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Housing For Homeless Quads

Creator: n/a
Date: 1963
Publication: Toomey J Gazette
Source: Gazette International Networking Institute


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WHERE WILL I GO
if I outlive my parents?
if something happens to my wife?
when my children are ready to marry?

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Handicapped young adults are haunted by these ever-present fears.

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In the past, the few extremely disabled who lived and survived beyond their families, were consigned to a living burial in a County Home for the senile.

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The present has little more to offer although, in the last two decades, antibiotics and other medical discoveries have created a new and ever-growing population of able-minded young people who live on, healthfully, in spite of extreme physical limitations.

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Obviously, their accomplishments show clearly that, with their own determination and some commonsense assistance, they can be successfully and economically employed, can raise their families and serve their communities.

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But assistance is essential to their living and productivity. Now, before their present assistants are gone, their "Where will I go?" must be answered.

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Morally, institutionalizing young people with so many potentialities for service is wrong. One answer lies in small co-operative residence homes in which the residents have freedom and privacy to live -- not merely exist.

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Because each handicapped individual is unique, the problem is a local one. His needs can best be accommodated in or near his own community. The nature of the problem suggests that local community action and active leadership by the major voluntary health agencies concerned would evolve answers to this chronic and growing problem.

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Examples of various types of residence homes throughout the world, already in operation or planned, are presented on the following fifteen pages. It is our hope that these examples will be followed by similar voluntary undertakings in many communities to prevent these important human beings from becoming superfluous people, in the worst sense of the word.

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-- The Editors

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