County Leaves Mentally Ill In Squalor

Mentally ill suffer deadly neglect

With a promise of community care, psychiatric wards were unlocked 30 years ago. Today, the sickest patients live in squalor.

By MEG KISSINGER
mkissinger@journalsentinel.com

Posted: March 18, 2006

First of three parts

Tony Hall roasted to death in the stifling heat of an unregulated rooming house.

Street thugs murdered David Rutledge.

John Collins died after falling from his wheelchair, down the stairs of the unlicensed, mouse-infested group home where his Milwaukee County caseworker placed him. For months after Collins’ death, someone kept using his food stamps.

Abandoning Our Mentally Ill

Bessie Johnson sits on a bare mattress soaked in her urine in January, at a Milwaukee house where she lived for more than five years. The bag to the right is full of used toilet paper. She was moved to another home by her caseworker earlier this month. Both buildings had rats, roaches, broken toilets and a lack of heat.

A plate of discolored eggs and a bowl of mushy fruit salad are put out for breakfast at the boarding home owned by Lois Wimmer in Milwaukee. Residents pay $500 a month for food and rent.

Georgia’s Story

A hauntingly familiar tale: Georgia Rawling’s story reverberates across the years

About the Series
SUNDAY: Preyed upon by opportunists and neglected by the people we pay to care for them, hundreds of Milwaukee’s mentally ill people are fending for themselves. It’s killing them – literally.
MONDAY: How did filthy homes with questionable landlords and long lists of building code violations become acceptable housing for people with mental illness?
TUESDAY: A host of steps can be taken to make sure people with mental illness live in safe places. One of the first: Local bureaucrats need to stop ignoring the problem and blaming each other.
REACTION TO SERIES: The fallout from the series has resulted in Milwaukee County conducting an emergency meeting on housing, a call for reform and a vow to do more to protect people with mental illness who are living in squalor.

Willie Teague tells of looking into the bloody face of his friend David Rutledge after a group of youths fatally beat Rutledge in July 2004. The attack took place just a half-block from where Rutledge and Teague lived in a licensed group home.

John Budski, who has depression and schizophrenia, lives in a rooming house. He previously lived on his own but says the county would not come to his home to provide services.

Debra Rhodes keeps the toes of one foot bare despite freezing temperatures outside, as she watches traffic pass by her boarding home in January. People with chronic mental illness often lack the care they need.

The pantry is all but bare at Lois Wimmer’s group home in January. Four tenants live at the home, where food is included in the $500 rent. All the items on the shelves were past their recommended freshness dates.

Four tenants share this bathroom in January at Lois Wimmers boarding house at 2717 W. Vliet St. A razor and bloody tissue are lying on the floor. City inspectors in the past have found violations, including broken smoke alarms; overcrowding; open sewage; and electrical and plumbing violations.

Lois Wimmer of Milwaukee recalls her years running boarding homes for Milwaukees chronic mentally ill population. At one point, she had 15 rooming houses with up to 75 tenants but has closed all but one, on Vliet St.

Housing

Click to enlarge

How To Get Help
Whom to call with a complaint of illegal group homes or poor living conditions for people with mental illness:
State Bureau of Quality Assurance (608) 266-8481
City of Milwaukee Building Inspection: (414) 286-2268
County Board of Supervisors: (414) 278-4222
Milwaukee Common Council members: (414) 286-2221
Disability Rights Wisconsin
Milwaukee office: (414) 773-4646
Madison office: (608) 267-0214
Northern Wisconsin: (715) 736-1232
About the Reporting

Meg Kissinger
Kristyna Wentz-Graff

Journal Sentinel reporter Meg Kissinger and photojournalist Kristyna Wentz-Graff spent seven months interviewing people with mental illness, their families and neighbors, landlords, caseworkers, government officials and building inspectors, doctors and nurses. They also visited rooming houses, apartment buildings and subdivided homes where mentally ill people live. Kissinger analyzed hundreds of city building inspection records; county, state and federal files; court documents; and medical examiner’s reports.

Thirty years ago, a Milwaukee County lawsuit sparked a nationwide revolution in mental health care. Patients living in locked psychiatric hospital wards were released to live in freedom with the aid of new drug treatments.

