NIMBY’S In Bethesda, My Dog Still Chases Cats

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/22/AR2008032201983.html

What makes this particular group of neighbors opposing housing a homeless family in an empty house in their neighborhood special is two things: their claim that they are compassionate people who don’t harbor prejudice and one neighbor’s statement that it isn’t the homeless family that might move in that he objects to but “the mentally ill” who might move in if the family moves out because he doesn’t want his children near such people. Nice. Wonder what kind of attitudes his children are learning towards people who are different to them? Well don’t spend too much time wondering, I think we all know what they are learning at home, it’s called prejudice.

Neighbors Resist Integration of People With Disabilities Into Their Neighborhood, My Dog Still Chases Cats

The only thing a little different about this instance of prejudice and resistance to integration due to the constant fear-mongering and spreading of propaganda and lies by groups such as the Treatment Advocacy Center and other groups that purport to care about people living with mental illness while actually doing everything they can to make people living with mental illness feared and loathed in society at large, is that a psychotherapist is one of the neighbors who talks about the need to reassure neighbors the residents won’t threaten them.  Hmm, does she reassure her office neighbors about her clients?  Or is this just a case of not minding earning one’s living off the backs of people with mental illness as long as they don’t move next door?

The link is to text and video:

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=5967255

Nimbies Win in Pennsylvania, My Dog Still Chases Cats

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/dauphin/article292424.ece

Group abandons plan for home for mentally ill
BY CATE MCKISSICK / Of The Patriot-News, 11/09/07 5:41 PM EST
UPDATED: 11/09/07 6:32 PM EST
A mental health provider is giving up its fight to put a group home in Londonderry Twp. for people with mental illnesses, formerly patients at the State Hospital.
Keystone Human Services, which had sued the township claiming discrimination after the township denied a waiver to create the facility on Lauffer Road, is dropping its case.
Londonderry claimed the facility would be institutional and therefore not a permitted use. A lower court had upheld the township’s decision and Keystone had appealed to the Commonwealth Court over the summer.
Charles Suhr, attorney for Keystone, said Keystone had been looking for alternative facilities while it was pursuing its appeal of the Londonderry decision. It has since found a facility in Susquehanna Twp. that it will use instead.
Keystone will most likely sell the group home in Londonderry Twp., Suhr said.
Mark Stewart, attorney for Londonderry Twp., said that the township was on solid legal ground.
“The township was confident that it had taken a responsible and lawful position throughout the proceeding,” he said. “Its position was confirmed by the zoning hearing board and by the common pleas courts and we’re glad to see the matter resolved.”

Is Questioning Politicians’ Mental Health The New Red Baiting?

Before I was born, Senator McCarthy and many others led  a campaign to discredit people who disagreed with them and to intimidate anyone who might support them by calling them communists, a tactic that became known as red baiting or McCarthyism.  Many people were hurt, lost their jobs and reputations, some even killed themselves after losing everything to red baiting.   Some few folks were actually communists and  of those a few were actually a threat to the United States or had been in the past opened Soviet archives seem to show.  But the very vast majority of those whose lives were affected were never a threat to anyone, least of all the government nor the people of the United States.

In the last few years a disturbing new trend has arisen that is eerily reminiscent of red baiting and McCarthyism.  This trend is the questioning or even diagnosis of political opponents’ mental health.  The latest to use this disgraceful tactic is sadly Dennis Kucinich in his jab at President Bush.  Now I want President Bush impeached, but I don’t want him committed and I am dismayed to see his mental health put on the political table instead of his actions. 

Even locally, I saw tonight a woman who had been raped called a “nutjob” and our local prosecutor, who I do not support as a candidate but because of his actions as a prosecutor not his mental health, called a “nutjob.”  On the other side we have had Republicans call Democrats lunatics as well. 

At the same time, all over the country there is a campaign to make it easier to violate the civil rights of people who have ever been diagnosed with a psychiatric disability and we have laws proposed to fill in the “gap” in the federal gun database of people who have never hurt anybody who were ever committed to a psychiatric hospital in their lifetimes while the records of millions of convicted felons and people with restraining orders against them are also missing and no one is holding demonstrations to protest that fact. 

We have a witch hunt going on and people with psychiatric labels are the witches.  How many years will it be before people look back in shame at what they did today and how many people will have their lives destroyed by what is going on right now?

Will you help stop the witch hunt or will you join in?

