a proven method for 22 years

Over twenty-two years,  I have developed a definite and proven method for how to deal with stigma which will be described later in this message and in my memoir. Of course, within the buildings, stigma was never a problem because everyone lived together as a community, so there was mutual understanding and empathy, which are not compatible with stigma. (Think about that.)

We have all expressed concern for the suicide rate among the mentally ill as well as the many problems caused by stigma.   My twenty-two years of experience providing supervised room & board for hundreds of seriously mentally ill individuals have made it necessary for me to give a great deal of thought and reflection to both situations. So later in this message and in my memoir, I will be offering my thoughts and experience with suicide and stigma as well as how to build a community.

The memoir itself makes an interesting coffee table book with 197 pages on 8.5" X 11" stock, and 497 photos, not including the cover. The photos alone reveal what a community looks like. It also makes a detailed handbook for anyone interested in emulating our methods. I would be interested in a conversation with anyone even mildly considering duplicating our model and sharing my experience. For starters, think about economy of scale, the benefits to the residents, putting purposeful use to buildings that are no longer being used for their original purpose. And, what a wonderful project for any church or other charitable institution that could “adopt” a particular facility so to speak, to provide volunteers. The use of volunteers would bring folks to become involved and sharing favorable stories of their time with victims of serious mental illness, having a real affect on stigma, in other words we would all be getting to know each other, all while helping to keep expenses down. I will be offering more on this in the near future.  I have no secrets and only hope that others will copy us because I've witnessed how the residents responded to our program with many smiles, grins, and success stories. This email contains all of my contact information, so I will be more than happy to answer any questions you may have.

I have spent twenty-two splendid and fulfilling years of my long life developing and operating a unique pair of residential “communities” designed to provide room & board and TLC for 180 adults living with an array of life-changing disabilities, which consisted predominantly of serious mental illness. It was a very successful venture and created a much admired model by building a community rather than just warehousing them, and this model should be duplicated wherever there is a need.

We are all concerned for the suicide rate among the mentally ill. So when sitting down to write my memoir, I first thought about the suicide rate and realized that we never experienced a resident to commit suicide or even attempt suicide or have an overdose, so that should be an easy answer; however, the follow-up question should be, why didn't we have any suicides or attempts?  You will find my thoughts on that in the rest of this email and in my memoir also. Hint, you will learn how to create a community instead of a warehouse.They certainly don’t belong in a warehouse. In those twenty-two years, we produced hundreds of happy smiles and grins, with zero suicides, attempted suicides, or overdoses. I firmly believe, intellectually and in my heart of hearts, that this outcome resulted because, in the setting we created, they had a reason to live and they could escape judgment for something they had no control over. They lived and thrived in a community where they never experienced social isolation, where they could love and be loved freely and could feel proud and needed. They even learned how to relax and have fun. Those are rights that every child of God is born with, and those rights should never be sacrificed by the ignorance of a bigot. We made sure they always had something to look forward to as well. Unfortunately, it ended abruptly, putting all of the residents out of their home when a new local Alderman/attorney decided that he didn’t want “those people” to live in his neighborhood, in spite of never setting foot inside the buildings.  That is called Structural Stigma against the mentally ill. We need to fix that.

I have hopes that you will find my memoir’s contents, along with my suggestions for eliminating mental illness stigma, worthy of your recommending it to your friends, fans, constituents, and your colleagues. It presents some unique, innovative, and compassionate ideas that I employed in my twenty-two years of serving our mutual friends. It will demonstrate, with many dozens of photos, more than 40 vignettes and examples of how we successfully created a community rather than a warehouse for our residents and how we were able to keep suicide, suicide attempts and drug overdoses to zero. And the bonus was that I, along with my staff, the many volunteers, caseworkers, and our board members, thoroughly enjoyed interacting with the residents, especially while witnessing the smiles on their faces during the many activities we organized and shared with them.

The story as described in my memoir follows the unplanned birth and development of Housing With Help Inc., which operated the two supported boarding homes, with a total of 180 beds, located near Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It began when I accepted a 13-year-old, 94-room, distressed and nearly empty boarding home instead of a real estate commission. Five years later, I added another 86 beds with a second building, and together, they eventually became a nonprofit, Housing With Help, Inc.

FIRST A WORD ABOUT STIGMA  (Be assured, this is hypothetical) Suppose a group of aliens from another planet got hold of a stack of media scripts from newspapers from any urban community and they were able to decipher the writing, thereby reading all the headlines and viewing all the pictures but they never got to meet us or know us. What do you think they would think of us? My guess is that after reading all the headlines that said things like: • "Shooting leaves X injured…", • "Manhunt underway after fatal stabbing…", Police investigate suspected homicide in…", • "Thieves steal thousands in smash-and-grab jewelry heist…", • "Homeowners on high alert after rash of daytime burglaries…", • "Identity theft ring busted by federal agents…", • "Tech CEO indicted in multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme…",• "Phishing scam targets local bank customers..."  ed it. In their eyes we would be stigmatized. That is about as simple as I can make my point. And what is the only thing that would change their opinion and attitude about us?  That would entail making sure we all get to know each other better.  So therein lies the problem, and our mission. We have been chasing the stigma, which is the problem, but we need to go deeper and fix the cause of the problem. We just plain don’t know each other well enough to form trust and a bond so the stigma continues. The obvious conclusion is, let’s fix that. Lets do what ever it takes to get to know them.  Let everyone get to know them in the same way that, I and others who serve them do and stigma would disappear.

Research published by the American Psychological Association indicates that only 7.5% of crimes committed by individuals with serious mental disorders are directly tied to active psychiatric symptoms (such as acute psychosis or unmanaged depression), with the majority of offenses linked to external factors like substance use, poverty, or homelessness.

