Mentally Ill Find Refuge Off Streets Trinity Group Homes Wants Own Site

Marie made her way sleeping on the streets of Spokane, selling pastel portraits for $5 apiece.

Then she moved to the safest place she could imagine - near the Coeur d’Alene police station - using a sleeping bag she obtained from a St. Vincent de Paul store.

She’s not sure how long Coeur d’Alene has been her home, a place where she often has subsisted without money or medication. But it’s preferable to Eastern State Hospital at Medical Lake, says Marie, who prefers not to use her real name because of the stigma that goes with being mentally ill.

In most communities, people like Marie are a special class of homeless, taunted with names like “Batty Betty” or “Crazy Charlie” - if they are noticed at all.

But in Coeur d’Alene, a small number of them are afforded refuge at Trinity Group Homes, a low-key place for functional but mentally ill people to gain some independence and learn to live on their own. A fund-raiser is now under way to help Trinity provide better housing for its clients.

“Like most of us, people with mental illnesses want to maintain independence for as long as they can,” explained Gail Vorse.

Trinity Group Homes was started 15 years ago by mental health workers, a pastor and the parents of some of the clients. They were worried about turning the mentally ill out on the streets.

That beginning was “two old crummy homes,” Vorse says, where “the inventory went: two fry pans, one with a broken handle.”

It was still better than what Trinity’s residents normally know. “Here they are poised to move into the community,” Vorse says. “To have to go back into the hospital means a step back in the client’s mind. It’s such a drain on taxpayers.”

Trinity has graduated to two somewhat better rentals, one of them a large, nondescript frame house in a quiet Coeur d’Alene neighborhood. But Trinity dreams of building its own duplex with handicap access, bigger living rooms, a more accommodating kitchen. And more stability.

Because the group homes are rentals, “the concern is somebody else is going to buy it and the residents worry they will have to move,” Vorse said.

Instability panics Marie. She tried living in an apartment but was haunted by the loneliness.

“I have really awful psychosis,” Marie explains. “I was having problems with nervous breakdowns. But I feel safe here … having people to talk to about my problems, camaraderie, having structured time, being able to do my artwork.”

She shakes her head and shuffles just-finished sketches - black-andwhite pastel lines rubbed onto matte board she receives for free from a local frame shop. One sketch depicts Jesus; one a Native American.

Her stunning sketch of Einstein stares down from her wall. Other walls hold other portraits, proof of the talent she has cultivated since childhood.

Marie is donating some of her portraits to the silent auction Trinity is holding this week to raise money for a new home. Her pieces and the work of the likes of well-known Lake City artist Sarah Gates are on display at Capers Restaurant through Saturday.

Money always is tight. Trinity doesn’t have many easy fund-raising options.

“We are never going to have any poster children,” Vorse says. “So we beg, we borrow, we work for cheap.”

The auction’s offerings include a short story that Trinity resident Emily wrote and then stitched into a barn-wood frame. Emily has been here since last April, when she promised her brother, on his death bed, she would move here.

He worried about her existence in one of the outlying towns, says Emily, who also prefers not to be identified by her real name. She took his concern as kindness.

“He never said, like the rest of my family, ‘You are just sick, Emily; you need to let others make decisions for you,”’ she says.

A child of the 1950s, Emily had chronic depression in a time when doctors didn’t catch it or simply medicated patients into a vegetative state, she says. Her family barely tolerated her. They locked her up at State Hospital North in Orofino when they went on vacation.

She found some comfort with a family living over the hill from the ranch where she grew up. “When I couldn’t function, they let me live at their house and feed critters,” Emily remembers.

Living in rural North Idaho posed numerous problems. Emily had to beg rides to Coeur d’Alene, to the doctor, to the pharmacy. She became a hermit rather than deal with the townspeople who tormented her with demeaning names.

Her neighbor called her landlord once a week to say she needed to go to the hospital. That neighbor didn’t want to live next door to someone with a mental illness.

Here at the Trinity home, Emily can enjoy a quiet lunch at a downtown restaurant. She functions as house mother, even shampooing carpets when other residents move on.

“I’ve always wanted to own a boarding house,” Emily says of her willingness to clean up after others.

Doctors didn’t officially diagnose Emily’s problems until the late 1980s. But her life didn’t even out until she came to Trinity.

Emily raises tomatoes. She responds with a flashlight and a keen eye when the elderly woman living next door to the group home calls about hearing strange noises in the night. She mixes with other people in the neighborhood during barbecues and garage sales and revels in being treated as another human being.

“I feel safe here; that’s the main thing,” Emily said. “At home, I’d get afraid, get panic attacks and anxiety attacks. Those haven’t happened since I moved here.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: AUCTION The first annual Trinity Group Homes Valentine art auction runs through Feb. 14 at Capers Restaurant in Coeur d’Alene. The artwork is on display at Capers during regular business hours. The proceeds will help build a new home for mentally disabled people. For more information call 664-9036.