Moon Fairweather Lodge Official is 'Prepared to Fight'

Sharon Alberts said she was upset when she read reports of Wednesday night's Moon Township Board of Supervisors meeting.

Alberts is the CEO of Transitional Services Inc., a Homestead-based organization that provides a range of services to people with psychological and mental disabilities. Her organization has been busy readying a home in recent weeks at , which she hopes will become a shared residence for people with mental illness. She said her staff has been doing final renovations and interviewing roommates for the house, which will be called a Fairweather Lodge. 

Four men with a history of mental illness will share the home, pay rent and work together to learn to become self-sufficient. There will be no live-in supervision, but Alberts said Transitional Services will provide intermittent support. She compared it to a group of college friends renting a house together.

She said she doesn't understand why residents on Greenlea Drive oppose the home opening in the neighborhood. At the board of supervisors meeting this week, residents decried this use of the home and asked the supervisors to intervene and block it from opening.

Dozens of residents , voicing similar concerns. They fear for the safety of their children around the home's residents. They believe that the residents, when off medication, may become violent. They worry that the proximity of the home might devalue their properties.

"When I read [news coverage of the meeting] my stomach turned," said Alberts. "It's discrimination. It's the same thing as saying 'I don't want a black person living next to me. Or I don't want a person with a physical handicap or an old person.' "

She believes residents have overstated the mental conditions of the home's future residents. She also said that she has met with township staff and provided them information about the home and its purpose in recent months.

"We do criminal background checks on every person in the home," she said.

In October, the group bought the brick single-family home. Township officials last month issued an occupancy permit for the home, which is zoned for use as a group residence.

But Greenlea Drive resident Venus Thompson has filed an appeal of that occupancy permit on behalf of the streets' residents, according to a township public hearing notice. Thompson, who lives next door to 162 Greenlea Drive, is asking that the township zoning hearing board to revoke the occupancy permit.

Thompson could not be reached for comment.

A public hearing on the appeal is scheduled for March 10, although township Solicitor Blaine Lucas said he has contacted attorneys for Thompson and Transitional Services to request that the hearing be postponed until April 14.

He said he recommends that the two parties take part in mediation before the hearing. He also asked that residents not move into 162 Greenlea until the hearing takes place. As of Thursday afternoon, he had not received a response.

"I'm prepared to fight this," said Alberts. "We have a right to live there. If I back down, then I'm not any good at the job I do."

Lucas said if either party is unhappy with the result of the zoning board hearing, they may appeal the case to the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas.

Alberts said she never expected the home on Greenlea to be so controversial. She said she's spoken to at least five residents on the street and "invited them to have a dialogue" about the home. Each of them declined, following advice from their attorneys, she said.

At the advice of her own attorney, she will not attend public meetings in Moon

"What am I going to do?" she said. "Go down to one of those meetings and get into a brawl?"

Alberts said she still hopes neighbors on the street might someday get used to the idea of the home. She's handed out her phone number to several residents in the hope that a dialogue might begin, she said.

"I want them to come and see the success we've had and meet the folks we've worked with," Alberts said. "We believe recovery from mental illness is possible. If we didn't I wouldn't be able to come to work everyday."