I chose the word endearing in the title of my memoir because I got to know them very well and discovered that most are indeed endearing personalities. It's my true story as a real estate broker who, with no prior experience working with victims of mental illness goes on a two-decade-long unplanned odyssey while creating and operating residential facilities, where I befriend hundreds of endearing characters while providing room and board and TLC for hundreds of indigent men and women who had an assortment of disabilities. Most were struggling to find the most meaningful life possible while learning to accept the finality of living with their Serious Mental Illness.

But because my story is not only about the buildings, I revised my memoir to focus on and discuss more about stigma. It's mostly about the struggles, the dreams, and the endearing personalities of the many people who came there and called it their home as they tried to salvage what was left of their lives after they became disabled. It's about how they were rejected by much of society, often including family, because of the stigma, but here they found each other and became a community of peers who shared a common struggle of living with their burden. For some, Housing With Help was a stepping stone on the road to more independent living, and for others, it was as far as they could go, and they could continue living in a community of friends who were just like them and not be judged or rejected.

Here is where your help comes in. I'm hoping to get as many copies of Memories of Endearing Personalities out into circulation as possible to spread the word that our friends who live with serious mental illness are just interesting very likeable folks with a disability. They need and deserve the same kind of support and empathy offered to those who are victims of any other kind of serious illness. I’m not looking to make a fortune on sales, but I’m interested in saturation so that as many people as possible get the message. Memories of Endearing Personalities is available only on Amazon, priced at $6.50 for Kindle and $15.95 for a B&W coffee table size, printed 8.5X11with (179 pages). And 497 photos not including the cover.

Yes, promoting this very important effort will take quite a bit of organizing. I’m aware that this is an unusual way to promote an idea; however, I recently turned 88 years old with my own age-related physical disabilities. Therefore, I’m relying on help from others, including some key mental illness advocacy organizations, writers, celebrity advocates, and anyone I can come up with who has displayed an interest in advocating for the mentally ill. Those good people will be receiving a similar request to do the hard part of participating in this effort in any way they can offer.

As one strategy, we can try to convince TV and movie producers that a series or a movie would certainly improve the public perception of those who suffer from mental illness. If their day-to-day life struggles could be portrayed as they actually are, it might awaken some empathy from the masses. Not just in a supportive situation like Housing With Help, but shown where they came from when they were, broke, homeless, and abandoned.  Perhaps true stories showing rejection by friends and family, even to the extreme, like some of our residents who had a memo in their file that read “Family has requested that we not contact them unless he/she dies.” We need to shine a bright light on stories and incidents that tug on people’s heartstrings enough to result in a call to action. I have sent messages to selected individuals such as writers and producers in the entertainment industry with a request that they get on board by producing series or movies. And here is the whipped cream with a cherry on top, described in a June 2025 Forbes article at the link below.

Emmy Effect: Why Mental Health Stories Are Hollywood’s Best Investment. The timing could not be better.

Stigma toward the mentally ill is a shameful part of our culture, but here are some examples of how entertainment as well as intellectual media has used its influence to turn those attitudes around.

After the war in Vietnam, the veterans were seriously looked down upon, insulted, shunned, and even spat upon. The movie and TV series M*A*S*H, along with Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan, thoroughly changed perception, and today the military is almost revered, so when learning that someone is a veteran, we thank them for their service as it should be.

Everyone knows what people used to think about nerds, but then along came "The Big Bang Theory" and suddenly they're hip.

“The Jeffersons” showed that the American Dream is available to all, regardless of skin color, and exposed the racist as a fool.

Remember what the mini-series, Roots, did for race relations? It's all about communicating the history that's pertinent but not taught in school.

The series, The Love Boat, introduced the middle class to cruising, creating a boom for that industry that extended even to the shipbuilding industry.

The TV series, Sex and the City has changed attitudes of a younger generation, making women more accepted and comfortable staying single through their 30s and 40s.

Think of what you knew about autism before my friend, Barry Morrow, introduced us to it with the Academy Award winning movie, Rain Man. What is your attitude toward victims of autism now? If you have a pulse, the word compassion should come to mind.

Even as long ago as 1946, “The Adventures of Superman” radio serial exposed a version of the KKK to about 3.5 million children, bringing much praise to the producers of the program and humiliating the Klan. The Klan's immature and silly handshakes, passwords, and other rituals were all exposed and made fun of, resulting in a severe loss in Klan membership, and it continues to drop to this day. Check out the book, “Superman Versus the Ku Klux Klan: The True Story of How the Iconic Superhero Battled the Men of Hate” by Richard Bowers. It was also recently shown on “The Way I Heard It”, with Mike Rowe.

Another old one, the 1850s book, Uncle Tom's Cabin, profoundly affected the country by fueling the abolitionist movement in the North and increasing sectional tensions that contributed to the Civil War. The novel's emotional narrative portrayed the brutalities of slavery, which many in the North saw as truthful, while the South condemned it as a false and exaggerated attack on their way of life. Its lasting impact also includes shaping discussions on race, morality, and civil rights, which continue today. 

Of course, persistent media exposure can have the reverse effect. What else could turn the morals and highlighted criminal activity in “The Godfather” and “The Sopranos” into being accepted as "cool"?

Jonathan Roumie, the actor portraying Jesus in The Chosen, shares how the series has profoundly impacted viewers, including atheists who found faith after watching.

We as well can use the power of the media for the benefit of the seriously mentally ill.

So, it is obvious that persistent media exposure has the power to shape people’s thinking, good or bad. A great conversation starter would be, "Can you think of even more examples?"