Community Corner

Disabled Couple Finds Home in Riverhead Nonprofit

Paul Forziano and Hava Samuels, unable to live together with their current providers, will move in with East End Disabilities Associates on July 1.

Failing to receive a joint living space from their care providers after marrying in April, a developmentally disabled couple has taken a Riverhead nonprofit up on its offer to move into its facilities.

East End Disabilities Associates extended an offer to Paul Forziano and Hava Samuels after they decided to sue the organizations that currently oversee their care – Independent Group Home Living and Maryhaven Center of Hope. Also named in the lawsuit are the State of New York and the commissioner of the Office of Persons With Developmental Disabilities.

The couple will move into their own apartment on July 1, a space separated from the rest of the all-male home that was once reserved for staff.

EEDA's Director of Program Operations, Gus Lagoumis, said that the space recently opened up, and the timing just happened to be right.

"It was one of those fortuitous situations where it happened to work for both sides," he said. "Had this happened a month earlier, it wouldn't have worked out for us. Luckily Paul and Hava both feel comfortable there."

The couple has come to eat dinner with the home's residents on a few separate occasions, Lagoumis said, and feel comfortable with their future house mates.

"Paul and Hava are very eager to begin living together as a married couple at East End," reads a letter from their lawyer, Martin Colemen.

Coleman said that despite moving into EEDA's facility – the move will technically be temporary to start out, offering the couple a 30 to 90 day window to make sure they are totally comfortable in their new surroundings – the lawsuit put forward will still go on, for two reasons.

"To ensure that if Paul and Hava have to move out of East End for any reason in the future, they will not find the same policies of the two group homes to be a barrier to finding new supervised housing for themselves. Second, the defendants' actions injured Paul and Hava's civil rights and caused delay in their marriage plans for a significant period of time."

The couple reportedly tried living together as early as 2010, and Coleman said monetary compensation is being sought, though no number has been put forth as of yet.

Requests for comment from IGHL and Maryhaven Center of Hope's overseeing agency, Catholic Health Services of Long Island, were not immediately returned.


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