New York Times Profiles For-Profit Home for People with Mental Illness

The April 18 New York Times profiles Queens, N.Y.-based Leben Home for Adults, the "largest for-profit home for the mentally ill in New York," which the state has "annually deemed ... unacceptable quarters." Residents moved into Leben as part of New York's effort in the 1970s to move people with mental illness out of psychiatric institutions and into "more humane settings." But since then, the home has "amassed a record of neglect and misconduct." Last year, the state "forced" the home to evacuate residents on the first floor, "a warren of crumbling walls and fetid mattresses where 60 people lived." The Times reports that in recent years a resident was run over by a train before the home reported him missing, a janitor raped a resident and two residents were murdered. Jacob Rubin, the home's operator, has been sued for allegedly misappropriating thousands of dollars from residents, trying to withhold psychiatric treatments and being involved in a 1998 "scheme" in which 24 residents were forced to consent to "often unnecessary" prostate surgery. The state fined Rubin $60,000 for his involvement in the prostate-surgery incident and now is trying to revoke his license. State Health Department spokesperson John Signor said, "We are looking for dramatic, widespread immediate changes" at Leben. Rubin said that he has "never provided poor care or exploited residents" and attributes the home's problems to "inadequate financing from the state." While the state would like to close the home, it "has been reluctant to do so" because it would require "an expensive effort to find beds elsewhere for the mentally ill," the Times reports. Clarence Sundram, former chair of the New York Quality of Care Commission, said the state "has had a history of completely ineffective regulation of [the mentally ill residence] industry" (Levy/Kershaw, New York Times, 4/18).