As Closing of Center Nears, Residents Prepare for Life in Group Homes

We worked with the New York State Office for People With Developmental Disabilities to try and provide balance in this story. A reporter and photographer from The New York Times recently visited one of our Bronx group homes, where Noel Rodriguez, 28, a new resident, recently moved from the Brooklyn Developmental Center. His transition to the home has been seamless, according to staff. Maria Pabon, his mother, couldn't be happier.

Long after lunchtime one recent afternoon, John Cosentino sat at his usual table, eating his usual snacks. On this day, he was the only resident of the Brooklyn Developmental Center in its cavernous cafeteria, drafty and lit with the bleakness of an earlier era.

His father, Tony Cosentino, arranged fruit salad, nuts and pretzels on a paper plate, which John grabbed. Mary Ann Cosentino spoon-fed her son yogurt.

“Very good, John!” she said.

She tensed when John started waving his left hand near his forehead, past the ear he long ago mutilated and the blue eye blinded in a fall at the center. This was his sign that he might hit himself. Instead, he gestured for his white mitts from his L.L. Bean canvas bag monogrammed “J C,” and put them on. Then he suddenly stood up and pushed back his chair. Visit over.

For John Cosentino, 50, an intellectually disabled adult with profound autism and self-injurious behavior who does not speak, this routine has been his refuge. He has lived at the sprawling, state-run center in East New York off the Belt Parkway since he was a teenager. Sometime this year, however, his routine will abruptly end, and he, like the other remaining residents of the institution, will probably enter a group home.