Milwaukee's United House, Grand Avenue Club make strides for mentally ill

MILWAUKEE — Jack Kuczynzki has lived with schizophrenia for the last decade.

After 22 years in the U.S. Army and several years as a teacher, the Milwaukee native thought dealing with mental illness would be easy when he was first diagnosed.

He quickly realized that wasn't the case.

"I thought this was a course I could ace," Kuczynzki said. "But I'm not even getting a C+."

His illness makes it difficult to hold a steady job, so he relies on Social Security to pay for living expenses and the medicine needed to treat his symptoms.

The disease has also left Kuczynzki almost abandoned by his family. He goes for months without hearing from his son, and the last time he made the bus ride to his parent's home, Kuczynzki's father turned him away without even speaking to him.

Poverty, social stigmas and a lack of proper care are some of the issues people like Kuczynzki live with every day. But while conditions for Milwaukee's mentally ill have drastically improved over the last several years, many feel still more can be done to better the quality of life.

Things began looking up for Milwaukee's mentally ill shortly after March 2006, when the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published a three-day series titled "Abandoning Our Mentally Ill."

Milwaukee has held an important place in the nation's mental health history. A Milwaukee County lawsuit filed in the early 1970s upheld the constitutional rights of the mentally ill and released thousands of patients across the country from locked hospital psychiatric wards to live on their own.

The Journal Sentinel investigated how conditions had changed for Milwaukee's mentally ill since the ruling.

While the mentally ill have enjoyed greater freedom in the ensuing 30 years, the newspaper found many also were living in conditions that were not only filthy but potentially deadly.

Large numbers of patients were placed in overcrowded, illegal group homes and apartment complexes by their caseworkers, violating federal court agreements. The homes promised to provide the mentally ill with care and a safe place to live. Instead, they were often fined by city building inspectors for things like dangling electrical wires, structural defects and mice.

Because Wisconsin group home inspectors only investigate licensed group homes, many of the unlicensed ones housing the mentally ill flew under the radar and managed to stay open for years.

Georgia Rawlings was one of the many mentally ill to live in Milwaukee's illegal group homes. Before moving into her current home, a trailer she shares with some friends, Rawlings spent time in some of Milwaukee's worst group homes, places like Oakton Manor, or West Samaria, where Rawlings lived for two years along with approximately 90 other residents.

At one group home she lived in, Rawlings and the other tenants were routinely fed rotten food obtained from a nearby grocery store.

The same home was also infested with rats. Whenever building inspectors came to evaluate the building, the owner quickly spread large amounts of rat poison throughout the building to kill as many rats as possible before the inspector could arrive.

Rawlings said during these times she was often frightened of getting sick from inhaling all the poison in the air.

Deaths weren't uncommon at these group homes. One resident was beaten to death outside West Samaria. The decomposing body of another resident was found in a locked room at the home in March 2007.

For years, conditions like these were to be expected from many buildings housing the mentally ill.

But that began to change soon after the Journal Sentinel series was published. As they became more aware of how the mentally ill were living, the people of Milwaukee began demanding changes.

It began by closing the illegal group homes.

Buildings like West Samaria that were once packed with the mentally ill, who would sit outside talking or walk around the neighborhood, now sit abandoned.

Electrical wires still hang exposed from the building's ceiling, and computers and clothes lie forgotten in rooms and offices on the first floor.

But with the poor group homes that once housed so many closing, the mentally ill needed somewhere else to go.

In 2007, Milwaukee County established the County Special Needs Housing Trust Fund to provide funding for decent, safe and affordable housing for the mentally ill.

The first project financed by the fund was United House, which opened Aug. 29, 2008. It's a $3.6 million housing complex with on-site social services designed to help the mentally ill live on their own.

"The vision is to give them the tools and support they need to be independent," said Dominica Smith, supportive apartment coordinator for United House.

The building has 24 one-bedroom, apartment-style units, a community kitchen, library, lounge and fitness center.

To get into United House, residents and their caseworkers submit an application, which is reviewed by the county housing division. Applicants are accepted based on their behavior at their previous homes and on how much they would benefit from United House's services.

When it first opened, Smith said United House was flooded with applications from caseworkers looking to get their clients out of the terrible conditions found in some group homes. Former residents of West Samaria were some of the first people accepted into United House.

"Those are the people we took in first because we know how bad it was," Smith said.

Lawrence Richardson was one of those accepted to United House during the initial rush. While he didn't live in West Samaria, Richardson was in a similar low-income group home before coming to United House.