SAVE THE DATE!

Our charity golf tournament is scheduled for May 3, 2025 at the Lake Venice Golf Club (https://www.lakevenicegolf.com/) in Venice, Florida. More information about how to join, cost, hole sponsorship, raffles… to come.

About Us

The Size of the Need

Although the data is relatively poor, the National Institute of Health estimates that more than 2 percent of adults have autism spectrum disorder (ASD) which is only one of the categories of special needs we want to address.

We want to develop a Community for special needs adults in Sarasota or Manatee County , Florida for up to 100 Residents. We hope that the business model we create can serve to launch 10,000 (or more) similar Communities throughout the United States. This would represent a significant start/improvement.

  • Michael Borden

    CEO

    Mike spent the bulk of his career in the energy industry. He developed utility scale power plants for Duke Energy, Avista Energy, and Cogentrix Energy.

  • Kerry Benson

    COO

    Kerry was owner or partner in 4 different businesses during his career, starting in the printing industry and eventually transitioning to the commercial roofing industry. 

    Kerry raised his autistic son Eric as a single father from when Eric was 10 and they are still happy roommates to this day.

    Kerry expects Eric to outlive him and is concerned about what happens to Eric when he is gone.

Our Core Principles

Filling a Need

With few exceptions, adults with special needs are likely to outlive their primary caregivers, their parents. In most cases adults with special needs live with their caregivers in private residence. Most caregivers do not have a specific plan for the living arrangements for their special needs adults when they die. And beyond just having a safe and secure place for the loved ones to live, the Community will allow the Residents to make friends in ways that are not even possible while living with their parent caregivers.

Safety

Safety will be a key feature of the Special Communities from two perspectives. First, the Community itself will have careful security measures in place to prevent entry by unauthorized visitors and to quickly exorcise those persons. Second, the living and community spaces will be designed to minimize the chances of accidents, especially when caregivers are not on campus to help (showers, cooking…) the special needs adults.

Fast and Scalable

Several wonderful special needs communities have been created in America by passionate and determined people. But to really start making a dent in the need, we must have tens of thousands more communities. We cannot take 10-15 years for a wonderful idea to go from conception to the start of construction. We think our approach can drastically reduce the pre-construction period to 1-2 years. We also think our process will be easily repeated by us and others. We will always be willing to share our success and details about our processes.

Encouraging Meaningful Work Life

Each Community will provide vocational training to prepare Residents who wish to work for compensation. The feed-in businesses and other local (grocery stores…) businesses will provide work opportunities. The Community will help find safe transportation to facilitate work inside and outside of the Community.