TACID: A Place to Belong

Connection and support for adults with disabilities

By Like Media Team

For over 45 years, TACID has offered something increasingly difficult to find: a place where adults with disabilities and behavioral health challenges can find connection, support, and community.

The Tacoma Area Coalition of Individuals with Disabilities runs a peer-led Wellness and Recovery Program for adults navigating physical, sensory, developmental, cognitive, and behavioral health disabilities. Services are delivered by Washington State Certified Peer Specialists, staff with lived experience of disability or behavioral health challenges.

“Everyone deserves to be seen as a whole person, not a diagnosis,” says Executive Director Nalani Linder. “Peer support creates space for people to define recovery on their own terms.”

Services range from peer support groups and wellness activities to one-on-one support, a drop-in Day Room, and twice-weekly Bingo, all designed to foster connection, wellness, and belonging. TACID served more than 1,300 individuals in 2025, three times the number served in 2022. Linder attributes that growth to shrinking access to behavioral health and disability services across Pierce County, along with word spreading that TACID does not place a time limit on how long someone can remain involved.

What that means in practice becomes clear through the people who show up. One participant who had been withdrawing from others while struggling with severe depression began reconnecting through regular conversations with a Certified Peer Specialist. She returned to hobbies she had set aside. She formed friendships with people who understood her experience without judgment. She reached a turning point in her recovery.

“We don’t ask people to fit into a program,” Linder says. “We build a community where people can simply belong.”

Now TACID is looking beyond its current home. Following the announcement that its lease on the Tacoma Community College campus ends in 2029, the organization is working toward creating a South Sound Disability Resource Hub, a permanent, fully accessible center where multiple disability service organizations can operate under one roof.

The proposed Hub would bring together services like peer support, inclusive recreation, resource navigation, and employment and housing assistance. By placing those resources in one location, TACID hopes to reduce barriers, strengthen collaboration between organizations, and make it easier for individuals and families to find the support they need.

While plans for a future South Sound Disability Resource Hub continue to take shape, TACID's work is happening every day. The organization's Backyard Benefit and Silent Auction on September 12 helps fund the peer support, wellness programs, and community connections that hundreds of people rely on each year. Learn more about TACID, upcoming events, and ways to get involved at TACID.org.

Linder puts it simply: “Everyone deserves a place where they belong—and belonging changes lives.”

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