Steve Thurston (2021)
State Sen. Dan Stec (R-45) greets people at the Cooper St. Apartments ribbon cutting ceremony.
About 100 people stood in the sunshine outside the Cooper St. Apartments in Glens Falls and celebrated the apartment complex that almost wasn’t.
At a ribbon cutting ceremony, state, county and local officials praised the 28-unit building aimed at helping individuals with mental illness and their families move from homelessness to their own homes. It was a day marked by speeches.
The facility will open to residents on Monday and will be full shortly after, said Andrea Deepe, the executive director of the Warren-Washington Association for Mental Health, which owns and developed the building. Mercer Construction was the contractor, according to signs on the property.
The building faced both a lawsuit from MMSI Properties, owned by Elizabeth Miller of Miller Mechanical, and a drop in state support during the pandemic, a story in the Post-Star says, but they broke ground in April 2020.
“A little bit over a year, not too bad" to get the job done, Deepe said. The process started in 2017.
Glens Falls Mayor Dan Hall, on hand for the ceremony, said the pandemic has made the need for mental health services even more necessary than normal.
“It’s exciting to see it come to some sort of a conclusion,” he said. “They’ve gotten by everything.”
During an introduction of the next presenter, Michael Bittel, executive director of the Adirondack Chamber of Commerce, which helps to host ribbon cuttings, paused to catch himself. His family, he said, has had troubles with mental illness, so he knows first hand what a facility like Cooper St. Apartments can mean.
“I’m blessed,” he said, his voice catching. He paused a moment to collect himself and continued, “to be here today, and this is a reality.”
The facility will offer the same services that their facility in Hudson Falls does, says Matt Ryan, the association’s director of supportive housing.
They follow the “housing first model” which believes in the idea that a person can focus on mental and physical health, that they can find a job and move back into society, only after they have stable housing, he said, adding, at that point, they “revert from survival mode, out.”
He said the association will meet their needs and offer wraparound support. Staff will be on hand 24/7 to act as sort of “case managers” he said.
Of the 28 units, four will be larger to accommodate families and the building has six emergency units.
To qualify, the person must meet low income standards under HUD rules; be homeless at the time of admission; and have one or more “secondary qualifiers,” a document distributed at the ceremony says. The qualifiers say a person must have severe and persistent mental illness; be a survivor of domestic violence, be chronically homeless; or be a young adult between 18 and 24 years old.
“We’re trying to help them [the final group] transition into adulthood,” Deepe said.
Kirk Lowell talked of his own troubles with mental illness and housing.
“I’ve been here two-and-a-half years,” he said of the association, which also runs a similar facility in Hudson Falls, “and I’m happy.”
He addressed the many state and local leaders: “What you’re doing is a great, great thing.”