Despite protest from many residents of 79th Street in Howard Beach, Community Board 10 last week unanimously approved a proposal to place a group home on their block.[Photo caption: Community Board 10 approved a proposal by the Bernard Fineson Developmental Center to open a group home at this house on 79th Street in Howard Beach. Photo by Stephen Geffon]
The application for the home at 153-10 79th Street in Lindenwood was submitted by the Bernard Fineson Developmental Center, and presented before C.B. 10 at its meeting on Wednesday in South Ozone Park.
The building, a two-story wood frame structure, is an attached two-family residence with a two-car garage. There will be six to eight male residents, age 21 and over, with moderate to mild retardation living there, according to Fineson representatives.
The program for these individuals will provide housing, meals, recreation, companionship and continuous supervision in a homelike environment staffed by professionals. The prospective residents will also participate in pre-vocational training, vocational placement and day habilitation services.
Larry Rozelle, a developmental disabilities program specialist for Fineson, told the board that his group offered the owner of the 79th Street house $680,000, and that after purchasing the residence, it would put about $225,000 into rehabilitating it.
The Fineson Center, which has a unit in Howard Beach, located at 155-55 Cross Bay Blvd., operates 21 community residences and individual residential alternatives in Queens. The latter house about 130 mentally retarded or developmentally disabled adults in a group home setting. The residential alternatives enable the individuals to participate fully in the community, according to Fineson.
The movement away from institutionalizing the mentally challenged and toward placing them in group homes began decades ago. According to state mental health officials, creating more of these homes, which on average house between five and 10 people, benefits both the individual and the local communities in which they live.
Fineson officials have cited a “fear of the unknown” that causes most people to immediately recoil when they hear that a group home is moving next door. That may be what happened at last week’s C.B. 10 public hearing where several neighbors expressed fears about the home.
A next-door neighbor expressed concern about residents of the home walking around the neighborhood unsupervised. “Are they violent?” he asked. Francine Watnick, group administrator for the Fineson Center, assured him that the residents are continually supervised and that none are violent.
Another resident asked about the appraisal values of surrounding homes in other areas after a group home has come into the community. Watnick said the values have stayed the same or gone up. “Our homes are maintained,” she said.
She also noted that each home has a community advisory board of neighborhood resides which meets on a regular basis with the staff of the home.
Regarding a resident’s question about whether the group home would house recovering drug addicts, Watnick gave her assurance that no such individuals are or would be residents there now or in the future.
Rozelle assured a resident who was concerned about the safety of young children living on 79th Street that the individuals who would be living in the group home would pose no danger to the neighborhood youngsters.
Board member Donna Gilmartin said she understood residents’ concerns, but noted that in her experience with group homes in the South Ozone Park community, she has witnessed success: people who were initially outraged when groups homes came into their neighborhoods became happy to have them in their community. “It really worked out fine,” she said.
According to the Community Residence Site Selection Law, 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 79th Street, the community board approved the application.
