Normalization and boarding homes: an examination of paradoxes

Boarding homes have emerged throughout the nation as places where many deinstitutionalized psychiatric patients, and others, reside. They represent one type of congregate living arrangement which is expected to facilitate social policy goals of enabling chronically mentally ill people to live in the most appropriate, least restrictive environment possible. This paper presents a study of ten boarding homes in New Jersey which suggests that instead of being empowered as consumers, residents have become commodities; instead of gaining additional freedoms, deinstitutionalized persons have been abandoned. The paper also presents problematic issues concerning the provision of treatment and rehabilitation services to boarding home residents.