CORDOVA 2028 CALLS FOR DISABILITY POLICY TO BE BUILT WITH THE PEOPLE IT AFFECTS

MANTECA, CALIFORNIA — Cordova for President 2028 is releasing the Disability Autonomy, Homeownership, and Federal Reality Standards policy framework as a working discussion draft and is calling on people directly affected by disability policy to help determine what comes next.

The framework addresses disability income, accessible homeownership, housing stability, healthcare, self-directed support, benefit cliffs, community living, and protection from homelessness and unnecessary institutionalization.

But the campaign is making one point clear:

The policy is not complete.

The people whose lives will be affected by these decisions must have a meaningful role in determining how the final policy is written, implemented, measured, and enforced.

That includes people with physical, sensory, intellectual, developmental, psychiatric, and chronic-health disabilities; wheelchair and assistive-technology users; people who rely on personal attendants; people who have experienced homelessness or institutionalization; people transitioning from hospitals, rehabilitation facilities, jails, prisons, and other institutions; family caregivers; direct-care workers; and people who have personally navigated SSI, SSDI, Medicaid, housing assistance, accessibility barriers, and other public systems.

“This should not be a process where government writes the policy first and asks people for comments afterward,” Vincent Cordova said. “The people who live with these systems every day understand barriers, consequences, and unintended harm that policymakers may never see. Their direction, their vision, and their concerns should help shape the policy from the beginning.”

The philosophy behind the framework begins with something more fundamental than government programs.

Human beings are members of the same species, and our genomes are overwhelmingly alike. The National Human Genome Research Institute commonly notes that more than 99.9 percent of human DNA sequences are identical from person to person, while newer genomic research accounting for additional forms of variation still finds human genomes overwhelmingly similar.

Those biological similarities do not erase individuality, culture, experience, disability, or the differences that make each person unique.

They place those differences within a larger reality:

We belong to one human species.

“We have spent generations being taught to see people through categories—wealth, poverty, disability, race, employment status, housing status and countless other divisions,” Cordova said. “But before any of those classifications, we are human beings. We share the overwhelming majority of our genetic blueprint. We need one another.”

Cordova said the campaign views helping people who cannot meet essential needs on their own not merely as a government program, but as part of the responsibility human beings have toward one another.

“Human beings survived and built societies through cooperation,” Cordova said. “When someone cannot walk, cannot work, cannot find shelter, cannot care for themselves temporarily or permanently, the answer should not be abandonment. Our response should be: What do you need, what do you want for your life, and how can we help you regain as much control over that life as possible?”

The campaign distinguishes that principle from paternalism.

Helping another person does not mean controlling that person.

It means making assistance available while preserving autonomy, dignity, informed choice, and the right to say no.

We Need One Another

Human cooperation operates on a scale unusual among other species. Human beings build families, communities, healthcare systems, transportation networks, governments, emergency services, scientific institutions, economies, and entire civilizations through dependence upon the knowledge and labor of other people.

No individual creates everything required for their own survival.

“No one is truly on their own,” Cordova said. “The food we eat, the roads we travel, the medicine we use, the electricity in our homes, the buildings around us, and the knowledge we inherit exist because other human beings contributed something. Independence does not mean needing nobody. It means having enough security and autonomy to direct your own life while participating in a society where people depend upon one another.”

The campaign therefore rejects the idea that needing help makes someone less valuable.

A disability may change what a person can physically do. It does not determine whether that person has purpose.

“We do not know what contribution, relationship, idea, kindness, discovery, creativity, lesson, or influence another person may bring into this world,” Cordova said. “Every person should have the opportunity to participate in our shared human future. Our progress as a species depends on allowing people to live, develop, contribute, and belong.”

Division Should Never Become Public Policy

The campaign is also calling for greater scrutiny of political and social narratives that encourage people to view other groups of human beings as inherently disposable, threatening, inferior, or undeserving of basic dignity.

Foreign adversaries have themselves recognized division as a vulnerability. Federal cybersecurity and national-security agencies have documented foreign influence operations that identify divisive issues, amplify conflict, undermine trust, and attempt to turn Americans against one another.

“That should teach us something,” Cordova said. “Division is exploitable. When people can be convinced that another group of human beings is the enemy simply because they are poor, disabled, homeless, foreign, different, or politically inconvenient, society becomes easier to manipulate.”

Cordova cautioned against equating ordinary disagreement with foreign influence.

“People will disagree. That is part of a free society,” he said. “The danger is the deliberate dehumanization of another person or group. When division becomes more important than the fact that we are members of the same species, we should question who benefits from that division and what it is doing to us.”

The campaign's governing principle is that public policy should not manufacture human worth according to economic status, physical ability, employment, housing, or social classification.

Policy Must Begin by Listening

The working disability framework currently proposes a regional Federal Reality Standard designed to reflect the actual cost of a safe and dignified life, along with a Personal Autonomy Income, voluntary accessible homeownership assistance, self-directed support budgets, protections for savings and marriage, and separation between housing, healthcare, income, and support services.

But these proposals remain open for examination and revision.

The campaign is specifically asking affected people:

The proposed framework already calls for disability-led governance and public participation, including compensated participation by people with lived experience and accessible opportunities to participate remotely and in person.

Cordova said compensation is important because lived experience should not be treated as free labor.

“If government wants someone's expertise because they have spent years navigating disability, homelessness, caregiving, institutionalization, or a benefits system, that knowledge has value,” Cordova said. “We should not invite people into a room, take their experience, thank them, and then make the decisions without them.”

Participation Must Have Consequences

The campaign said public participation should not consist of presenting a completed proposal and asking affected communities to approve it.

Meaningful participation means being willing to change the proposal.

“If people affected by this policy tell us that something we designed will hurt them, we need to hear that,” Cordova said. “If they have a better solution, we need to examine it. If we discover that an idea that looked good on paper takes autonomy away in practice, then the policy needs to change.”

People with lived experience should therefore have meaningful influence over the final legislation, regulations, implementation standards, oversight mechanisms, and definitions of success.

The framework also recognizes that different people may choose different paths.

• Homeownership should be voluntary.
• Self-directed care should be voluntary.
• Housing and services should remain separate.
• Assistance should not become control.

A person should retain meaningful choices about where they live, who assists them, how they use their personal income, what services they accept, and what kind of future they want to build.

“This is ultimately about how we see one another,” Cordova said. “If we begin with the understanding that every person is one of us—a member of the same species—then disability policy stops being about managing a population and starts becoming a question of what we owe one another while still respecting each person's freedom.”

“No human being should have to prove that their life has value before society is willing to help them survive.”

Cordova for President 2028 will continue developing the framework through public review, disability-led participation, and engagement with people who have direct experience with the systems addressed by the proposal.

The campaign intends to carry the same principle into other areas of policy:

When a policy touches people's lives, the people living those lives should help shape it.

The guiding principle is simple: