Put humans first in state decision

In the Oct. 9 article “Quinn puts Mabley’s noble legacy at stake,” Burt Constable recaps how a horrible institution called the Dixon State School was replaced by a much better facility, the Mabley Developmental Center. He further explains that today, over objections from some of the Mabley families, many in the developmentally disabled community advocate closing institutions like Mabley in favor of neighborhood group homes. Constable further states that, separate from the “human side of the story,” this financial battle will be waged by politicians, unions and lawyers.

Actually, the financial and human sides of the story are linked. The annual cost of housing one person in a facility like Mabley is about $190,000 while the annual cost of housing one person in a neighborhood group home is about $52,000 per year. That means that for the cost of housing one resident in an institution, the state could house that resident plus two more in smaller group homes. Using rough math, with 87 residents in Mabley, there are about 58 developmentally disabled people who could but won’t receive residential services because there is no money for them.

No one advocates saving money by providing disabled people with lesser quality services at a cheaper cost. But as parents of two developmentally disabled adult sons, my wife and I are very happy with the quality of care our sons receive in their neighborhood group homes. We just see so many of our sons’ friends (along with 17,000 others on the Illinois waiting list) who desperately need and would thrive in a home in their community but are told there is no funding for them, perhaps in part because of exorbitant costs of maintaining Mabley and institutions like it.

The financial battle between the politicians, unions, and lawyers has real human consequences.

Ron Coppel

Schaumburg