A Home of Their Own Offers Hope for a More Stable Future

As soon as her children grew up and left home, the “others” took over Judy Kerrigan’s life.

The one who called herself “Erica” dyed Kerrigan’s hair purple and stole a car. “Polly” had Kerrigan climbing under furniture and sucking her thumb when she was afraid. “Jane” played the earth mother. And there were many more.

Those alternate personalities, combined with alcohol and drug abuse, left Kerrigan’s life in a hopeless state of disarray. The former Reseda resident had been homeless for 10 years, so long that she wondered if she could ever live on her own again.

But since January, even Kerrigan has been amazed at how a home of her own has helped turn her life around.

At the Fox Normandie Apartments, she not only has a roof over her head but the support of people who have struggled much like her. Knock on any door at this new 48-unit apartment building in Koreatown and you will find the residents all battling mental illness while trying to keep homelessness at bay.

“People in this building have really fought and struggled to be able to function in society,” Kerrigan, 52, said with pride. “Nobody sits here on their butts. Everybody is doing something for their life.”

The residents have help in that effort from A Community of Friends, a nonprofit organization that provides affordable housing and support services to the mentally disabled.

On Thursday, residents, elected officials and funders attended a dedication ceremony for the six-story red brick apartment complex, which opened in January. Mental health experts say the new apartments--in a refurbished building--are part of the solution to a daunting problem.

“In terms of mental health services in L.A. County, [housing] is probably the most significant issue that we have not been able to address,” said Marvin Southard, who heads the county Department of Mental Health.

“If you’re worried about where you’re going to spend the night,” he said, “that’s going to contribute to any mental health problem that you have.”

An estimated 25% to 50% of the 236,000 homeless people in Los Angeles County each year suffer from mental illness.

A Community of Friends has developed 15 affordable apartment complexes in the county for the mentally ill.

With a total of 596 units, those buildings only begin to address the need.

The organization financed the $5-million Fox Normandie project with funds from the Los Angeles Homeless Service Agency, Bank of America, Cal Fed, Federal Home Loan Bank and Enterprise Social Investment Corp., which invests in affordable housing by purchasing federal tax credits.

In addition to providing homes, Fox Normandie helps residents make the transition from homelessness by offering other types of assistance.

“Our experience has taught us that on-site support services combined with a healthy dose of self-reliance is just as important as the roof over the resident’s head,” said Monique Lawshe, executive director of A Community of Friends.

Residents of the Fox Normandie were all homeless, though some have previously lived at other residential facilities that prepared them for independent living, Lawshe said.

Two full-time case managers assist residents with an array of issues such as enrolling in schools, applying for benefits, locating medical care and reuniting with relatives.

“Many times homeless persons aren’t able to reunite with their children until they can demonstrate they have a safe, affordable, decent place to live,” Lawshe said.

The tenants pay rent using subsidies from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Under the program, they contribute 30% of their income toward rent.

What they receive in return is more than just shelter. It is an opportunity, tenants said, to begin to build their lives.

For Kerrigan, suffering from mental illness and addiction meant losing her home and the respect of her children.

In another life, she said, she was a woman who seemed to rise to every challenge: a single mother who raised three children, including twin autistic boys; took in three foster children, including another autistic child; pushed for the interests of disabled children; and cared for her aging relatives.

Then the children grew older and no longer needed her. And her fragile hold on reality loosened, she said.

“As long as I had all that stuff I had to do, I held it together,” she said. “I was like super woman, but I burned out.”

Then the mental illness worsened. Her abuse of prescription drugs and alcohol, which existed before, became excessive. During 10 years of homelessness, she overdosed, lost two households full of possessions (hers and her mother’s), was convicted of writing prescriptions and ended up facing a judge who wanted to commit her to a mental hospital for a year, she said.

It was years into her illness when Kerrigan was finally diagnosed as having dissociative identity disorder.

She bounced from program to program, then landed at Portals Mental Health Rehabilitation Services in Los Angeles’ Westlake area, where she began a life of sobriety. The sobriety, combined with therapy, allowed her to overcome her fear that she would not be able to live independently.

Now each day in her new place reminds her of how much her life has changed. She loves her large studio apartment. Many of her neighbors are friends from Portals.

The medication she now takes controls her mental illness, so much so that Kerrigan has been able to enroll at Los Angeles City College, she said.

“She is a triumph of human resiliency,” said Daniel Ruark, a Beverly Hills therapist who treats Kerrigan. “I’ve seen her report cards. She’s had nothing but straight A’s.”

Kerrigan’s family life is changing as well.

“It’s like a whole new relationship for them and me,” she said of her children. “I’m seeing they’re able to trust me now. They respect me now.”

But many grateful Fox Normandie residents know that a new home is only part of the solution.

David Basford, 36, has AIDS and suffers from clinical depression. The diagnosis when he was 23, followed by the loss of so many friends to AIDS, exacerbated the major depression he had suffered for years.

“I would just sit and stare at a wall an hour or two or all night long,” he said, “and I’d feel so alone and so separate.”

For a long time, he tried to ignore the diagnosis. But in February 2000, he became unable to work and was forced to move out of his apartment. For months he slept on friends’ couches. By June, he had written a suicide note.

Moving into the Fox Normandie did not bring immediate relief.

“When I first stood in my apartment with my key in my hand, I wish I could say I felt an overwhelming feeling of relief and gratitude,” he wrote in an essay describing his transition. “But I did not. . . . I had lost too many things: my home, my health, my vision of who I was.”

The key that opened his new apartment also unlocked a huge wave of depression.

“I got depressed because I no longer had to deal with the pressures of finding a home,” he said.

Now on medication to control his depression, he is spending his time at the Fox like many of his neighbors.

“My goals right now are to sit still in one place and take care of first things first, my health,” he said. “Not taking care of myself and ignoring it and pretending I wasn’t sick got me homeless.”