Neighbors up in arms over private group homes for mentally ill, addicts

How would you feel if a private company opened a bunch of
group homes in your neighborhood for the mentally ill and
drug addicts, but never told you? That’s what happened in
Normandy Park just south of Seattle, where neighbors are
up in arms about the California company Hanbleceya, which
has opened five group homes in the neighborhood in the
past year.

While they’re deeply troubled by recent suicide attempts
and potential problems with clients living in the homes,
they’re more disturbed with “a loophole”
preventing government oversight of the homes.

In an interview with the Ross and
Burbank Show, City
Councilmember Stacie Jenkins says it’s been a major
frustration getting actual information and addressing all
the issues.

“It’s not a matter of not wanting the disabled living in
Normandy Park. It’s a matter of how well they are
monitored so that our community feels safe and we feel
comfortable the clients are safe,” Jenkins says.

Hanbleceya operates the group homes, but it doesn’t
provide any actual treatment for the clients who can pay
upwards of $100,000 a year. All counseling, medication
and other services are provided at a clinic in a nearby
strip mall. Because of that, the Department of Health
has told neighbors the homes don’t fall under its
oversight.

The company’s managing director Kerry Paulson tells The
Seattle Times the neighbors are “ignorant and
insensitive about the mentally ill and their needs.”

In a letter to critics, Paulson says recent incidents at
the Normandy Park homes are “an anomaly […] but I
realize
you need to see no incidents for a sustained period of
time for you to believe me.”

Jenkins says after meeting with a number of officials,
she still hasn’t received any answers that are
satisfactory.

“I met with the owner, clinical director and staff
director.
I was going in with the full expectation I was going to be
meeting with mental health professionals and I would have
all the questions answered that I had been hearing from
residents,” she says. “The answers that I got from them
made me really uncomfortable and really exacerbated my own
concerns and the concerns that I had heard from others.”

Jenkins is a part of a new task force formed to increase
oversight and regulation of the company, while neighbors
have formed a neighborhood group call “Normandy Park
Cares,” to raise money for legal action against
Hanbleceya. Jenkins says another meeting is planned next
month with company officials, who vow to remain despite
the widespread neighborhood opposition.