But you've got to admit the plan to deinstitutionize was a disaster.
I've lived among the deinstitutionized in two towns: NYC & Ocean
Grove. In NYC, the mentally ill hated the overcrowded, crime-ridden
shelters and so took to the streets, growing more sick, dirty and
threatening by the day...and that was before the crack epidemic. In
Ocean Grove, the facilities were poorly run and maintained. In the
early '90s, Ocean Grove was a sea of indigent, sick people sitting on
park benches throughout the town. Some were threatening, most just
pathetic. My favorite was the lady wearing a grey wig, pushing a
little dog in a shopping cart and saying to strangers with the utmost
calm: "Give me a dollar or I'll kill you."
That being said, on Seaview Avenue in OG, there is a shelter
called "The Rest Home" that is beautifully run. Many of the
neighbors have personal relationships with the lodgers. I worry with
all the gentrification going on in the Grove, that pretty soon they
will be squeezed out.
--- In AsburyPark@yahoogroups.com, "wernerapnj" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
>
> The discussion of "escaped mental patients" I quite bizzare. Yes,
> Asbury Park, Ocean Grove, etc., had a large population of people
with
> handicaps. But not for the reasons believed, such as: escape, State
> dumping, etc.
>
> Hotels and rooming houses were having a hard time due to he decline
> of tourism. At the same time, mental health theories were changing
> and people with controlable disorders were encouraged to try to
make
> it in normal society.
>
> The State offered qualified facilities subsidies to provide for
these
> transitional individuals in the form of housing and assistance.
> Hotels and rooming houses were converted to transitional care use
out
> of necessity.
>
> If you were the owner of a large building, losing money and perhaps
> on the verge of losing your building what would you do? Conversion
to
> care facility was a natural evolution in light of a subsidized
client
> base.
>
> It was just timing not some plot.
>
> Werner
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