(Canada) Ontario: Only 33% autistic adults employed; 42,000 waiting for services

Oct 7, 2026, York Region:  York Region autism charity searching for new group home

They are hunting together for a house for the children, their adult children on the autism spectrum.

In York Region, such homes, supervised group homes, are in short supply and people can wait decades for a placement.

But without a spot at a home, can parents take care of their autistic child when they themselves are aging?

And what happens after that?

Autism In Mind, a charity which operates a groundbreaking private school and vocational café in Richmond Hill, is preparing to open its first group home in 2027.

On a day last week, AIM’s founder and CEO Suki Choi and several members of a parent committee visited four houses for sale, three in Richmond Hill and one in Maple.

For Victoria Kirk, AIM branching into housing offers her son a chance for some independence and a life on his own, decades from now.

 “It’s harder as they get older,” Kirk said outside a six-bedroom, four-bathroom house in Richmond Hill’s Mill Pond neighbourhood.

Kirk said her son is 17 and she plans on sending him to school until he’s 21, which school boards allow. After that, she fears he could become isolated, like many adults on the spectrum.

“Having a vulnerable child and you’re not going to be there to take care of them, we want them to be in a good place,” said Kirk.

Some programs offer just a week or two of vocational training, but at AIM, for which she does public relations, Kirk’s son works in the café kitchen and returns home “with a certain level of levity, because he’s got purpose,” she said.

Choi said the charity, which has been raising money for the project, wants a large house within 20 minutes of AIM’s Leslie Street location. An investor will help AIM with the purchase, and the charity will lease to own.

The home will have daily activities, job programs, volunteering, access to transit and community engagement, she said.

The charity sees such homes as a way to narrow the tremendous employment and housing gaps facing autistic adults.

Only 33 per cent of autistic adults in Canada are employed and some 42,000 Ontarians are waiting for community participation or related supports that give adults with disabilities “somewhere meaningful to be during the day,” the charity added in a media release.

Mahmoud Joghtaei, another parent on the house tour, has a son at AIM who’s nine.

That would seem to give him years to think about the future — but time flies, he said. Joghtaei knows people who started looking for adult accommodation at an older age; that became a big problem.

Joghtaei said his son thrives on encouragement and at AIM he knows the environment. In a group home run by the charity, he would have the community he grew up with.

“That will be his happy place also.”