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)

From the Los Angeles Times:

An apartment complex in Monrovia, CA, has sent eviction notices to all of its residents with disabilities, some of whom have lived in the affordable housing complex for more than a decade.

The facility’s managers told tenants that there had been a mistake and they never should have been allowed to move in. The complex was supposed to have been reserved for seniors only, they said.

People with disabilities have valued the complex for its quiet and relative safety, proximity to jobs and transportation, and warm, neighborly atmosphere. Residents and family members have filed a complaint with the California Department of Fair Employment and House, alleging discrimination based on age and disability.

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.

From the Austin American-Statesman:

Boarding homes for elderly people and those with disabilities lack government oversight in Texas, leaving residents at risk for unsanitary living conditions, theft, assault and inadequate care, advocates say.

The problems were highlighted by the recent arrest of Tommie Yvette McKinney, a Texas boarding house operator who was charged with bilking one of her residents. Public records show that McKinney has had at least 14 theft convictions, and has been sent to prison for felony theft in three different Texas counties.

Advocates say unscrupulous operators are free to prey on vulnerable people in thousands of state boarding homes because regulations do not require that they be licensed, unlike nurses, massage therapist, locksmiths and other professionals who must undergo state background checks and inspections.

After years of debate, Texas legislators this spring granted individual cities the authority to license and regulate the homes but provided no funding for the task.

Advocates for elderly and mentally ill people say one reason the system has been permitted to exist with no oversight is that boarding homes provide cheap housing that government can’t, or won’t. The January report found that residents of boarding homes were among the state’s neediest. About a third of the residents had some form of mental illness; another third were elderly.

… Advocates say the system establishes a dangerous dynamic: Clients who most need assistance often can’t afford the more expensive licensed assisted living facilities that provide it and so end up at unlicensed boarding homes – which by law can offer no help, even with the most basic tasks, such as handling their many medications.

“Medicine bottles were everywhere; it was just a free-for-all,” said Carson Palmer, who last year was forced to live in a boarding home in Northeast Austin after a bad car accident left him unable to work. His mattress had blood stains, he recalled; cockroaches climbed over him at night.

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.

Writing in the [White Plains, NY] Journal News, Esther Gueft says people with disabilities constitute one of the nation’s largest minority groups, yet their needs are consistently overlooked.

This is the year of the “minority.” An African-American is president, and there could be a Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court. The list goes on. Color barriers are falling. But what about the minority that cuts across all racial, religious and cultural barriers? Where are they?

…They live in your house, next door, down the street and across town. Because of their differences, they are only now emerging thanks to laws that were enacted just under 20 years ago.

… What can we do to integrate this special minority, which we will join as we age through illness, accident or injury? Access to appropriate housing and support services is key to permitting disabled adults [to] gain the independence they need.

In a press release timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s landmark Olmstead decision, President Obama announced the launch of “The Year of Community Living,” an effort to assist Americans with disabilities.

The initiative is aimed at improving access for people with disabilities to housing, community supports, and independent living arrangements. The White House release pledged an increase in the number of Section 8 housing vouchers, as well as enhanced coordination between officials at the departments of Health and Human Services and Housing and Urban Development.

From the release:

“The Olmstead ruling was a critical step forward for our nation, articulating one of the most fundamental rights of Americans with disabilities: Having the choice to live independently,” said President Obama. “I am proud to launch this initiative to reaffirm my Administration’s commitment to vigorous enforcement of civil rights for Americans with disabilities and to ensuring the fullest inclusion of all people in the life of our nation.”

Disability rights advocates have criticized Obama recently for backing off his campaign promise to endorse the Community Choice Act, legislation that would give Medicaid recipients equal access to services in the community and help them live independently outside of institutions. The administration recently said it would not address the issue as part of its proposed health care overhaul.

The Supreme Court’s 1996 decision in Olmstead v. L.C. held that unjustified segregation of individuals with disabilities in institutions is a form of discrimination prohibited by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

See also:

• HUD to offer assistance to 4,000 Americans with disabilities (press release.) The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has announced plans to offer rental assistance to 4,000 non-elderly families with disabilities, including 1,000 vouchers specifically targeted to those transitioning out of nursing homes and other care facilities.
• Sens. Harkin, Kennedy introduce legislation to commemorate Olmstead decision (press release)
• Obama boosts in-home services for the disabled – ProPublica.com