Legal dimensions of the psychiatric halfway house

This paper addresses itself to the solutions developed in Massachusetts to three key legal problem areas with regard to the psychiatric halfway house. The areas are (1) the assurance of the overall quality of the programs through rigorous implementation of regulatory statutes; (2) the determination of beneficial location and equitable geographical distribution of these facilities as enabled through local zoning ordinances--preventing at the same time arbitrary community exclusion; and (3) the establishment of standards for safe, suitable, and feasible structures to house the community residence as determined by building codes.