New York State moved more than a thousand people with serious mental illness out of segregated “adult homes” and into integrated community housing this summer, marking a significant moment in disability rights advocacy and the conclusion of a legal action more than two decades old.
On July 3, New York moved 1,200 adult home residents into apartments in the community as part of the conclusion of the O’Toole v. Hochul case, originally filed in 2003 as Disability Advocates, Inc. v. Pataki, according to a press release from Disability Rights New York.
In New York State, as well as the city, housing and adult homes that were originally for the frail elderly became places where people with mental illnesses were discharged with no alternative placement for them, Jota Borgmann, senior staff attorney at Mobilization for Justice, told Able News.
“The way the policies work in New York state is that once somebody got into an adult home, there was no way to get out. The homes are almost exclusively run by for-profit businesses. They don’t have a financial incentive as a business to help people go anywhere else,” she explained. “Most of these people are using their social security benefits or maybe sometimes public assistance benefits to pay their rent, so they don’t have a lot of money to go towards rent. [Adult homes] just became these dumping grounds for people who lost their housing in the community.”
The case challenged the state’s longstanding practice of placing people with serious mental illness in large institutional “adult homes,” which were facilities of 120 or more beds. The plaintiffs argued that the segregated, restrictive conditions violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
In 2009, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled that the state had violated the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the landmark disability rights case Olmstead v. L.C., which prohibited the unnecessary segregation of disabled people and granted them the right to live in community.
Michelle Kraus is the manager of social work and intake services at the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest. Photo courtesy: NYLPI.
“It’s a victory because…this case upheld the Olmstead Act, allowing people the choice to live in a least restrictive setting in the community, giving people with disabilities the basic opportunities that all people have in terms of making decisions about their lives, about where they like to live… the choice about food, about how they want to spend their time,” Michelle Kraus, manager of social work and intake services at the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest told Able News. “There was just an array of decisions that became open to them once they made the choice of transitioning into the community.”
In the summer of 1967, Gerard Heller, now 67, entered the mental health system. When he returned home a few months later at the age of 9, his parents had lost their jobs, so his grandmother made the decision to send him to Edenwald Center, a residential treatment center for boys and girls aged 7 to 16 dually diagnosed with some form of emotional disturbance. This marked the start of 48 years living in congregate care and independent care housing.
The worst one Heller recalled living in was Surf Manor Home for Adults in Coney Island, which closed many years ago. At age 27, he remembers living with people who were old enough to be his grandparents.
“People in their 20s should not be living with people in their 90s. That’s totally unacceptable. But how does New York State come to grips with the idea that they have to update the situation?” he said.
At the time, Heller had no idea he would be living there for 31 and a half years before moving into his first apartment in 2018.
“I would suppose the situation around the country is even worse…but why should we be lumped in with people old enough to be our grandparents?” he said. “The adult home [and] adult care facilities… needs to be reassessed and redesigned. It’s not fair to younger people.”