UPDATE 3-23-23 SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) – Calls are growing louder to save Portage Manor.
St. Joseph County Commissioners approved a resolution Tuesday night to look for other ways to fund the facility moving forward. Since the county will not continue funding it, private developers could take over ownership.
The council and commissioners said they will now delay a vote for 60 days, which will give private developers time to come up with viable plans.
“The people have spoken and we have listened. So, I’ve tasked the council, led by Mark Catanzarite, to have a 60-day window to explore all the options and have weekly meetings, report back to us, make them available to the public so everybody can weigh in. So, hopefully we can find a decision that somebody will take that over, which that would be the best case scenario,” said St. Joseph County Commissioner Derek Dieter.
St. Joe County Attorney Mike Misch said it would cost roughly $40 million for a new building and the transition phase but said this is not feasible.
Photo from HealthyPlace.Com
(3-10-23) I posted a blog earlier this week about the probable closing of Portage Manor in South Bend, Indiana, and the fate of its 101 residents with disabilities and serious mental illnesses.
Portage Manor is a local story but what is happening there is part of a larger story being played out nationally as communities struggle to find adequate housing while being pressured to close group homes.
Joseph Dits, a talented and fair-minded reporter at the South Bend Tribune has published an excellent article describing the complexity of keeping Portage Manor open or shuttering it, including the county’s financial options. Local mental health officials are worried that residents living in the facility will not receive adequate care once the home is shuttered despite promises by officials. St. Joseph County Commission President Carl Baxmeyer is quoted by Reporter Dits promising the county “will ensure that each resident is housed and settled somewhere.” Matt Costello, who runs the local Disability Rights group, counters: “What I don’t think the commissioners realize is how hard it is to place people.” Many require 24/7 care. A local mental health service provider is quoted saying if the Manor closes, the community can absorb only 10 residents, adding there are “very few places that provide the level of care they need.”
All of this is playing out while developers push to buy the land and historic preservationists ask the county to pay for restorations. County commissioners voted 2 to 1 to close Portage Manor. The county council will vote next Tuesday without any apparent plan for the future of Portage Manor residents.
Back in 2014, I wrote an OPED for The Washington Post warning that closing group homes without first creating meaningful community services would end tragically. South Bend officials are now facing that reality.
(Has your community closed down group homes? Tell me about it on my Facebook page.)
Pete Earley: Sending the mentally ill from group homes to an uncertain future.
First published in The Washington October 30, 2014
The Justice Department is making states comply with a 1999 Supreme Court decision, Olmstead v. L.C. Two women brought the suit after they admitted themselves into a Georgia psychiatric hospital and then discovered that they couldn’t be discharged because no suitable housing in their community was willing to take them.
The justices held that unjustified segregation of people with disabilities constituted discrimination in violation of Title II of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Public entities must provide appropriate community-based services, including housing, for people confined in nursing homes, group homes and mental hospitals.
This year, prompted by Olmstead, the Justice Department scored a major victory when a New York judge approved a comprehensive settlement . Under it, some 4,000 residents living in 23 adult homes in New York City will move into apartments. The settlement follows similar suits in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Florida and New Hampshire. Other states are being targeted.
The second major initiative is a shift of responsibility from state mental health agencies to private insurers. Under the Affordable Care Act, thousands of people with severe mental illnesses will become insured. Health officials predict that this shift will eventually make state mental health agencies obsolete.
The concept of community-based mental health treatment was introduced by President John F. Kennedy and codified in the Community Mental Health Act of 1963. It set the stage for the mass closing of costly and often inhumane state mental hospitals. Many states negotiated court-ordered settlements, promising community-based care to patients being warehoused in hospitals.
Sadly, those promises went unfulfilled. Tax dollars saved by “deinstitutionalization” were not reinvested in community-based mental health care. Promised federal funds were either cut or never allocated. Homelessness ballooned, and jails and prisons became our new asylums. Two surveys by the National Alliance on Mental Illness have documented that most states today struggle to provide bare-bones community services. Consider Illinois, where 50 of its 102 counties have no psychiatrist. Even wealthy suburbs such as Virginia’s Fairfax County have long waits — a week or more to see a licensed therapist and two years for specialized housing.
If the Justice Department is going to force states under Olmstead to empty group homes, the federal government must guarantee that suitable housing is available. We should not repeat the debacle of unplanned deinstitutionalization. If the government pushes a shift to private insurance, it must define acceptable community care. Subsidized housing, job training and therapy were critical to my son’s recovery. Will private insurers recognize the value of Weight Watchers as a treatment option when clients refuse to take medications because they cause weight gain? Most parents can recount horror stories about insurers who refused to pay for a costly antipsychotic medication until after their son or daughter failed first on a cheaper one, jeopardizing their stability.
It has been 51 years since Kennedy’s call for community-based mental health care. The Olmstead ruling and the Affordable Care Act can help achieve that lofty goal. But unless Congress provides adequate funding and keeps a close eye on private insurers, both of its reforms may simply cause more suffering.
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