Why True North Living?

Every organization has a beginning.

For True North Living, it began with a simple question:

What if there were a better way?

After spending time navigating the world of group homes and supported living, we began to see how easily the person at the center of the system can become secondary to the system itself. A resident may have a diagnosis, a care plan, a medication administration record, a schedule and a room—but none of those things tell us who that person actually is.

What do they enjoy?

What are they capable of?

What makes them feel safe?

What overwhelms them?

What helps them regain their balance?

What goals do they have for their life?

And perhaps most importantly:

What could they accomplish if someone actually believed they could?

Those questions became the foundation for True North Living.

True North was created with the belief that adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities deserve more than simply a safe place to live. They deserve a home—a place where they can develop, maintain and exercise their abilities while receiving the support they actually need.

That doesn’t mean pretending everyone is completely independent. It means recognizing that needing support and being incapable are two very different things.

Our goal is to provide individualized support rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. Staff will learn the individual—not simply their diagnosis. We want to understand each resident’s communication style, preferences, strengths, sensory needs, routines and unique ways of expressing themselves.

We also believe that behavior is communication.

When someone becomes overwhelmed, our first question shouldn’t automatically be, “How do we stop this behavior?”

It should be:

“What is this person trying to tell us?”

Sometimes the answer may be sensory overload. Sometimes it’s frustration, anxiety, pain, fatigue, boredom, communication difficulty or something happening medically. Sometimes we may not know immediately.

But we’re going to look.

And we’re going to listen.

True North Living will begin small, intentionally serving a maximum of three residents in a home. We believe that a small household allows us to create something that feels much more like a home and much less like an institution.

We’re also building the organization carefully before opening our doors. There are businesses to establish, financing to arrange, property to identify, plans to submit, policies and procedures to develop, staff to recruit and train, and regulatory requirements to meet.

We’re going to take you along for that journey.

Twice each week, we’ll share another piece of the True North story.

We’ll talk about what it takes to establish a home like this, the decisions we’re making along the way, the challenges we’re encountering, and—most importantly—the philosophy behind those decisions.

Because True North Living isn’t simply about opening a group home.

It’s about creating a place where the answer to “What is possible?” isn’t determined by a diagnosis.

We don’t promise that everything is possible.

We promise that we won’t decide something is impossible before we’ve given the person a chance to show us what they can do.

After all:

It’s not impossible.

It’s “I’m possible.”

Welcome to True North Living.

We’re just getting started.