To Table of Contents disabilities , we will demand to get statistics about the number of people with disabilities they hire as part of our loan document . A perfect example of employment of persons with disabilities is Rising Tide Carwash in Parkland , Florida . A father and son started a car wash where all of the employees have a disability and they are a very successful business . They report back to us with the number of young men and women who are working at the carwash , their disability status , income levels and wages and we track that .
We actually do direct investing in companies that employ people with disabilities and become shareholders of some of these companies . One is called
Ultranauts where 75 to 80 % of their workforce has some form of neuro diversity . When they started with us , they had about 31 employees , now they have up to 90 employees . There are amazing stories of some people who were once on government welfare , and now are making 50,000- $ 70,000 a year at their jobs . We just invested in them , we took our capital , we believed in them . And this is a great example of the way we deploy our capital to help employment for people with disabilities .
In the first quarter of 2022 , we will be opening and operating the world ’ s first fully accessible hotel in White Sulphur Springs , West Virginia . We will be hiring people with disabilities to work there . So , we ’ re not only ensuring that people with disabilities are hired through our capital , we also hire them through our actual operations .
Would you say that awareness about the needs of people with disabilities has improved over the years ?
Yes , absolutely and there ' s a very basic reason for that , and that ' s why we started DOF - supply is not keeping up with demand . Disability is not a fad or a gig economy of some sort . Disability does not discriminate socio-economically or geographically , between race , gender or anything else . If you ' re going to look at it purely from an economic standpoint , and you take away all of the discourse about disabilities , you ’ ll see that it ’ s just a market that will continue to grow and grow .
Autism was a little ‘ a ’, now it ' s a big ‘ A ’, and for the last 15 years , it has exploded into acceptance and parents are not going to want institutionalized settings for their children anywhere in the world .
Employment . You know , now all of a sudden , a day habilitation , sitting around doing nothing , and being in a sheltered workshop all day is not acceptable - real employment , real opportunities are needed . There ’ s a labor shortage around the whole globe right now so it ' s nice to have a whole new category of people who are willing to work and can work . We were just a little bit ahead of our time but now I think everyone is catching up to the fact that this has to be a public / private partnership . Taking a private mentality to a public sector problem . And that ' s why we created DOF in the first place . We ’ re not saying we can do it without government benefits , or the government shouldn ' t be involved , it ' s just the government is limited in what it can do so bring the private sector to the table and between the two worlds you ' re going to get more supply of the things that people will need .
Are government officials open to working in partnership with DOF ?
Yes , because imagine that you ' re the government agency , where resources are shrinking , and you have private entities coming in to say , we don ' t want money , we ' re actually we ' re bringing