Facility addresses mental health

A new facility that combines mental-health recovery services with supportive housing has opened in northwest Miami-Dade County. The Key Clubhouse of South Florida partnered with Carrfour Supportive Housing to build Northside Commons, an 80-unit supportive housing complex with a 5,000square-foot clubhouse program for adults living with serious mental illness. This represents a first-ofits-kind model that addresses Miami-Dade’s severe affordable-housing shortage and homelessness as well as helping people with mental illness find recovery through meaningful work and employment.

Although people living with serious mental illness benefit from therapy and medication, they often need much more to restore what they have lost — jobs, relationships, self-esteem and a safe place to live. The program focuses on these aspects of recovery, part of a worldwide movement to help people living with mental illness connect with educational and job opportunities and develop friendships.

The clubhouse facility offers real-world work environments where members learn valuable skills by working with trained staff in a training kitchen, video production room, employment office, thrift shop, bank, reception area and computer stations. When members are ready, the Clubhouse helps place them in local jobs in the community or to pursue education. Last year, 52 were placed in paid employment; 11 have gone back to school or are working on GEDs.

In addition, 45 members who were homeless or at risk of homelessness are living in apartments above the Clubhouse, thanks to our collaboration with Carrfour. We are thrilled to be part of this new model that addresses mentalhealth recovery and homelessness in Miami-Dade.

– Debra Webb, executive director, The Key Clubhouse

of South Florida