October 22, 2001
For more information, contact:
Bob Kafka (512) 431-4085 cell
Marsha Katz (406) 544-9504 cell

ADAPT Shuts Down S.F. City Hall and Wins Meeting with Mayor Brown

(SAN FRANCISCO) Mayor Willie Brown narrowly escaped delivering his State of the City address to an empty room in City Hall when 500 ADAPT protesters closed off the front and back entries for several hours along with all the intersections surrounding the building. As his 3 p.m. press conference drew near, the Mayor agreed to meet with ADAPT at 9a.m. Wednesday morning to discuss community based alternatives to the rebuilding of city owned Laguna Honda Hospital, the nation's largest nursing home.

Protesters surrounded the City Hall block, filled all the intersections and cordoned them off with yellow crime scene tape that read "Laguna Honda, Tear Down the Walls." ADAPT is protesting the rebuilding of Laguna Honda with public money instead of putting the funds into community based alternatives for seniors and persons with disabilities. ADAPT's "Vision for Community Services and Supports in San Francisco" was delivered to the mayor before the group dispersed once Brown agreed to a meeting. The vision statement cited the U.S. Supreme Court's 1999 decision in Olmstead v. L.C. and E.W. , which declared that "Unnecessary institutionalization is discrimination."

"With that decision," said Clark Goodrich of ADAPT Michigan, "the Supreme Court changed the debate on long term care from "if" people could receives services and supports in the community to "how" the states are going to plan to provide community based services. A Laguna Honda that warehouses people in 30 bed wards at a cost of $400/day typifies the failed local, state and national policy on long term care. Rebuilding Laguna Honda is just plain wrong when there are so many San Francisco residents who are crying out for community alternatives."

ADAPT is asking Mayor Brown and Governor Davis, with any needed federal assistance, to implement the following strategies in order to provide community based services and avoid the need to rebuild Laguna Honda Hospital; apply for and fund more Medicaid waivers; require that money spent on institutions follow the person into the community for personal care services and housing subsidies; increase the current hours available in the personal assistance services program to 24 per day, seven days a week; assure that families caring for family members at home have access to an intensive respite care program; assure that hospital discharge planners and social workers divert people from nursing homes by identifying all applicable community options; create salary equity between community based providers and institutional ones; contract with community based organizations to assist in identifying and diverting people from nursing homes and other institutions; create a menu of housing options."

"For several years I've been making weekly visits to Laguna Honda to help people move out who want to live in the community," said Jana Overbo, of San Francisco's Independent Living Resource Center.
"I want Mayor Brown to know about all the unhappy people I've met there who want to move out. Two of the women I assisted died before they could move out and that devastates me. People shouldn't have to die to leave Laguna Honda. There's a better way. We want community services now."

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