for two years in a row. Here’s the 2025 report:
https://masilc.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/A-Crisis-within-A-Crisis-Revisited-11.21.2025-.pdf
It contains statistics and stories from around Massachusetts about the accessible housing crisis within the larger affordable housing crisis. Using the Housing Navigator, a tool for finding affordable housing in MA, they were able to see the number of accessible, affordable homes and apartments across the state. However, most of these apartments are filled with people who need them already–looking at the Housing Navigator today, I can’t find any apartments currently open that are completely wheelchair accessible, not age restricted, and with rents based on income. This follows the 2024 Accessible Affordable Housing Report, which found only two units at the time of that search.
One thing we all have in common is that we need (and deserve) safe, affordable housing. Unfortunately, for people with disabilities, finding housing can be like finding a needle in a haystack. People with disabilities are disproportionally lower-income, making the current housing market too expensive for many. There are great low-income housing programs like the MRVP and AHVP, as well as Section 8, but these programs are underfunded and overburdened.
There has been a lot of fuss over the “Big Beautiful Bill”- which of course isn’t beautiful at all, as it creates tax cuts for millionaires in exchange for cutting funding to health coverage. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation of Massachusetts did a great webinar on how these cuts will affect us here in Massachusetts- I’ll go over the basics, but you can access the whole slide deck here: https://www.bluecrossmafoundation.org/sites/g/files/csphws2101/files/acquiadam-assets/OB3%20in%20MA_PUBLICATION%20CHART%20PACK_December%202025_FINAL.pdf
As of November 12th, all eligible SNAP recipients across Massachusetts have received their SNAP benefits for the month of November.