NIMBY’S In Merrillville, Illinois, My Dog Still Chases Cats

Be sure to read down to see the accurate statement that people with mental illness are LESS violent than their average neighbors. 

Mental health home plan has some in a stir
(http://www.post-trib.com/news/591896,mvapartments.article)

October 7, 2007

By Teresa Auch Post-Tribune staff writer

MERRILLVILLE — Jose Rangel knows what violent outbursts feel like.

After living with schizophrenia for 14 years, he’s had his share of physical incidents and time spent hospitalized.

But Rangel has learned to live with his illness and has controlled it for more than 10 years with no outbursts.

“Most people think I’m just another person in the world,” Rangel said.

He lives at Watertower Apartments, a complex owned by the Southlake Center for Mental Health for mentally ill adults.

The agency has proposed building another such residence just south of Watertower on Grant Street, across from the Sedona neighborhood.

But Sedona residents have protested, saying they fear the adults who would live there might harm their families and drive property values down.

Experts say those fears, though, have no basis and that studies show the majority of the mentally ill are harmless.

Concerned residents

Residents first became concerned when they learned Southlake Center for Mental Health wanted the Merrillville Board of Zoning Appeals to approve the rezoning of land on the west side of the 8600 block of Grant Street, Edward Sims, president of the neighborhood association, said.

The land is zoned for commercial use, and the mental health agency wanted to rezone it to residential for the building. The proposed residence would have 14 apartments available to mentally ill adults seeking treatment through the agency.

The building is different from a group home in that the adults have been deemed capable of living on their own without medical supervision, meaning no doctors or nurses would be present. Many residents would have jobs or go to school and would come and go as they please.

“I felt like, OK, this is going to be a situation where if these people don’t take their medications, what’s to stop them from running into the neighborhood?” Sims said. “I don’t have a medical background, but some things are just kind of common sense.”

Other Sedona residents shared his fear and let the BZA know it. They showed up en mass to the meeting and spoke of having to keep their children inside in case one of the adults wandered through the neighborhood and had a violent outburst.

The concerns don’t stop there.

“We felt it would be devastating to our property values,” Sims said.

These fears are not unusual. The general thought is usually the same — not in my back yard, said Daniel Yohana, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago.

“It’s just an error to believe that the mentally ill are more violent than the general population,” Yohana said.

In fact, studies show that adults with mental illnesses are less dangerous than the average neighbor, said Bernice Pescosolido, an Indiana University professor of sociology.

Pescosolido studied patients at Central State Hospital in Indianapolis after it closed in 1994, looking to see what happened to them. The former patients of the mental hospital had a lower record of arrest and violence than the general public.

“If you really want to predict who’s going to be dangerous, don’t have any young men around you,” she said.

Part of the problem is that people have a perception of mental illness being chronic, said Paul Lysaker, clinical supervisor for people with mental illness at the Indianapolis Roudebush Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

That’s not the case, though. Many people recover from their illness to a point where they can return to daily life.

“Most people with severe mental illness are able to live and function well in the community,” he said. “It doesn’t mean you need to live in a place under doctor’s care.”

As far as property value, similar apartments are usually better kept than the surrounding areas, Yohana said.

No problems here

Locally, the same appears to hold true for Southlake Center for Mental Health’s apartments. A check with the Merrillville Police Department showed a fire call, a vehicle title check and a fraud report as its only calls to Watertower apartments in the past year.

It’s otherwise known as a quiet place.

The people who live in the AHEPA senior citizen apartments next to Watertower have no problems with it.

“It’s not like they’re pedophiles or anything of that matter,” P.J. Rose said.

Mary Lou Penilla said the Watertower residents never bother anybody.

Rangel says he has never had problems living next to any of his fellow Watertower residents.

“Most don’t want to go up to a stranger,” he said. “We’re not yelling and shouting in public.”

And Southlake Center for Mental Health President Lee Strawhun says that everyone who is allowed to live in the apartments must first be evaluated by doctors. The apartments are for people who can take care of themselves and can take their own medication.

Sims supports what the mental health agency is trying to do, but the reassurances are not enough to convince him that right across the street from his neighborhood is the right place.

“I mean, it takes a person’s word,” he said about the medication. “They may not take it.”

And while the majority of mentally ill adults are not violent, there is a small contingent who are, Pescosolido said.

Adults who have a combination of a mental illness and an alcohol or drug addiction have shown to be more violent than the average person. But studies show that anyone under treatment has a lower risk of violence, she said.

