Not in our back yard!
No group home with children with autism in our neighborhood, said residents of a neighborhood in Queens.
Of course, this could get very interesting. Let's look at some facts...
If one out of every 166 live births, or 150 births (depends on who you ask) result in a baby who develops autism, and a certain percentage of these children need a setting other than their homes....
Well, what then is the mathematical chance that you know one of these families? Or that you are related to someone in this circumstance?
Or that (like me) you are married to a sibling of a grown up who one day may need some kind of group home setting?
Sounds like shooting yourself in the foot to me.
Instead of saying "not here" the question becomes: where? It has to be somewhere.
Of course, nothing is every "that simple" What starts out as a NIMBY story turns out to be not that simple, because the neighborhood in question already has a group home - a block from the proposed group home.
Perhaps no happy ending-and no easy answer either. I'm not going to propose one either, except to say our society has to face this issue head on-and face it quickly.
That's what epidemics are all about.
One day those children are going to grow up.
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