Saline, Michigan: Families take the initiative in creating new housing for people with DD

Read and listen to a Michigan Radio (NPR) interview, “People with disabilities at heart of new Saline neighborhood” by Doug Tribou, 1/29/18. Patty and Karl Rabe of Saline, Michigan, down the road from Ann Arbor, have joined with other parents and a local developer to create a new neighborhood that will include housing for their adult children with DD.

Their son, Bill Rabe, is 28 years old and lives with his parents. He has developmental disabilities including severe speech and vocabulary problems and needs someone around to help him. He will be living in a condominium in the new neighborhood and sharing resources with other adults with DD. His parents will also move into the planned community and be close by if Bill needs their help. According to the interview, “..Bill holds down two part-time jobs, is a Special Olympian, and likes to watch movies and play video games. His favorites are hockey games. “

The new neighborhood is called Maple Oaks; groundbreaking took place in October 2017. This project is the result of years of planning by the families, the developer, and the community of Saline. There is a great deal of excitement looking forward to the success of this project, in stark contrast to other communities that have reacted with fear and ignorance at the prospect of providing homes for people with DD.

According to the Saline Sun Times News in an article, “New Residential Housing Development Planned For Saline In Demand" by Angelo Parlove from 7/14/17, “A project team led by William Godfrey, who is the principal at Three Oaks Development and Advisory Services in Ann Arbor, plans to bring a multi-family development containing 34 units, which will consist of 10 single-family homes, eight duplexes and two community buildings which will hold another eight units each.”

Another article in the Saline Post “Saline Approves Final PUD for Development of 600 North Maple Road” by Tran Longmoore, 07/25/2017, describes the changes to zoning for Planned Unit Development or PUD that allows mixed density residential development for this project.

The developer William Godfrey said of the people moving into the new community, “some families already reside in Saline, while some are coming from out of town. Buyers include empty nesters who want to live close to family, families with children with special needs and young families who want to live near the middle school.”

The NPR interview and the additional news articles give a good idea of the intricacies of planning a neighborhood that prides itself in including housing for people with developmental disabilities.

Desiree Kameka from Madison House Autism Foundation, who was interviewed by NPR,  lauds the Saline community for providing stable housing for adults with DD. “Kameka says unlike group homes, the families will own the condos, giving them more control. Most of the young adults qualify for some government funded in-home care. The families are hoping to pool some of those resources…'They know that that housing will be secure...that their loved ones will never be kicked out, just getting placed in the next empty bed counties away, because a provider decides they don’t want to serve that person anymore.’"

Not everyone agrees that this project is a good way to integrate and house people with disabilities in the community: 

“Dohn Hoyle thinks the Saline project falls short. Hoyle is the public policy director for the ARC Michigan. Because the condos will have 24-hour care and house only residents with disabilities, Hoyle sees less independence than what’s being marketed…’It will be their own place in the sense of their own condo, but remember what you’ve done is you’ve set up a group-living situation [by] having everybody who lives there have a disability,’ Hoyle said.”

Dohn Hoyle appears to be discounting or overlooking friendships and a desire to live together among some people with disabilities, the opportunity to rein in costs and improve services by sharing resources, the choice of people with disabilities and their families to live in such a community, and the excitement and enthusiasm by the Saline community for the success of the new neighborhood. 

Let’s hope that Hoyle does not lobby the State to refuse funding for services to the disabled residents as he has done in the past: 

The ARC Michigan: Our Way or the Highway

The ARC Michigan to the State : Stop funding congregate settings