See this story at BrooklynDaily.com.
By Colin Mixson
Brooklyn Daily
A local panel approved a plan to move four disabled men into a Mill Basin supervised group home.
Community Board 18 gave the thumbs up to Heart Share Human Services proposal to place four men suffering from various degrees of autism in the home on E. 66th Street.
The young men are now on track to move into the two-story home between Veterans Avenue and Avenue T in Mill Basin, likely sometime in the late spring of next year.
There they’ll live under the constant supervision of between two and three caretakers at all times, according to Joyce Levin, vice president at Heart Share.
Before a group home with assisted living can be established in a neighborhood, the organization responsible is required under New York State law to present its plans to the local community board.
The community board then has the opportunity to express its support or opposition to the plans, by voting on whether to advise the state Office for People With Developmental Disabilities — which has the final say — on how to proceed.
In this case, Community Board 18 voted its approval of Heart Share’s plan, but the state agency typically decides to permit the home based on a set of pre-established guidelines, not the local community board’s whim, according to Levin.
“There are very specific reasons as to why you cannot approve it,” she said. “Just because you don’t want the home next door to you, isn’t a reason to reject it.”
Levin, who manages some 30 homes across Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island, says that in her career she has been rejected by community boards on a few occasions, but never once on the state level.