Carma's Place is a nonprofit in formation — incorporation and 501(c)(3) recognition are in progress. Read about our stage →
Our why

What happens to my child when I'm gone?

That question lives quietly in the homes of families raising an adult with autism or a developmental disability. Carma's Place exists to replace that fear with a plan.

Reserved for the founders This page is intentionally left as a placeholder rather than filled with a generic or invented story. Carma's story — who she is, what her life has been, and the moment that made this organization unavoidable — belongs here in the founders' own words, not paraphrased by anyone else. Two or three honest paragraphs will do more for this page than anything written in advance of them.

A fuller founder narrative already exists in the organization's working documents for funder conversations. It has not been placed on this public page because a website is a wider and more permanent audience than a funder packet, and because it names specific people, a diagnosis, an intervention program, and a family legal matter. Before any version of that story goes on a page anyone on the internet can read, it's worth deciding, deliberately, how much of it belongs in public versus reserved for direct conversations with funders and partners — and the conservatorship language in particular should have a counsel review, as already flagged in the organization's materials.

The fear behind the mission

Across the United States, hundreds of thousands of adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities live with a primary caregiver who is sixty years old or older. For these families, the loss of a caregiver isn't a question of if, but of when — and when it comes, it can mean an abrupt move into emergency placement, a skilled nursing facility, or homelessness, simply because no appropriate home was ready.

Carma's Place answers that question with bricks, staff, and structure — a real home, a real path toward employment and community, and an organization built to outlast its founders and keep its promises long after they're gone.

From one family's need to a mission for thousands

Most organizations in this field are founded to solve one family's problem. The family advocates fiercely, their loved one finally secures housing or a program, and — understandably exhausted — their advocacy turns back toward their own family. The systemic shortage remains untouched, and the next family starts over from zero.

Carma's Place is designed against that pattern from the beginning: not a single home, but a documented, replicable model built so that another community can open a location without reinventing the organization.

"We celebrate every individual success, but we measure ourselves by how many families we can help — not just our own."

See how the mission becomes a model.

The Pathway to Independence turns this conviction into a structured, measurable path for every resident who walks through the door.

Explore the model