Local three-way partnership enhances group home

LYNN – Two pickup trucks brimming with tables, chairs, nightstands, rugs and beds were unloaded Monday in front of 516 Essex St., home to a dozen military veterans with psychological disorders.The facility, run by Habitat P.L.U.S., is the beneficiary of a new partnership with the General Electric Veterans’ Council and Flannery’s Handyman Service of Swampscott.Patrick Burke, a GE employee and member of the veterans’ council, was attending a Swampscott Rotary Club meeting when he learned about the handyman service that cleans out estates as part of its business.”When the owner, Todd Flannery, heard what we were looking for – basically bedroom and living room furniture for the guys in the group home – he said ‘Take whatever you want from my warehouse,'” said Burke. “Todd has access to all this stuff. The guys in the group home really need it. And we help by arranging and transporting everything, so it’s good for us because we can give back to the community.”In the fall, the GE Veterans’ Council and GE Employees’ Elfun Fund plan to spruce up the landscape and the woodwork at the group home. The upgrade will be a hands-on follow-up to the single-handed fund-raising effort by GE employee Marie Poretta, who made $10,000 selling T-shirts on behalf of the veterans’ council and donated it to the Lynn group home.The vintage structure currently houses 12 men. Each has a bedroom and semi-private bath. The oldest resident is 75, a veteran of the Korean War. The youngest is 48. They hail from all branches of the military.”We can house up to 14,” said Kevin Winchell, the program manager. “These guys have paid their dues. Some of them were living on the streets when they came here. They had drug and alcohol problems. They weren’t taking the proper medications.”Wichell recalled one resident who had been released by the former Danvers State Hospital where he was bedridden for five years. “The guy supposedly was unfit to live in society, but we took him in here and he stayed for eight years until he died of cancer,” he said.Habitat P.L.U.S. is a non-profit organization serving psychiatrically disabled veterans. Its mission is to “provide interim, transitional, supportive and sober housing to psychiatrically disabled veterans, who would otherwise be homeless.” Some occupants of the Lynn group home who want more independence eventually transfer to the abutting co-operative apartment house, also run by Habitat P.L.U.S.The organization was founded by Bernadette Forti and Susan A. Campbell, the latter whose cousin, Stanley J. Egan, was killed in action in Vietnam at the age of 19.As Campbell explained, “This unique housing option was created in memory of my cousin. After sustaining this terrible loss, I began to notice that a high percentage of the homeless population on the streets of our communities were veterans.”