This week, the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee (JBC) will discuss a proposal to close the Grand Junction Regional Center campus. The truth is, almost no one believes the campus should remain open. It is much too large and its outdated buildings are costly to maintain. At issue is what happens to the 28 severely disabled people who call it home. Many have lived there for years.
At the request of the JBC, the Colorado Department of Human Services (CDHS) submitted a recommendation for relocating the 28 people. Family members helped draft the plan and are in wholehearted agreement with its approach.
The recommendation calls for each person’s needs to be assessed individually and their personal choices honored. If someone wants to move to another city in Colorado, CDHS would assist in that transition. For those who opt to stay in Grand Junction, three or four new homes would be built to meet the unique needs of the people who would live in them.
There is a cheaper alternative, of course. The Regional Centers in Pueblo and Wheat Ridge have empty beds. People could be forced to relocate to one of those facilities. Such a move, however, would conflict with the direction set forth in the report just issued by the Regional Center Task Force. The task force — which deliberated for 18 months and included family members, advocates, health care professionals, state officials and legislators — concluded that people should be allowed choice in where they live and that any changes to their living situations should be voluntary.
Not surprisingly, the right to choose where one lives is also central to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Olmstead Decision addressing living conditions for people with disabilities.
For the sake of the people who live at the Grand Junction Regional Center and anxious family members who are awaiting a decision, the JBC should give residents and their families the opportunity to decide where they will live if the campus is closed.
Tim Hudner was co-chair of the Regional Center Task Force and is the father of a resident of the Grand Junction Regional Center.
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