Out of the Ordinary, Into the Mainstream: Nate Diskint's New Paradigm for Housing People with Developmental Disabilities
- Mark Ludas
- Jun 3
- 7 min read
A paradigm shift is brewing in the world of care for people with disabilities. It is rippling out from Morristown, the home of Cohome, and causing a rethink among caregivers, administrators, economists, social engineers, and even the average person on the street, when it comes to where people with disabilities (PWDs) should live.
To begin with, Cohome’s CEO, Nate Diskint, believes, "where should people with disabilities live?" is the wrong question.
"The right question,” he says, “is, where do people live?"
The reality of caring for PWDs can be both inspiring and tiring. And that’s on a good day.
On a bad day, disillusionment is common. There is a lot of good work being done, Nates, says, but the difficulty is not in the quantity: it's in the quality.
What qualities define it now? Separation. Distance. Special treatment. Bureaucracy.
Nate points to a simple yet illustrative example: transportation.
Homes for people with disabilities are often separate from many of the things people without disabilities take for granted: stores, restaurants, laundromats, bowling alleys. And, of course, cafes.
Many people with disabilities have difficulty with employment in general, but just getting to their jobs is a challenge in itself. Why? Because housing for PWDs are often located far, far...
...Far away.
Which makes little sense if employing PWDs is important to our communities. Which it should be.
This returns us to Nate's question: "where do people live?"
And how can we reorient our approach to people with disabilities towards togetherness, closeness, and human understanding?
Enter: Cohome
Nate’s younger brother, Jeremy, has Down syndrome. This reality includes both daily struggles and daily hilarities (Nate’s word, by the way). But they have both informed his vision for Cohome: a new housing model that integrates people with disabilities and people without them.
Did you get that? PWDs living WITH non-PWDs. Not apart, so much? But more like, together. As in, in the same place!
Hence the prefix, "co-" in Cohome.
Far from separating people with disabilities from everyone else, Nate's approach utilizes what's called mainstreaming, which serves at least two meanings; perhaps even three.
On its face, mainstreaming means placing differently abled people—so, people with disabilities as well as people without them—in the same environment, often including but not limited to residence, employment, and education.
But with a slight spin, mainstreaming refers to something else:
It means bringing people with disabilities into the mainstream, reducing and ultimately eliminating the perception that they need to live apart from everyone else. The "otherness," as Nate calls it, that defines their perception in society.
And it won’t just benefit people with disabilities. It increases togetherness and understanding and empathy and quality of life for entire communities, and potentially society as a whole.
And at the very least, to quote Jeremy, "it beats living with your mother."
It Starts in the Home
When Jeremy was in school, he often didn’t do his homework. Nothing strange about that, but when his teachers asked for an explanation, Jeremy didn’t need to resort to “the dog ate it” cliches for an answer. As Nate puts it, Jeremy would just “play the disability card.”
“He’d say, ‘I have Down Syndrome.’”
This idea that people with disabilities merit extra sympathy never sat well with Nate , yet he watched his brother struggle against a curriculum that he couldn’t relate to.
He knew he didn’t want his brother to get special treatment. He didn’t want his brother to be deprived of advancement opportunities, knowledge, skills and problem-solving abilities.
It’s not that everyone is exactly the same; that nobody is different or that nobody needs help. But just because a person is different, it doesn’t mean they need help. And does special treatment, isolation, deprivation....do these measures REALLY HELP THEM? Or do they help us—everyone else, the people without disabilities—feel better in some way?
Nate saw these questions as clear as day. But what were the answers?
Jeremy was the only student with Down Syndrome in his school. His parents fought to have Jeremy in the public school system because the default was to have him go to a “special needs school." They fought for Jeremy to remain where he was even when the school district did not like it.
As a compromise, an aid was assigned to Jeremy, who turned out to be an “aid” in name only.
“She was more of a detriment,” Nate explains. “She kept him separate from his peers,” which only pushed the chance at a normal life further and further out of Jeremy’s reach, behind a veil of “otherism.”
There was seemingly only one thing left to do. Nate started looking for homes for Jeremy. But this effort was similarly frustrated.
