By Linda Lutton
She also said the AA meetings at MTECS had been suspended.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Servant says that not only was there no security, residents weren’t even given keys to their apartments, and construction staff meandered freely in and out of them while rehabbing the building. He says that shortly after he moved in, $400 cash, a TV, and a VCR were stolen from his room. He notified Monty McClellan of McClellan Training, Education and Counseling Services, assuming MTECS would take responsibility for the lost items. “His answer to me was to pack my stuff and get out.” So Servant took his story to the local community organization, the South Austin Council.
Poorly run recovery homes are nothing new to the South Austin Community Coalition Council (SACCC). Last year around this time, hundreds of Austin residents were attending housing court, where inspectors testified to dozens of building code violations in homes run by New Beginnings. The neighboring Northwest Austin Council created the Austin Recovery Home Task Force to look into the problem, and eventually the city’s Office of Substance Abuse Policy commissioned a citywide task force on recovery homes. The city is still in litigation with New Beginnings over zoning requirements and building conditions.
McClellan responds that SACCC’s attack is unfounded. “The allegations that have been made are completely false. They are libelous and slanderous. They have spread lies about the true nature of what’s going on.” McClellan claims he’s the wrong target; he says he doesn’t own the recovery home–McClellan Training, Education and Counseling Services does. “I practice medicine in an office adjoining MTECS,” he explains, going on to say he receives no pay from MTECS and collaborates with the service only as a consultant. He says his name is a part of MTECS’s name only because “conceptually I was the one that started this type of organization.”
McClellan contends that he and MTECS are unfairly targeted do-gooders: “Maybe a mistake was made by not closing it down and rehabbing it and then letting people in there. But gosh. People needed places to stay. Nobody had their arm twisted to move in there.”
Residents say the rehabbing accelerated after they brought their complaints to SACCC, and MTECS staffers claim that by now all 32 residents in the home have been moved to rehabbed apartments. “They’re really scrambling a whole lot,” Welch acknowledges. Lauren Kramer got a new place a week after SACCC’s public hearing and the AA meetings at MTECS have resumed. “I think the pressure that was put on was very effective,” Kramer says.
