Eight mentally retarded and developmentally disabled adults are expected to move into this South Ozone Park house, located at 133-47 120th St., next spring. (photo by Lee Landor)A short, quiet, dead-end South Ozone Park street, on which two houses sit beside a church, is expected to welcome eight new residents next spring, when the state moves them into a home it recently purchased.
The Bernard Fineson Developmental Disabilities Services Office — the Queens branch of the New York State Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities — is currently in the design phase of its plan to open the group home, located at 133-47 120th St., next spring. It will house adults with profound mental retardation or developmental disabilities.
“There’s always a need for more group homes,” said Fineson’s community development coordinator Larry Rozelle, noting that about 130 mentally retarded or developmentally disabled adults — known as “consumers” — are already living in such homes throughout the borough. Some 250 reside in Fineson’s Queens Village center and 49 are at its Howard Beach location.
A movement away from institutionalizing the mentally retarded and, instead, placing them in group homes began in the 1980s. “A small home — it’s a better way to live,” Rozelle said. “Instead of living in a ward, you’re living in a house with five to eight people. It’s more of a family setting .... They deserve a home, too.”
Creating more of these homes, which, on average, house between five and ten people, allows the OMRDD to move residents out of old buildings — like Fineson’s “antiquated” center, located at 155-55 Cross Bay Blvd. — and into more comfortable and personal residential alternatives. This benefits both the consumers and the local communities in which they live.
Area residents are introduced to and become familiar with what mental retardation and developmental disabilities encompass. This helps to diminish some of the stigma that usually accompanies those characteristics.
“It’s fear of the unknown” that causes most people to immediately recoil when they hear that a group home is moving in next door, Rozelle said. This is what happened at a Community Board 10 public hearing in December, when several neighbors expressed fears about the home.
According to C.B. 10 Chairwoman Betty Braton, the opposition aimed at the home was simply used to mask a family dispute between the home owner and his relatives who live on the block. The board passed Fineson’s request to open the facility, believing that once the residents move in, there will be no problems.
This is due, in part, to Fineson’s tradition of opening its doors to neighbors from day one. It invites area residents to check out the house and meet some of the residents, to ask questions and see for themselves what the group home is all about. Sometimes neighbors become actively involved with the group home, throwing birthday parties and other events for those living there, according to Rozelle.
Fineson has forged a comfortable relationship with the Howard Beach community, where it opened a center in 1975. In its first five years, Fineson — although never disruptive — made a name for itself, starting what would become an annual event for local residents.
Members of the Independent Bikers of Queens, dressed as Santas decked out in black leather jackets, would ride their motorcycles through town every Christmas to deliver gifts to the center’s children.
The mutual respect has worked well throughout the years, which is why the community expressed regret at Fineson’s decision to shut the center down. Since 1999, Fineson announced repeatedly it was moving out of the community, but it never followed through, causing Howard Beach residents to shift between relief that the center would stay and concern about what would replace it. Rozelle said the center will close in May 2009.
Often, it seems that neighbors who were initially apprehensive about accepting a group home in their community end up appreciating it, Braton implied. They’re grateful that their new neighbors are inconspicuous: they don’t drive, throw parties, make noise or demonstrate inappropriate behavior — because they are not only supervised, but most of them aren’t able to do such things.
Rozelle indicated that there is no reason for concern about people and vehicles coming and going from the home, since many consumers are wards of the state or do not have family members who visit. “I’m sure, I guarantee you drive by (group homes) every day and you don’t even know they’re there. They don’t stick out,” he said.
Modifications to the home will be minimal and made only to the interior. There will also be minimal neighbothood interaction with the residents themselves, since they are taken by van to an OMDRR “day habilitation” center in the morning and returned around 3:30 p.m. From then on usually they remain in the house.
Since Fineson encourages community inclusion, the residents will occasionally take short trips with supervisors to local parks or area stores. They make sure to consider community residents before engaging in such activities. “We’re aware of our neighbors and we try to be good neighbors,” Rozelle said. “We have to go above and beyond being good neighbors ... because we’re in the spotlight.”
But, this works both ways, he added. “Our developmentally disabled individuals deserve the right and the dignity (and the respect) to live in the community.”