An investigation by the Journal Sentinel has found that hundreds of today’s sickest patients suffer in the city’s most broken-down neighborhoods. Some are dying; others are preyed upon by opportunists and neglected by the people responsible for their care. They are not able to fend for themselves, and no one else is taking responsibility for them, despite being paid more than $10 million a year in tax dollars to do so.

In the first comprehensive accounting of Milwaukee’s severely ill mental patients, the newspaper found:

• Hundreds are living in illegal group homes and rooming houses – many of them filthy and dangerous, some deadly – which have sprung up as stealth mental hospitals to replace county wards.

• City building inspectors have failed to identify and close down these illegal homes. And they have never reported illegal group homes to the state licensing agency.

• County caseworkers, responsible for their clients’ well-being, regularly send them to these houses and apartments, despite knowing how filthy and dangerous the buildings are. This is a direct violation of a federal court agreement.

• State group home inspectors generally don’t investigate homes unless they are licensed. As a result, unlicensed, illegal group homes escape scrutiny.

• The federal government adds to the problem by allowing landlords to receive all of a tenant’s disability check directly, despite the obvious opportunity for exploitation.

• Bureaucrats point their fingers at each other, claiming someone else is responsible.

• The problem is especially pronounced in Milwaukee County, where most of the state’s mentally ill people live.

“It is a hidden and shameful thing that goes on here in Milwaukee,” said Tom Hlavacek, who served as chairman of the Milwaukee Mental Health Task Force until last year.

Just how bad are these places?

Ask Willie Teague how two of his buddies died.

On Aug. 7, 2000, city building inspectors got a complaint from some psychiatric caseworkers that Gene Gokhman, a Mequon businessman, was running an illegal group home in his apartment building at 4276 N. 27th St. The caller said eight men, all mentally ill, were living there, signing over their Social Security checks to Gokhman. Inspectors visited eight days later but said they weren’t able to verify that the building was a group home.

Case managers for the county complained again, months later, this time about broken toilets and the lack of heat in the building. City inspectors went back out in January 2001 and found merit to the complaint, but again did not cite the building as an illegal group home or fine Gokhman.

On July 22, 2001, Teague awoke in choking heat and found his roommate, Tony Hall, 34, sprawled out on the couch, dead from heat stroke. Hall was on anti-psychotic medication, which inhibited his ability to regulate body temperature. The home lacked enough ventilation ; Hall died of “environmental hyperthermia.”

Teague ran as fast as he could to a pay phone down the block to let police know. They carted away Hall’s body before the rats that roamed the rooms at night could get to it. Hall’s core body temperature was 100 degrees at the time of his autopsy, which was performed more than five hours after he was found dead.

Police found a notice, near the back door, requiring that the building be boarded and the tenants be vacated. It was signed by the city and dated 10 days earlier.

Scott Ivanowski, Hall’s psychiatric case manager, told police that he had been to Hall’s apartment many times and was aware of the conditions. His former co-workers said he was so upset about Hall’s death that he quit his job and moved away.

Teague took his friend’s death hard, too. He went into a spiral after Hall died, crying often and saying he wanted to be with his mother, Lilly, who had died years earlier. He became combative and eventually ended up in jail for battery. Teague still talks about how much he misses Hall.

“He was a real good guy,” Teague said. “He was my friend.”

Gokhman said he had no idea when he bought the building in 2000 that people with severe mental illness lived there. He admitted that his employee used to feed the men their meals from one common area, in violation of city code. The men had no refrigerators or stoves in their living areas.

“The guy who sold it to me didn’t say nothing about it. I didn’t know it was a group home until later,” said Gokhman. He said he didn’t get a license because he didn’t know he needed one.

Gokhman said he ran errands for the men.

“I helped these guys a lot,” said Gokhman, who confirmed that he had the men sign over their disability checks to him.

Gokhman sold the building in May to a company based in Las Vegas for $305,000, more than twice what he had paid for it five years earlier.

Gokhman didn’t remember details about Hall’s death.

“I was out of town. But I heard it was real hot that week,” he said.

If you also blame Scott Walker, please call him at 414-278-4211 and demand that he protect the mentally ill.