Taking no chances

Although no incidents have happened yet at any of the agency’s residential centers, Sims and other residents don’t want to take the chance that something could happen in the future.

Strawhun said there is always the possibility that one of his patients could become violent. But, he said, it’s certainly no more likely to happen than a car accident.

“One of my staff, for god’s sake, could go out and do something wild,” he said.

But Sedona residents also fear what will happen to area businesses. A Montessori school has been proposed for the area, but the owner said at the BZA meeting she would not build it if the apartments are approved.

Right now the issue remains in limbo. The BZA gave a negative approval to the request to rezone the land. The ordinance now goes to the Merrillville Town Council for a vote, and the council is giving Southlake until November to do more research to make its case.

Councilman Joe Shudick, who represents the area, has told Strawhun the town could help him look for other places to build. However, Strawhun says, any properly zoned place is either much too large (Southlake Center for Mental Health needs two acres whereas the available lands are 100 or more acres) or are not for sale.

He also insists Merrillville has a desperate need for more housing for mentally ill adults, housing that does not put them in the worst areas of town.

“They want to have a safe place to live in a good community and not be relegated to some area that has gangs or crime,” he said.

But Sedona residents also have a right to live in a neighborhood that isn’t changed by the whims of politicians looking for more taxpayers, Sims said.

LHANA’s Haskins costs people with disabilities $2,036 over his NIMBYism

So Mark Haskins of LHANA caught out a volunteer board on technical violations of FOIA and won $2,036 in attorney’s fees.  Nice job.  Why was he FOIA’ing Region Ten in the first place?  Because he and LHANA want a right they do not have, the right to tell an agency and the people with disabilities it serves where and how these people may live in the community.  And where do LHANA and Haskins get the idea that they have any say over the housing choices and options of their fellow citizens?  I do not know the answer to that, but my best guess is that like most NIMBY groups, they do not realize and do not accept that people with psychiatric labels are citizens with the same right to live where they choose as the owners and renters on Little High Street who formed LHANA to try and stop and change and generally make things miserable for a project to house people who have psychiatric diagnoses in their neighborhood. 

 LHANA succeeded in getting Region Ten under its former director to not build spaces for 16 citizens, 16 citizens who will be stuck in unneccessarily restrictive living situations or on the street thanks to LHANA’s efforts.  Now Haskins of LHANA has cost Region Ten and thus it’s clients with disabilities, time and money it can ill afford. 

What’s next for LHANA and Mark Haskins?  Maybe they can petition the city to put speed bumps on their sidewalk so people who use wheelchairs won’t live in or even pass by their neighborhood.  Or they could put random obstacles on the sidewalk that are undetectable by the canes some blind people use to get around safely. 

Gee, what a nice group of folks, just makes me want to sell my place and move to Little High Street to join the fun, how about you?

Hey LHANA, want to march on Whisper Ridge together?

I know from their statements to the press that the members of Little High Street Neighborhood Association are very concerned about the well being of people with psychiatric disabilities.  So I would like to propose that LHANA members join with people with psychiatric disabilities to march on/rally outside Whisper Ridge (http://www.cvillenews.com/2006/08/31/whisper-ridge-indictment/ ) to protest the continued operation of this facility which can not seem to protect its residents from its own employees.   We would join you on a date of your choosing.  We could talk about our mutual concerns about the health and safety of people young and old caught in our local and state mental health system, private and public. 

Comment on this blog if you are a member of LHANA and want to do this.

Little High Street residents: put up a sign if you are not prejudiced

LHNA is at it again.  It occurs to me that it is unlikely that they represent all the residents of Little High Street outside of the 14 Region Ten clients who have been living on Little High Street for years now.  So I think it’s high time that the residents who don’t agree with LHNA’s prejudiced and discriminatory stance on housing for 26 more Region Ten clients in the expanded Mews to let their 14 neighbors know that they don’t agree with LHANA and that they don’t want to get rid of them or make them feel unwelcome.

I wonder if residents have thought about how their neighbors who live in the Mews now feel about LHANA’s activities or about how anyone else on that block who might happen to have a mental illness and is “passing” feels to keep hearing that their neighborhood association doesn’t think they have the same civil rights in housing as everyone else. 

So how about it Little High Street residents, including Blake Cavarati, why not put up a sign on your door saying you are NOT a member of LHNA or put up an American with Disabilities sign, just to let your 14 neighbors know that there are people who welcome them on the street on which they live?