Construction complete on Palmer complex for mentally ill

PALMER -- Workers were putting the finishing touches last week on the interior of a new six-plex apartment complex in downtown Palmer to serve people with mental illness. The building is called Delphi House and is being built by Valley Residential Services, the local nonprofit that most recently constructed the Forest Hills apartment complex in Wasilla. VRS accepted a $10,000 donation from Wells-Fargo Bank Alaska at Delphi House on Monday and VRS Executive Director Bill Scharrer gave a brief tour of Delphi House to bank representatives.

"We've found that giving people confidence in their housing situation allows them to make accomplishments in other areas of their lives," Scharrer said.

VRS has a partner organization in social service agency Daybreak Inc. Delphi House has an office and conference room that Daybreak will use to bring services like case management and employment, financial or personal counseling directly to the residents. Delphi House is modeled after Daybreak Apartments, which is just west of Palmer and also built as a partnership between VRS and Daybreak. Nineteen people live at Daybreak Apartments in one-bedroom apartments.

Both Delphi House and Daybreak offer permanent housing for the residents, which is something Bill Aube, executive director of Daybreak said is important to the clients and to his organization. Aube said Daybreak doesn't participate in so-called transitional living facilities -- such facilities come from a social service strategy Aube can't support.

"That's one of my pet peeves," Aube said. "Especially with people with troubles, you don't want to keep transitioning them through [from place to place]."

VRS collects rent and takes care of building maintenance and groundkeeping tasks at Daybreak Apartments and Delphi House. Daybreak provides only social services. Aube and Scharrer said there are advantages to not having one person who wears both the landlord and social worker hats.

According to Scharrer the new facility's first six residents will be found through the Department of Corrections and Alaska Psychiatric Institute. Because Delphi House is permanent housing, those six might be tenants there for the rest of their lives.

"Corrections has identified about 400 people who are incarcerated primarily for their mental illness and not for their criminality," Scharrer said.

Between June and November about 100 different construction trades workers were on the job at Delphi House at different times, according to Dianne Dyer of general contractor Dyer Construction. Dyer was also the lead contractor at Forest Hills apartments in Wasilla, a VRS project that targets qualifying low-income renters.

VRS board member Phyllis Sullivan was also at Delphi House Monday to meet and talk with the Wells-Fargo managers.

"I think when it gets landscaped it will really look like home for the people that live here," Sullivan said. "And that's what we want it to look like."