Housing for disabled adults in New Jersey.
The current economic crisis, and its effect on the housing market.
This post is about both of those topics.
Don’t stop reading—this is an upbeat post, despite the subject matter.
Certainly one wishes that the question of housing for disabled adults weren’t the sort of topic that is accompanied by words like “worries” and “depressing.” But it very much is, right now. In New Jersey, where we live, the waiting list of developmentally disabled adults wishing to move into government-supported community housing has over 8000 people on it. Last week’s report that 28-year-old Tara …read more

In just about one month, I turn 40. Charlie is 11 1/2—-so when I’m 50, he’ll be 21, and when I’m 65, he’ll be 36, almost as old as I am now.
Where will he be living? (With us?) What will he be doing? (School will be long over.) What opportunities will there be for him, or not?
Yesterday’s Bergen Record describes Debbie Legutko, whose two adults sons—24-year-old Derek and 21-year-old Frank—live with her and her husband. Derek is autistic and holds two part-time jobs. Frank requires intensive medical care and is on a ventilator and oxygen.
The Bergen Record notes that some …read more

Gerald Guay, who formerly worked in a Bloomfield (CT) state-run group home for mentally disabled people, was banned from working in the health care industry after pleading guilty to negligent cruelty to a person, the August 11th Hartford Courant reports. Guay tormented and abused 38-year-old Christopher Stockton, who has severe autism, developmental disabilities, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and does not speak. Stockton’s mother, Alice Stockton, suspected the abuse more than two years ago when her son started to have seizures, around the time that Guay started to work in the home:
Alice Stockton was told [by Connecticut's Department of Developmental Disabilities] there …read more