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14 Dev. Mental Health L. 1 (1994)

handle is hein.journals/dvmnhlt14 and id is 1 raw text is: Developments in Mental Health Law Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy - The University of Virginia Volume 14, Number I January - June 1994 Housing Discrimination and the Mentally Ill: the Impact of Federal Law by John Petrila, J.D., LL.M * In 1984, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) published a report on housing and the treatment of people who were homeless and mentally ill (Lamb, 1984). The APA report stressed the importance of housing in enabling people with mental illness to live successfully in the community. Prior to the report's publication, many mental health professionals viewed housing as a social welfare issue: important, but not a responsibility of treating professionals. The report effectively eliminated that distinction. Since then, a number of studies have reaffirmed the critical role that housing plays in com- munity-based treatment (Baker and Douglas, 1990; Fields, 1990; Ridgway and Zipple, 1990). Surveys of primary consumers of mental health services and their families consistently suggest that stable housing is often more important than mental health treatment to successful commu- nity residence (Harp, 1993; Tanzman, 1993; Tanzman, Wilson, and Yoe, 1992). Despite the critical importance of housing, people with mental illness often have difficulty in obtaining access to it. A major obstacle to access is discrimination (Alisky and Iczkowski, 1990; Trute, Teffi, and Segall, 1990) often based on fear of people with disabilities and on concern that property values will decrease if people with mental illness move into a neighborhood (Ellis, 1992; Boydell, Trainor, and Pierri, 1989). State and municipal laws also have created barriers to housing by imposing special requirements and restrictions for the location and operation of housing for people with disabilities; the United States Supreme Court created a legal environ- ment in which at least such restrictions some restrictions under the rational might survive legal Also in this issue: basis test, the challenge by ruling in judicial test most 1985 that it would In the Virginia Courts 4 likely to result in the review equal protec- upholding of govern- tion challenges to In the Federal Courts 5 mental action (City of Cases from other States 10 Cleburne, 1985). *Professor of Law, In 1988, Congress University of South Essay 20 enacted the Fair Florida Housing Act Amend-

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