“In many of these spaces,” Nate observes, “social connections are moderated by the ‘proper facilitator.’” As he says this, Nate makes the “quote-unquote” gesture through our video-chat window. “The folks with disabilities are not actually connecting; they’re dependent on this facilitator. We put them in this group so that they could make connections, but we’ve actually handicapped them even more.”
“The facilitation itself can be a handicap. It’s well-intended,” Nate reassures me, “but stunting.”
What would Nate do differently? He knew, and he decided that, as soon as he was able, he would create the exact type of living situation he would want for his own brother.
But when would that be? It’s not like he was a pioneer in housing. Yet.
The Future is a Question
So, what was Nate doing, you might ask?
Having studied biology in college, he first worked in the field of biomedical engineering.
Simultaneously, coming from a collegiate track and field background, Nate was also a practicing specialist of ball sports and the neurological side of sports performance (think bio-feedback, mindfulness, visualization techniques, that sort of thing).
In short, Nate was a classic Millennial multi-passion, multi-career kind of guy. But something happened that offered—or maybe forced is a better word—a degree of focus, and urgency.
Jeremy graduated from high school. A question hung over the family: “now what?”
Nate explains: “Jeremy wanted to be independent and our mom encouraged it. We knew that keeping him at home would not help him; of course, a lot of families keep their people at home, because....”
He trails off for a moment, as if he just thought of something else to say, but is troubled by it. Not sure he should say it.
“...Because the options are so bad.”
Shaking Hands with Destiny
The idea came very early.
It wasn't even supposed to be a long-term thing, necessarily. So it makes sense that he might have some doubts, or hesitations.
He recounts describing his idea to his then-girlfriend, now-wife Julie.
“I said, ‘Julie, I think I’m going to take a few months off from work.’”
“She said, ‘what for?’”
And Nate laid it out for her like he was planning that night’s dinner. “‘I’ll set up a home for Jeremy. I’ll partner with a nonprofit in downtown Morristown. He’ll live there. It’ll be great.”
And what did Julie say?
“She said, ‘Do it.’” Nate smiles as he tells me that; I sigh with relief. I guess when it comes to bringing dreams to fruition, there’s nothing like a supportive partner.
“Just a few months,” he reiterates, “and then I’ll go back to work.”
The going got tough right off the bat, though. “At one point, I thought, ‘this is too hard.’ Maybe I couldn’t do it. My older brother, Yehuda, counseled me. He said ‘your idea, Nate, your housing model....it’s something like fifty years ahead of its time. And the system’s just not set up to support us.’”
Yet, Nate emphasizes. “It’s not set up for us yet.” I like that.
But what to do in the meantime?
Nate draws a parallel with other things that weren’t “set up yet” to accommodate certain groups of people. “It was the same thing with race and sex and religion. You know how many country clubs wouldn’t allow Jews back in the day?”
He pauses for a moment, as if to acknowledge that “back in the day” really wasn’t that long ago.
“All of these groups were discriminated against and now they have a metaphorical seat at the table. It’s just a matter of time before adults with disabilities do too.”
Even if Nate’s mindset wasn’t developed to this point when he was just starting out—viewing it as the civil rights issue that it is—it comes as no surprise when he continues with Cohome’s origin story, and his place in it.
Soon, Nate was choosing buildings, doing demolition work, putting in sheetrock, and digging trenches for electrical cables.
One day, when Nate was dog-tired and had a moment of doubt, his older brother Yehuda said something to him.
“Yehuda said, ‘when the work you’re doing exercises all of your faculties—intellectual, emotional, and physical—when everything is tapped one-hundred percent, you know you’re doing exactly what you were meant to do.’”
And is that how you feel?
“A few months off from work turned into nine years and counting. So, yes, that is how I feel.”
When We Stand Together
The idea that strength comes from adversity is something I’ve heard a million times.
But it wasn’t until talking to Nate Diskint of Cohome that I realized a certain strength also comes from witnessing someone else’s adversity and taking it on almost as your own. And not out of pity. It is not from pity that Nate’s strength was born.
Rather, it is from bearing lifelong witness to those traits that he and his brother held in common—a need for love, for direction, for purpose, like all people—as well as the quirks and insights and perspectives that made Jeremy different, but that make us all different, and all lives therefore precious and worth knowing, defending, and perhaps most of all, understanding.
