Prior to 2015, Joan and John Cleary, parents of a child with autism, formed Ongoing Autistic Success in Society (OASIS/Oasis), a nonprofit charitable organization, to create transitional residential adult independent learning (TRAIL) centers. These centers were intended to be similar to college, to prepare autistic individuals for a future where they could live and work on a farm, where the natural setting “would provide a rewarding and therapeutic working and living environment for challenged individuals.”
In February, 2015, Oasis sought to buy a second site, for TRAIL graduates, but ran into serious opposition from not-in-my-backyard neighbors.
