Illinois town up in arms after finding out disabled community will be replaced with those with mental health and drug problems
Residents of a small town are in uproar over plans to replace a street where disabled people live with people with mental health and drug problems.
The secluded 20-home community on Turkey Hill in Belleville, Illinois, served adults with developmental disabilities for 40 years.
St Clair Associated Vocational Enterprises fostered a community, often with their families, and offered them jobs at nearby facilities.
But the program was stopped last year after government policy changed and integrating disabled people into the community became more important than separating them.
As a result, SAVE lost funding from the Illinois Department of Human Services and discontinued the program, although it maintained its vocational day programs.
The secluded 20-home community on Turkey Hill in Belleville, Illinois, served adults with developmental disabilities for 40 years
With the houses sitting empty, SAVE struck a deal with the Comprehensive Behavioral Health Center to house its clients in 15 of the 17 remaining buildings.
CBHC has a $537,000 grant from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide low-income housing to people with behavioral health conditions.
The people who would move here include those with mental illness, substance abuse issues, homelessness or struggling with other crises.
“Our mission is to provide high-quality, individualized essential services to people in need of emotional, rehabilitative and social support, on a twenty-four (24) hour basis, in the least restrictive environment,” the website states.
However, the rumors spread like wildfire through nearby neighborhoods, which originally thought the houses would house migrants from Chicago.
When they discovered who was actually coming to live there, they feared an influx of violence in their community.
St Clair Associated Vocational Enterprises gave them a community, often with their families, and provided them with jobs in nearby facilities
Residents erect a building as part of their vocational training
“I’m especially concerned about drive-by shootings or people getting into an argument and then you hear gunfire,” Ginger Miller, who lives nearby, told police. Belleville News Democrat.
“I know the Freeburg Police Department does not have the manpower to patrol there regularly, and our district police are already overstretched.”
Frank Heiligenstein, who lives in nearby Freeburg, heads the Citizens Federation of St. Clair County and put the issue on the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting.
He originally called it “the relocation of migrants from Chicago to the SAVE location on Turkey Hill,” until he discovered the truth.
“Maybe we would have been better off with the arrival of migrants because they aspire to work somewhere,” he said.
“We have several facilities here… that migrants use, legally and illegally. Some of them have to use them to support their activities.”
The small, simply built frame houses maintained here were built in the 1950s and 1960s to house personnel at a U.S. Air Force radar base.
Disabled residents work in a garden in the small neighborhood
SAVE director Paul Wibbenmeyer said renting the houses to CBHC would bring the organization some income while still helping people.
‘The homes will be given a destination that is not very different from what we have done in the past. We were serving a population that was having problems,” he told the newspaper.
“The people for whom the HUD subsidy is intended have their own challenges.”
CBHC director Joe Harper said the people who would be moving in were already living in the community and needed help.
“We try to help them by giving them a stable place to live so they can become contributing members of the community,” he said.
Wibbenmeyer said CBHC would always have an employee in sight, and usually more than one.
The group wanted to provide a shuttle bus to transport residents in a remote neighborhood, and some may have their own cars.
The area is remote, with SAVE’s facilities (top right), including warehouses and assembly and packaging plants nearby, where disabled clients, both residents and those just visiting for the day, learn their vocational skills and work for pay.
CBHC provides therapeutic counseling, psychosocial testing, individual and group therapy, crisis intervention, consultation, community intervention, psychiatric evaluation, case management services, referrals and outreach services.
Other services include drug treatment, teen parenting classes and transitioning out of homelessness.
The small, simple frame houses were built in the 1950s and 1960s to house personnel at a U.S. Air Force radar base.
The government let SAVE use it in 1975 and later donated the land and buildings.
SAVE has warehouses and assembly and packaging factories nearby where disabled clients, both residents and people who just come for a day, learn their vocational skills and work for pay.