Nurses To Open Home For Mentally Ill Assisted-Care Facility Will House 14 Residents Near Downtown

Two nurses seasoned on the wards of Eastern State Hospital hope to fill a hole in Spokane’s care for the mentally ill.

They’re opening a home next week for 14 people stable enough to live outside a hospital but still in need of medical help.

Susan Stachofsky and Janet Wheatley pursued the project after years of watching the same patients come and go from the large psychiatric hospital near Medical Lake.

“You’d get people well and then they’d walk out the door and you’d wonder how long will it be until they’re back,” said Stachofsky, administrator of the new Raymond Court at 518 S. Browne.

Stachofsky wants the assisted-living project to give the mentally ill a safer, healthier option than life inside the city’s grittiest apartment buildings.

She said most of her tenants will be people who have already burned relations with families and friends. “Nobody wants these people,” she said. “But we do. We love them. We really do.”

Instead of squalor, Raymond Court residents will get spacious rooms with microwaves, private bathrooms and refrigerators. The freshly remodeled three-story building in the city’s medical district once housed nursing home patients for the Regency South Care Center.

New tenants share a dining room with Monet prints on the wall, a laundry, a store and a beauty shop - run by a mentally ill beautician.

After leaving the hospital last fall, the two nurses pitched their project to county, state and federal officials.

Billed as the state’s first assisted-living project for the mentally ill, Raymond Court was designed as a cheap alternative to staff-heavy state institutions now facing budget cuts.

With a total medical staff of three nurses, five aides and an on-call house doctor, the project will meet the needs of patients for $61 a day - about a sixth of the daily tab at state institutions, Stachofsky said.

Carrol Hernandez, director of the state’s mental health division, said projects like Raymond Court make sense for some patients.

“If folks do not need the intensive care that a hospital would require, this would be the way to go,” she said.

Hernandez also said Raymond Court fits the state mandate to reduce patients at state institutions. “We’re looking real creatively at alternatives,” she said.

Kasey Kramer, administrator of Spokane County’s regional support network, called Raymond Court “a great building in a great location” - close to buses and hospitals.

Kramer said the project helps diversify the county’s mental health services, which help up to 4,000 people each month.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was interested enough in Raymond Court to approve an $860,000 five-year grant to help pay the rent.

So far, future tenants range from 43 to 65 years old. Many are diabetic, needing a nurse to remind them to take insulin shots. Most tenants will need anti-psychotic medication.

The other major tenant sharing the revamped building will be the New Horizon Care Centers of Spokane, which runs Isabella House, a Browne’s Addition substance-abuse project. New Horizon leaders hope to eventually purchase the building, now sporting the polish of about $800,000 in recent renovations by owner Mick McDowell.

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