Project Will Offer Low-Cost Apartments to the Mentally Ill : Pacoima: Counseling, medication and other assistance also are to be available at the complex planned by a private group. Funding has been arranged.
If all goes smoothly, sometime next year 50 mentally ill people will move into a brand-new apartment complex on a Pacoima hill, entering a place they can call their own.
The apartments will be tiny--ranging from 280 square feet for a single room with a bathroom and use of a community kitchen, to 550 square feet for a one-bedroom with its own kitchen. But the rents will be low--between $266 and $351--making them affordable for people whose sole support is a monthly disability check of less than $700.
Most important, however, the residents of Hillview Village, as the apartment complex is to be known, will have counseling, medication, assistance with day-to-day living and other help readily available--a combination that will be unique in the San Fernando Valley.
Robyn Green, a self-described suicidal ex-prostitute and drug addict who once was homeless for three years, wants to be among the first to move in.
Green, who has lived in various group homes and psychiatric hospitals as well as on the street, said she hopes the combination of affordable housing and mental health services will keep her from becoming homeless again.
“I’ve tried to live a normal life, get a place and pay the bills, but it was too overwhelming,” said Green, 35, who now resides at a Pacoima residential psychiatric treatment facility. At Hillview, she said, she’d be independent “but . . . still have the support I need.”
In the past, Green said, she’s been on her own when she has left treatment programs. “When they thought you were all right, they more or less let you go, whether they thought you had someplace to stay or not,” she said.
This past week, the private Hillview Mental Health Center in Lake View Terrace announced that, after more than four years of effort, it had managed to put together a $4-million package of public and private money for the project on Van Nuys Boulevard near Foothill Boulevard.
About $1.8 million of the package is a loan from the city of Los Angeles and $1.3 million comes from the state tax credit program, which attracts private investments in low-cost housing in return for a break on taxes. Another chunk of money is a commercial mortgage and the final piece is $100,000 annually in federal rental subsidies that will cover some of the costs of the services associated with the apartment house.
Hillview is one of only three affordable housing projects targeting the mentally ill--all of them in Los Angeles County-that received state backing in the latest cycle of allocating tax credits for such purposes. It is among a growing number of such projects that are being built around the state and the country.
The reason is that mental health professionals, after years of trying desperately to maintain a patchwork system for treating the indigent mentally ill, are increasingly focusing their attention on housing as the key element of a successful approach to the problem.
Various studies have shown that such permanent housing facilities, although expensive initially, reduce patients’ dependence on treatment in the long run.
“Many of these individuals, with proper medication, with proper community-based treatment . . . can sustain themselves out there in the community,” said Fernando L. Escarcega, deputy director of the Los Angeles County mental health department. “When you compare those costs to what it costs us to maintain an individual in an incarcerated setting like a local jail . . . it just doesn’t make sense” to do otherwise.
But the Valley has not had such a facility. The mentally ill who do not have families to live with or who cannot adjust to sharing a room in a board-and-care home are left to fend for themselves. Those who cannot cope or cannot stretch their disability payments to cover the cost of shelter often end up on the streets, which exacerbates their illnesses.
Hillview “fits a very, very critical need,” Escarcega said.
Although it is a start, Hillview Village is at best a modest one, given that an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 mentally disabled people sleep in the Valley’s parks, alleys and abandoned buildings nightly. Moreover, other proposed residential and treatment facilities are stalled in the face of opposition from community groups.
One such program, which was expected to have 17 units, has been in the planning stages for several years in the North Hollywood area. That project, which would be operated by the nonprofit Homes for Life Foundation, has run into opposition from local residents as well as the North Hollywood Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, which has said the area might prove too dangerous for the mentally disabled.
“The public is not sympathetic to building mental health housing next to standard residential developments,” said Robert Sanborn, executive director of A Community of Friends, a Los Angeles-based organization that is one of two groups in the state specializing in putting such projects together.
Sanborn’s organization helped assemble financing for the Hillview project and is also a consultant to the North Hollywood project. “In meetings, we’ve heard comments that they’re concerned . . . that perhaps the residents of the project will be unsafe,” he said. Others simply don’t want to be around the mentally disabled.
The residents of such facilities are people with chronic, severe mental illnesses who are receiving treatment for their conditions. Rather than being a source of crime, Escarcega and others said, the residents of such facilities are often victims.
Carl McCraven, executive director of the Hillview center, said only those determined to be capable of living independently will be allowed to rent the apartments. “If they are disabled to the point of treatment, we expect them to be in treatment,” he said. “We will help them get what they need and get where they need to be.”
Because many of the mentally ill who have been homeless also are alcoholics, some residential facilities ban alcohol. But the Hillview center will not, McCraven said. “If it becomes a problem,” however, “we’ll have a way of dealing with that.” The use of illegal drugs, he said, will be banned.
Even though opposition to such housing is common, Community of Friends has managed to put together projects involving 250 units of permanent housing that are now operating or will begin construction in the next year.
A permanent housing project that recently got state funding with help from the organization is to be operated by Step Up on Second, a day-care program for the mentally ill in Santa Monica. A third one, to be operated directly by Community of Friends, is a 32-unit, single-room occupancy hotel in the Westlake area of Los Angeles near downtown.
Susan Dempsay, executive director of the Santa Monica program, said critics of mental health programs are often motivated by “total prejudice and hate.”
Opponents say “they know the services are needed . . . but they always say, ‘Why not do it someplace else? Why Second Street?’ ” she said. “We want to be part of the community. This is where the people are. It’s not acceptable anymore to put mentally ill people in the basements of churches or in a dark alley somewhere.”
Hillview, however, has not encountered opposition to its plans. The zoning for the property was secured several years ago for the adjacent residential treatment program and additional city approvals were not needed for the new project.
Although new condominiums have been built nearby, the zoning that allows the project on the 2.4-acre Hillview property predates them and could not be subjected to changes based on the objections of people who now live there.
As large mental institutions were shut down over the past 20 years, to be replaced with community treatment clinics, housing was ignored, McCraven said.
Now, having permanent housing will add to the ability of the center to assist its clients in living meaningful, productive lives. “Housing is a part of living and if you’re going to be adequately helped with treatment you have to have a place to live,” he said.
