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News & Events
October 2007
Lucy Arnaz - ”A Song Filled Evening “
Greenwich Country Club was the site of Pathways Annual Fall
Benefit. The evening began with cocktails and a silent
auction followed by dinner and a dazzling performance by TV
and Broadway Star Lucie Arnaz accompanied by David Friedman,
pianist, composer and songwriter.
The emcee for the evening was Bill Evans, Senior
Meteorologist for WABC,
Channel 7.
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Pathways celebrates new home
for clients
By Michael Dinan
Staff Writer
June 14, 2006
Board and staff members of a Greenwich nonprofit
organization that helps people with mental illness gathered
yesterday inside a refurbished and expanded Colonial-style
home that soon will house 10 of the agency's neediest
clients.
'What we're really giving people is a place to call home and
an opportunity to stay in the community,' Mary Guerrera,
executive director of Pathways Inc., said as she led town,
state and federal housing and mental health officials on a
tour of her agency's fourth group home, at 509 E. Putnam
Ave.
Pathways provides a home, job training and health and
support services for about 100 clients from Greenwich and
Stamford, including 28 people who live at the other three
Greenwich residences.
Guerrera said Pathways already has received more than 30
applications for a room in the new home at East Putnam
Avenue and Brookridge Drive, a project that required more
than a decade of fundraising and several years of
litigation.
The organization raised $900,000 in private donations to buy
the home between 1994 and 1997, but soon encountered
resistance from neighbors. Pathways has since developed a
positive, mutually respectful relationship with the
Brookridge District Association, Guerrera said. Association
members were among those sipping white zinfandel, iced tea
and munching cheese and crackers and grapes in the home's
expanded kitchen during the housewarming ceremony.
'This is a really nice example of a true public-private
partnership, and we needed both parts,' Guerrera said.
'Housing is definitely one of the most severe needs for
people with mental illness.'
The kitchen, complete with salmon-colored walls, Mexican
tiles, Corian countertops and oak cabinetry, connects the
original, 94-year-old house to a six-bedroom, six-bathroom
addition. Paul Selnau designed the addition as well as a
painted white trellis at the home's main entrance to bring
continuity to the entire structure, using the same
decorative eaves and red shadow shingles as the original
house.
The certificate of occupancy for the home should be issued
any day, Guerrera said, and Pathways soon will select its 10
residents from a pool of applicants. Preference likely will
be given to people who are homeless or at risk of becoming
homeless, she said.
The home is unique, Guerrera said, because Pathways won't
institute a length-of-stay requirement, as many other group
homes do. Residents will pay 30 percent of their income for
rent, she said, and stay for as long as they want to or are
disabled.
Michael Brody, associate director of a state agency that
serves as Fairfield County's mental health authority, was
among those who followed Guerrera on a tour of the home's
wraparound porch, Tudor-style community room and spacious
bedrooms.
'The setting is beautiful, which is a lot of what Pathways
does,' Brody, of the Southwestern Connecticut Mental Health
System, an agency of the state Department of Mental Health
and Addiction Services, said as he toured the home. 'This is
going to allow people to live in their community.'
Guerrera said DMHAS, private donors, board members and
others were instrumental in bringing the project to life.
Pathways obtained $875,000 in community development block
grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development. The organization also received more than $1.2
million from two other HUD programs. 'Several thousand
dollars' in private donations, Guerrera said, also have gone
into purchasing extra amenities such as a freshly paved
driveway, appliances and landscaping.
Renee Bigler, who founded Pathways in 1981 to provide a safe
home for people discharged from psychiatric hospitals, said
yesterday was 'extraordinary' for her.
'We're so excited about this,' she said. 'It's more than a
happy day, because these people --AOEjust because they're
ill, doesn't mean they should have substandard living
conditions.'
Copyright © 2006, Greenwich Time, All Rights Reserved.
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