Deaf entrepreneurs launch a tiny-house vacation spot

WASHINGTON — In the summer of 2017, Jane Jonas and her wife were vacationing in the Outer Banks of North Carolina when a massive power outage forced thousands to evacuate the islands. Not ready to return home to Washington, D.C., yet, the couple scoured AirBnB for vacation rentals and found a cabin in the mountains of West Virginia in a town called Lost River. They instantly fell in love with its wild, forested landscape and the solitude.

“It didn’t feel like any place I’d been to before,” said Jonas, who grew up backpacking with her family near their home in northern California. “All the other places where I’d vacationed around here were full of people.” When her wife, Laurie, suggested buying property there, Jonas, an entrepreneur, wondered if there might be a business opportunity.

Now, two years later, Jonas and two friends, Shawn Harrington and Andrew St. Cyr, have launched Lost River Vacations, an eco-friendly tiny house retreat on a 22-acre property in Lost River.

The three friends are all small businesses owners in the D.C. area, but what makes their story unique is not that they’re starting a trendy new venture, it’s that their trendy new venture is owned, managed and supported almost exclusively by the deaf community. Jonas, Harrington and St. Cyr, who met as students at Gallaudet University, are deaf; the tiny house itself was built by deaf carpenters; a deaf-owned company, Catalyst+, will design hiking trails on the property; and the walls of the tiny house will be decorated with artwork by deaf artists.

That’s part of the purpose of Lost River Vacations, to support the deaf economy.

By encouraging everyone to visit their retreat, the trio hopes hearing people, who might otherwise be reluctant to hire deaf businesses and individuals, will see the value deaf people can add to a project and be inspired to work with them.

Right now, Harrington explained, many hearing people see deafness as a disability, a term that implies victimhood and helplessness. They don’t understand how deaf people can function in a culture as auditory as ours.

PHOTOS BY EVELYN HOCKSTEIN / THE WASHINGTON POST Deaf entrepreneurs (from left) Andrew St. Cyr, Jane Jonas and Shawn Harrington — co-owners of Lost River Vacations — participate in a group photo during a fundraiser at Red Bear Brewing Company in Washington, D.C.

A tiny house at Lost River Vacations, which its deaf owners hope will help hearing visitors see the gifts of people who are hearing impaired.