Framingham social-services agency thinks the First Amendment is a conspiracy against it

My agency has attempted to do some of this, but there are often two barriers. One, the neighbors insist that they have no desire to meet "those people." Two, the folks being served are often not people who can make an informed decision whether to participate in advocacy. There are many adults with major mental illness (and some with mild mental retardation) who participate in advocacy organizations, but it isn't a huge number, and in any given group home that's moving in, you won't necessarily have any advocacy types. If the house is geared toward folks who are less independent and less able to make informed decisions, you can't just volunteer them to go and put themselves in the spotlight and show the neighbors how cute and cuddly and harmless they are. This is putting people with disabilities on exhibit, and it's a human rights violation. Again, if they're people who fully understand the implications of outing themselves and can give their informed consent, this is one thing. But there just aren't many folks with this decision-making capacity who live in a staffed residence; most folks involved in advocacy live in apartments with periodic staffed visits, so none of their neighbors even know they receive services.

I guess the thing that people fail to realize is that there's really nothing anyone can do about neighbors with disabilities moving in, unless they witness the folks breaking the law once they're moved in. From a legal standpoint, a group residence of 12 or fewer people is absolutely no different than if I were to rent an apartment with roommates and we hired staff to help us with our daily needs. It doesn't matter whatsoever if the folks have help renting the apartment, or whose name it's in; people just have no legal right to complain that their neighbors have disabilities. They can complain about observed behavior, such as noise or whatever, yes.

(And in my opinion, there's no good reason to have people living in group residences larger than 12 -- we all know that institutional living holds people back and community living helps them grow.)

There are group homes in Sudbury, Natick, and Wayland -- I've visited plenty to assess people when I worked in that area. But these were programs for folks who didn't travel independently in the community. Their programs were staffed 24/7, and they were taken everywhere in vans by staff. For folks who are more independent, it really doesn't make sense to live out in a suburb where there's nothing they can walk to or take public transportation to. Most recovering addicts are going to be independent-type folks who can take a bus somewhere and go grocery shopping alone, but most don't have a car or a license. So in order to facilitate maximum independence, it makes sense for them to live in a more urban area. Again, greater independence helps people make the best recovery. People don't do as well when they're capable of being independent, yet they live out in some suburb and have to be driven around in a van by staff to get anywhere.

And yes, people with substance abuse disorders have a psych disability. Some people have the misfortune of having a brain that's wired a little funny and/or traumatic experiences in their lives. Some combination thereof leads to symptoms of mental illness. For some people, this might be an eating disorder. For others, it might be strings of dysfunctional relationships. Or standing around muttering to oneself and seeing things the rest of us don't. Or not being able to stop smoking crack without a lot of hard work. We don't really know why one person might deal with things by slipping into a delusional world, and another might deal by drinking. So why on earth should we say that one of these people has an acceptable disability and is deserving of services, and the other one isn't? Why not just recognize how fortunate we are and have compassion for everyone who doesn't have it so easy?

(By the way, all of the folks I've worked with in publicly funded substance abuse programs also have major mental illness; these aren't folks who are going to instantly be really independent and functional once they stop using.)