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Several months ago, Rainbow Heights Club, a drop-in center in downtown Brooklyn for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people managing a serious mental illness, learned that its public funding had been eliminated along with twenty-six other mental health organizations. For Rainbow Heights, that would mean the loss of nearly all of its funding and certain closure.

Rainbow Heights Club is one of many peer based mental health organizations that provide daily services, support and advocacy to people with serious mental illnesses like bipolar disorder, major depression and schizophrenia. It is unique, however, in that its 250 clients are members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. "LGBT people suffering from mental illnesses are extremely isolated and vulnerable, because our mental health system is still often very homophobic," says the club's director Christian Huygen, PhD.

The agency's research shows that it has been extremely effective at preventing costly re-hospitalizations. Out of the 250 clients the club serves, only ten have been hospitalized since they began attending the club – and many have decade-long histories of psychiatric institutionalizations. A one-month hospitalization of this kind costs New York taxpayers $15,000, a one-year hospitalization costs $110,000. If Rainbow Heights Club prevented just two such hospitalizations, it would save more than its annual public funding.

Because gay people are still routinely discriminated against in terms of public benefits, domestic partnership privileges and accessing public accommodations, organizations like Rainbow Heights Club are vital to these members of the LGBT community.

Brooklyn's LGBT community recognized the value of this organization and organized and rallied their elected officials to demand for the full restoration of the club's funding. Due in large part to the advocacy of Councilmember Letitia James, Councilmember Margarita Lopez, the Lambda Independent Democrats (LID), Brooklyn's LGBT political club, and the Empire State Pride Agenda (ESPA), the LGBT community's statewide advocacy group, Mayor Bloomberg agreed to reinstitute and continue the contract for Rainbow Heights and all of the other defunded mental health organizations, but only until the end of the year. Although this has given a six-month reprieve to Rainbow Heights, it leaves them little reassurance that they will be able to continue to provide services beyond this December.

Brooklyn's LGBT community is continuing its organizing efforts. LID is advocating on behalf of the club to ensure that all its funding is permanently restored. Furthermore, LID and ESPA will join Rainbow Heights Club clients and travel to Albany on May 24th to persuade state lawmakers to prioritize this issue.

LGBT Brooklynites are coming together and heading to Albany, on behalf of this vulnerable and isolated organization and say with one voice, "We will not let this happen. We will not turn our backs on our own."

If you'd like to help, please call Rainbow Heights Club at 718-852-2584 or visit their webpage at www.rainbowheights.org.

Reprinted with kind permission Park Slope Courier, May 30, 2005, Vol. XXVII No: 22