Every year, the Network honors two outstanding supportive housing tenants at its Awards Gala. In 2011, we selected Patricia Hall of Community Counseling & Mediation and Michael Andersson of Geel Community Services. Learn more about these remarkable tenants below.
Patricia Hall
Patricia Hall and Community Counseling & Mediation President/CEO Emory Brooks.
According to everyone at Georgia’s Place, Patricia Hall is a rock star, or, as she calls herself “Big Momma.” Her enthusiasm, gratitude and exuberance have infected the residence and the Brooklyn community around her.
The highs and lows of Ms. Hall’s life have been seismic. She left home at 15, fleeing abuse. Three of her siblings were murdered. She had two daughters by two different abusive men. She self-medicated her schizoaffective disorder with cocaine.
And then her dealer substituted rat poison for drugs, sparking years of psychiatric and medical hospitalizations. Incredibly, Ms. Hall rebounded. She began working, taking care of her two biological children as well as mentoring the four young women she informally adopted, and helping them all successfully complete school. She volunteered in her Bronx neighborhood. She even beat stomach cancer through chemotherapy.
Then a 210% rent hike made her homeless.
It was then that Ms. Hall joined the community at Georgia’s Place, where she quickly became a central character.
“Ms. Hall is that rare combination of person who is able to survive horrendous circumstances, remain inwardly positive and relate that positivity to others through her warmth and caring,” said David Watts, Assistant Program Director at Georgia’s Place.
Mr. Watts is awestruck that, despite her trials, Ms. Hall has managed to so successfully raise her two daughters. Both are high school and college graduates. Both are successfully employed in what he calls “caring” professions -- one is a nurse, the other a daycare worker. He speaks of this achievement as “miraculous…a testament to the affirming message Ms. Hall was able to communicate despite her personal struggles.”
At Georgia’s Place, Ms. Hall’s positivity shines through every day, with her signature greeting, “Happy Monday” (or whatever day it is) and her enthusiastic participation in community activities -- especially the sewing club, where she makes her own clothes. But Ms. Hall is probably best known for putting together a building-wide yard sale through which tenants could sell personal items as well as home-cooked foods. Mr. Watts was amazed at Ms. Hall’s persistence and organizational skills.
“The sale involved having community meetings, organizing, scheduling, preparing a proposal and then actually having the sale,” Mr. Watts said. “All without staff assistance.” The three-day sale was a huge success: Tenants participated, spent time with their neighbors in the community and made some much-needed cash. Now the yard sale is an annual event.
The Network is proud to honor Ms. Hall as an Outstanding Tenant of the Year.
Michael Andersson
Left to right: Geel Community Services Executive Director Maria Matias, Michael Andersson and Network Executive Director Ted Houghton.
By giving back, Michael Andersson got his own life back.
A promising graduate of Georgetown University, Mr. Andersson was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in his twenties. He began to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. But it wasn’t until he was trapped in a burning apartment that he completely fell apart, cycling in and out of psychiatric institutions.
In 2005, Geel Community Services took him in, first in its apartment treatment program, then two years later in supported housing. Since that day, Mr. Andersson has continually found ways to give back. He even helped make an online WebMD video for other people with bipolar disorder about the rewards of volunteering, a subject for which Mr. Andersson is clearly an authority.
Within the Geel community, Mr. Andersson spends most of his free time teaching Spanish to other tenants. He joins other Geel tenant-advocates on trips to Albany: He has spoken out against the use of the S.H.U. (Solitary Housing Units) for those incarcerated and living with mental illness, as well as proposed budget cuts to mental health services.
He has also become a superstar at the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Trained as a presenter through NAMI’s “In Our Own Voice” antistigma advocacy program, Mr. Andersson travels to New York City to educate and inspire mental health consumers, students, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and service providers -- in English and Spanish. He also facilitates NAMI’s Peer-to-Peer education program. NAMI gave him its Volunteer of the Year award in 2007, and in 2010 sent him to St. Louis to become a state trainer of other mental health consumers. He has raised over $17,000 through NAMI’s signature “NAMI Walks.”
Mr. Andersson’s volunteering at NAMI and Geel has given his life a strong sense of direction. In April of this year, he was accepted into Hunter College School of Social Work Masters program. At the same time, he was hired as a peer advocate at Bronx Peer Advocacy Center, with a caseload of 25 people. He is enjoying his peer advocacy so much that he has deferred his acceptance to Hunter until the fall of 2012.
For his extraordinary accomplishments and his unstinting efforts to, as he says, “strengthen the safety net that was there for me,” the Network is proud to honor Mr. Andersson as an Outstanding Tenant of the Year.