From the Los Angeles Times, Pasadena Star News, KABC:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced today that a group of disabled renters who had received eviction notices would not be losing their homes. “Your eviction notice is being terminated,” he said.

Residents of the Regency Court Apartments in Monrovia had been told that everyone under age 62 should not have been allowed to move in and would have to leave.

Schwarzenegger said he was inspired to act after reading about the dispute in the Los Angeles Times, remembering the activism of his mother-in-law, the late Eunice Kennedy Shriver.

Some disability activists complained that Schwarzenegger’s announcement didn’t change the state’s plan to dramatically cut services for 140,000 senior citizens and people with disabilities.

“If the Governor is truly listening to the voice of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, he’ll stop attacking seniors and people with disabilities and do whatever is necessary to reverse the drastic and dangerous cuts he’s made to the State’s home care program,” said Hugh Hallenberg, long time disability advocate. “If he doesn’t, it’s obvious that this was nothing more than a press stunt.”

(Photo of Lily Hixon with Arnold Schwarzenegger by Ken Hixon, from the Pasadena Star-News)

Writing in the Sacramento Bee, Dr. Louis A. Vismara says he’s working with a group to develop a planned community on 577 acres in the Sacramento area. It would serve vulnerable adults including people with autism, senior citizens and those with other disabilities.

A founder of the MIND Institute at UC Davis and the father of a teenaged son with autism, Vismara says he has “personal heartache” over California’s lack of preparedness for the tsunami of children with autism who are now approaching adulthood.

He envisions a community with some 3,000 “green” homes as well as shopping, jobs, parks and recreational activities. An estimated 20 percent of the housing would be designated for people with autism and other disabilities, he said, and jobs would be found at area farms and community gardens. An excerpt:

Living in close connection with the diverse group of people who will be drawn to this community will lend immeasurable richness to residents’ lives, allowing them to tap deeply into their own humanity. It’s the life many of us say we want, and it’s the life I envision for Mark now and after I’m no longer able to care for him.

With this community, Sacramento could lead the way in creating smart and sustainable development that can be replicated across the state and throughout the nation. It will keep Sacramento where the MIND Institute placed it in the fight against autism: at the cutting edge.

This community could be a real jewel for Sacramento. Our sons and daughters deserve no less.

From the Cincinnati Enquirer:

A group of Ohio parents have banded together to create a rural residential and employment program for their adult children with autism.

It’s estimated that the non-profit Safe Haven Farms will cost $3.2 million, and will house up to 24 adults.

Sometimes lost amid questions about what causes autism and why its prevalence has increased – neither answer is known – is this: What happens when all those children become adults?

“If I were to grade our country on adult services for individuals with autism, I’d have to give it an F,” says Jeff Sell, vice president of advocacy and public policy for the Autism Society of America. “There are just very few options out there.

(Cincinnati Enquirer photo of program founders Denny and Ann Rogers and daughter Emily)

The Kansas City Star Editorial Board writes that people with developmental disabilities plead for help in the state Capitol annually, but keep getting pushed aside. More than 4,100 Kansans are on waiting lists for residential and home-based services — waiting lists that didn’t exist as recently as the 1990s.

Waiting means delayed therapy for children whose social and physical developments depend on services. It means idleness for young people who have finished school and are shut out of job programs. It means unending stress for families seeking a group home placement — or even respite care — for a disabled adult. Many Kansans have been on hold for more than four years.

“If we had a 4,000-person waiting list for kindergarten this year, someone would do something about it,” said Tom Laing, executive director of InterHab, a statewide advocacy group for people with disabilities.

… A state’s character is defined by how it treats its weakest citizens. By that measure, Kansas has much work to do.

Mark Brown, writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, says the Illinois legislature hurt some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens when it approved a “bogus stopgap budget deal” that included deep cuts in human services programs. The budget is a “lousy outcome for people who already get short shrift in this state,” he says.

Hurt the most, he says, are people like 35-year-old Tom Morissette, a man with Down syndrome whose day program was forced to close. Now Morissette is stuck at home, watching television or sitting on the porch swing. “It’s truly been a devastating loss,” his sister says.

From the Boston Herald:

The Westwood Respite Center, which provides support to 68 families of adults with disabilities in eastern Massachusetts, is expected to close its doors next weekend. The reason: massive cuts in the budget of the Massachusetts Department of Developmental Services. The center offers a place for adults to develop independent-living skills and socialize with peers.

People like Ellen Burns, who has been visiting for the past 15 years, are devastated. “I need a life,” she says. “I get lonesome.”

Her mother is outraged.“The zoo has gotten funding back. People with disabilites are not on the same level?” said Peggy Burns. “Where are their priorities?”

See also:

A wild idea: Help needy — by Peter Gelzinis in the Boston Herald

An excerpt:

“Look, I was happy when the governor came out and said that no animals were going to die,” Cheryl said. “I happen to be an animal lover, too. But I just think it would be nice if people, who find themselves in the same situation as my daughter, could get a little of the same attention.

“But then, I suppose that only happens in a perfect world, doesn’t it?”

– Quote from Cheryl Perry, whose daughter Ava was shut out of a Massachusetts adult services program because of budget cuts. Ava is blind and has Down syndrome.

(Photo of Cheryl and Ava Perry from the Boston Herald)

By Clark Kauffman in the Des Moines Register:

Faced with a $900,000 fine for the alleged exploitation of its mentally retarded workers, the owners of Henry’s Turkey Service say the company is not subject to Iowa’s labor laws.

Iowa Workforce Development imposed the fine in May after alleging that Henry’s parent company, Hill Country Farms of Goldthwaite, Texas, had paid 34 mentally retarded men less than the minimum wage to work in the West Liberty Foods plant in eastern Iowa.

An attorney for Hill Country Farms said that the company is subject to Texas laws rather than Iowa laws, and workers  who lived for decades in a bunkhouse in Atalissa, Iowa, were technically residents of Texas.

Earlier posts here.