NY’s Disabled Adults Win Court Ruling

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


As Jennifer Gonnerman detailed in “Surf Manor” in the current issue of Mother Jones, New York’s poorly maintained adult homes are where the mentally ill and very poor, with no place else to go to, are warehoused by the state. The homes regulate everything for them, from what to eat to when to take medication: “You get stifled—and you regress,” one adult home resident told Gonnerman. “You become dependent on these people, and I don’t want that.” Many residents would rather be in “supported housing,” where they can do their own laundry and make their own meals and receive regular visits by a caseworker. Too bad such units are incredibly scarce: only 60 units of supported housing have been opened for New York City’s 4,300 adult home residents since 2002. 

But that’s going to change: a ruling issued today by Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of the Federal District Court in Brooklyn ordered the state to develop at least 1,500 units of supported housing a year for three years. This ruling follows a September 2009 decision in which a judge ruled that adult homes were by their nature segregation and thus a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. As reported by the New York Times, the state has repeatedly fought new housing, arguing that recent improvements to existing homes were adequate: 

The order by Judge Garaufis offered a stinging rebuke of the much less sweeping proposed remedy offered by the state, which continued to dispute many of the findings of his previous rulings and which sought to cap the number of new supportive housing units at 1,000, to be made available on a more restrictive basis over five years. “The court is disappointed and, frankly, incredulous that defendants sincerely believed this proposal would suffice,” the judge wrote in his ruling Monday.

The state had argued that, particularly in current economic conditions, such a mandate would be too expensive. But the judge wrote last year that evidence showed that supported housing would cost only $40,253 a year per resident, about $7,500 less than it costs to place them in a group home.

“This is a tremendous order,” said attorney Cliff Zucker, whose firm Disability Advocates Inc. filed a lawsuit against the state on behalf of adult home residents. “We think that this order will end the disgraceful practice that’s been allowed to go on in New York for decades: warehousing people in institutions when they can live in integrated settings in the community.” Zucker said the state can appeal the ruling, which could potentially delay implementation. And even if the state does not appeal, monitors will be needed to ensure the state properly implements the ruling. “There’s much work ahead of us,” said Zucker, but he says the order is “bringing us some relief.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate