This house at 115-44 127th St. in South Ozone Park is likely to become a group home.After some debate and objections from area residents, a proposal to establish a group home for seven mentally challenged individuals in a South Ozone Park neighborhood received overwhelming approval at Thursday night’s Community Board 10 meeting in South Ozone Park.
Services for the Under Served, a non-profit organization founded in 1978 and overseen by the state Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, is seeking to establish a community residence at 115-44 127th St. The organization operates 17 homes in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx.
According to the application, the residence is a two-story wood frame house with a cellar. It will have five bedrooms, three and one-half bathrooms, a kitchen, dining room, medication room, study, den, living room and enclosed terrace. The cellar will include a staff office, recreation area, a half-bathroom and a laundry area with access to the backyard.
Services for the Under Served officials told board members that they haven’t purchased the house yet; however, once they do, it will be renovated to meet their requirements.
Cheryelle Cruickshank, director of Developmental Disability Services for the organization, stated that the residence will provide an opportunity for the individuals to reside in a local community accessible to normal life-enriching experiences close to their family and friends. She added that these individuals are people from the local community who are in need of a new home. Each person living in the residence will attend six hours of programs at a day habilitation program each weekday. Cruickshank assured community board members and residents that the home would be adequately supervised, noting that there will be staff on duty 24 hours a day, including a supervisor, program manager and assistant manager. Recreational activities and programs are planned for evenings and weekends.
Neighbors of the proposed group home voiced some of their concerns. Sandy McDuffie, Jr. believed that the home was too small to adequately house the seven individuals. “The rooms are small and the land is small,” he said. An SUS official told McDuffie that she believed they had met the space regulations. She added that what the house looks like now will not be what it will look like after it is renovated with changes in the configuration.
Lisa McDuffie was worried about safety in the area, expressing her concern about friends of the residents who will now be coming into the community to visit the residents. McDuffie was advised that the female residents are supervised 24 hours a day and generally do not have a lot of company.
Board member Peter Granickas commented that when SUS first opened its facility on Rosita Road there were some problems, such as residents walking around the area unsupervised. However, he said the problems were corrected.
According to the Community Residence Site Selection Law, sponsored by state Sen. Frank Padavan, a community can oppose a group home only on the grounds that there is already too great a saturation of other group homes in the area.
This not being the case on 127th Street, the community board approved the application.
