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.

 

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.