A place of their own

Susan Wallitsch still tears up when she talks about Home of Our Own, a housing project she’s been working to make happen for years.

Wallitsch and Mary Anne Oemichen met when their kids, Frank and Amy, respectively, were little. Both of their children have autism and are mostly nonverbal, so the two moms spent a lot of time talking about their kids’ futures.

They knew there would come a time when they could no longer take care of their children at home and they dreamed of their kids having a safe, comfortable place to transition to. Two decades later, that dream is becoming a reality. The parents have teamed up with the Wisconsin Housing Preservation Corp., an affordable housing provider, to build Home of Our Own; the developers are set to break ground in November.

“We’re on the brink of not only creating a place for our children to live that is going to be a good, wholesome, beautiful, safe place for them, but also it’s not like anything else that exists out there,” Wallitsch says. “I think it’s what our disability communities really, really need.”...