The Pennhurst
Declaration.
Pennsylvania's adults with IDD are still living in the shadow of shuttered institutions — because the rules written to replace those institutions have made the best alternative illegal.
Thirty-two years ago, Pennsylvania closed its institutions and promised a generation of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities a place in the community. Today, 4,200 people are on an "Emergency" waitlist. The state's rules make the best solution illegal. This is the documented record.
Two Institutions.
One Unbroken
Pattern of Harm.
Pennhurst State School warehoused, abused, and regressed adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities for nearly 80 years. The federal court record is unambiguous: residents were deprived of their constitutional rights, subjected to physical abuse, and left to regress in conditions a federal judge called unconstitutional.
Byberry — a psychiatric facility in Philadelphia — was so horrifying that Life magazine compared it to a Nazi concentration camp in 1946. The state was put on notice. It took 44 more years to close it. Both institutions were state-run. Both were state-funded. Both were defended by the state long after the evidence of harm was documented.
"Pennsylvania did not set out to break its promise. It simply never got around to keeping it — and in the meantime, wrote rules that made keeping it impossible."
The Math That
Pennsylvania
Cannot Ignore.
The state's current model costs $318,000 per person per year. A single 32-year-old adult with IDD — someone like the adults Front Porch Cohousing is building for — represents an unfunded lifetime liability of $33 to $44 million under the current system.
Multiply that by 4,200 people on the Emergency Waitlist. The state is sitting on a $140 billion unfunded liability — and its own regulations are preventing the private sector from solving it. This is not a social services crisis. It is a fiscal infrastructure failure of the first order.
See the full fiscal caseThe Research Is Settled.
The Math Works & Is Undeniable.
We're Ready to Build It.
The Pennhurst Longitudinal Study — the definitive five-year federal research record — proved that smaller, more normalized, more permanent settings produce measurably better outcomes for adults with IDD. There is no setting more permanent or more normalized than owning your own home.
Front Porch Cohousing is building exactly that. Private equity and homeowner ownership can retire the state's $44 million per-person liability for a fraction of the cost of the current system — without a single dollar of new state spending. We are not asking for a waiver. We are offering a rescue plan.
Partner With Us
The time for waiting is over.
4,200 people are on an Emergency Waitlist. The state has the data. It has had the data for 40 years. It is time to build.