Housing: Communities & Institutions

Over history, most people have had no secure housing. People labelled as having an intellectual disability could end up living in different places, depending on when and where the person lived. Institutions were not the only, or even the most common place to live.

CLICK on one of the following headings or scroll down the page!

• Home Living
• The Poor House
• The Work House
• Asylums
• Institutions in the Twentieth Century
• The Community Living Movement
• Self-Determination in Housing - the Future?

  Home Living

  Most people labelled as having disabilities lived in their communities for most of recorded history. Communities often looked after people who could not support themselves. These people included those who were sick as well as those with disabilities. Often, though, what we label "disabilities" today were not the same, or were not thought to be disabilities, in the past. However, some people (although probably not as many as today) were still labelled.

  France, Britain, and North America two hundred years ago, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the most common living place for people labelled as having an intellectual disability was still at the home of their family. This was a time when several generations would often live close together - children, parents, and grandparents. Most adults lived close to their parents.

  If families were not too poor and could look after their own members, they did so at home. If a wealthy family had a member with a disability, they sometimes would pay poorer families to look after that person. This is what happened in the family of the writer Jane Austen: her brother George was sent to a family in a town about 15 miles away, where he lived for all his life.

  But it wasnÕt so easy for poor people. Sometimes, poor families would be supported by their parish. That meant that the church and political leaders in their home town or area would make sure they had enough money to live. This money would come from charity - it would be given to them by other members of their parish. But if people didnÕt find a way of looking after themselves, sooner or later they moved into the Poor House.

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The Poor House

People labelled (usually as "simple," "foolish," or "idiots") in the 18th century, if their families could not afford to look after them, were looked after by their parish. This meant that they would live in a parish "poor house," an institution where all of the people who could not support themselves ended up. Sometimes entire families lived in these poor houses. They were much like prisons, with people living on very little food and in cold cells. But only people who were considered "deserving" of help could live in the poor house. People with intellectual disabilities, and their families, were considered to be "deserving poor" because it was not their fault that they were poor.

The Work House

In the early 19th century, poor houses closed and were replaced by work houses. Work houses were like poor houses in that they were isolated buildings where people who could not afford to look after themselves ended up. However, these people had to work in order to stay in the work house.

Poor people with disabilities, and their families as well, often ended up in work houses.

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Asylums

"Lunatic" asylums have existed since the 1500s hundreds of years, but most of these asylums were only allowed to admit people who were thought to be "lunatics" - that is, they were thought to be insane, but perhaps curable. In the 18th and early 19th centuries in France, though, some institutions contained people who were labelled as having intellectual disabilities (or "idiocy", as the label was known then). These asylums, such as the Bicetre, were often filled with people dressed in old rags and living in small cells on a straw-covered floor.

In Britain, the United States and Canada at the same time, there were no institutions for people with intellectual disabilities. There were only "lunatic asylums" for people who were considered "insane." Sometimes these asylums accepted people labelled as "idiots", even though they were not supposed to, because these people made good workers in the asylum. Usually, however, they did not accept them.

People who would have been labelled as having intellectual disabilities didnÕt live in asylums in North America and Britain until the middle of the nineteenth century.

Specialized "idiot asylums", as they were then called, first opened in the 1840s in France, Britain (The National Asylum for Idiots - also called the Highgate Asylum - in 1847) and in the USA (the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded opened in Barre in 1848). In Canada, the first institution was the Asylum for Adult Idiots, opened in 1872 as a branch of the London Lunatic Asylum in Ontario. The Orillia Asylum, an independent institution especially for people labelled "idiots", opened in 1877.

They were first meant to be like boarding schools. People were supposed to attend these institutions for no longer than five years. While they were there, they were to be taught how to live on their own in society.

However, before too long institutions became places where people were sent to live until they died.

Asylums had two main forms: the "village" and the dormitory/ hospital. In the "village", a group of houses would be built in the countryside, and people would live, with the institution staff, in these houses. They would usually work at farming the land around the village. Villages were also called colonies.

In the dormitory/ hospital arrangement, people lived in wards in one large building or set of buildings. During the day, they might work in workshops on different jobs. The job would depend on what the individual was capable of doing, and what was thought appropriate. Sometimes, women worked as seamstresses, sewing dresses. Men might work on construction or farming projects. (See Jobs)

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Asylums in the Twentieth Century

For much of the twentieth century, people with intellectual disabilities would be sent to asylums unless their parents chose to keep them at home. This was the case even when children became adults.

Many people thought that asylums were the best places for people labelled as having intellectual disabilities. Doctors and psychologists regularly told people to put their children in institutions, where they would be "happier" and "better off". Often people thought that asylums and institutions were "safe" places where people labelled as having intellectual disabilities could live in comfort.

However, they were wrong. In the 1960s, there were many reports of people being badly treated and abused in asylums. In 1966, the book Christmas in Purgatory, by Burton Blatt and Fred Kaplan, published shocking photos of the living conditions in an asylum in the United States. People were slowly becoming convinced that institutions were not good places to keep other people.

The Community Living Movement

In the 1970s, institutions started to close, and they were replaced by the community living movement that we have today. Most - but not all - large institutions have closed, and people labelled as having intellectual disabilities live mainly in group homes or other supported living arrangements.

Most people greatly prefer these types of living arrangements, as they have more freedom to choose how to live.

However, the threat of institutions remains. There are still "chronic care hospitals" where some people are kept; these are much the same as institutions. Large group homes are also just like mini-institutions. Even smaller group homes, if there is little choice in oneÕs day-to-day activities, can be like institutions.

A Self-Determination in Housing - the Future?

There is still much work to be done to make sure that people labelled as having intellectual disabilities have the right to chose the kind of housing that best suits them. More information will be included here as it becomes available.

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