A redevelopment plan for the Central Virginia Training Center campus, an effort Lynchburg-area officials have talked about extensively in recent years, formally kicked off Thursday with the launch of a website and a strong push for public input.

CVTC in Madison Heights is in the process of closing as a state-run facility with more than a century’s history of serving residents with disabilities. The site’s last remaining resident was relocated in early April.

The Lynchburg Regional Business Alliance announced Thursday the new website, www. trainingcentermasterplan. com, has resources available for local residents to engage in offering input on future use, including a public survey available online until Oct. 26.

“Community feedback is critical,” said Megan Lucas, executive director of the alliance, during a press conference Thursday.

For a decade ABC 13 followed the closure of the Central Virginia Training Center.

In 2012 the Commonwealth announced it settled a lawsuit with the federal government to close four institutions for the disabled, which includes the Central Virginia Training Center in Amherst County.

State senator Steve Newman fought hard in Richmond to keep it open. As many families were forced to move their loved ones out, Newman said he became close to them and still talks to them today.

"For so many years I just felt that God told us to take care of people who can not take care of themselves," Newman reflected. "Those were the people who were in that facility."

The superintendent of the Jonesboro Human Development Center died of the coronavirus Tuesday as the number of people hospitalized in the state with the virus reached a new high.

Steve Farmer, who also was chairman of the Craighead County Republican Committee, died Tuesday morning at St. Bernards Medical Center in Jonesboro, where he had been hospitalized for more than three weeks, an official with the state Department of Human Services said.

His death came as the state's count of virus cases rose by 641, the largest increase since Saturday.

Farmer, 67, joined the Human Services Department's Division of Developmental Disabilities Services in 2012 and had been in charge of the Arkadelphia Human Development Center before becoming superintendent of the Jonesboro center in 2017.

The state's five human development centers house Arkansans with severe developmental disabilities.

"His passing is a great loss not only for the Jonesboro HDC but for the whole state because he was such an involved and passionate public servant," Human Services Department spokesman Amy Webb said in an email.

"Our thoughts are with his family and everyone at the HDC."

Melissa Stone, director of the Division of Developmental Disabilities Services, said officials don't know how Farmer contracted the virus. She said a number of administrative staff members at the center tested positive around the same time last month.

She said Farmer developed "some cold-like" symptoms, tested positive for the virus and was hospitalized all within the span of a few days.

"That's just the sad thing about it is in that same kind of time period, we had other people test positive, and they all had mild symptoms or no symptoms and fully recovered," she said.

"There's just no rhyme or reason to it. I guess that's what makes it so scary."

According to the Health Department, five residents and 35 staff members at the center had tested positive for the virus as of Monday.

Stone said Farmer is the first human development center staff member to die of the virus.

A study suggests a growing risk of homelessness for Oregonians with intellectual disabilities, as government support fails to keep pace with rising housing costs for a population that often needs support. The report written by ECONorthwest and commissioned by the Kuni Foundation also found that efforts to document and address these challenges have been stymied for years by a lack of current data on the disabled population.

The report estimates that “around 24,000 adults with IDD [intellectual and developmental disabilities] in the region face housing insecurity.” But the report’s authors concede that it’s impossible to find reliable numbers on the number of people in Oregon and southwest Washington who have such disabilities and their housing situations. Researchers have long relied on a 2001 study called “Prevalence of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities: Estimates From the 1994/1995 National Health Interview Survey Disability Supplements." But the data in that study is a quarter century old.

People with intellectual and developmental disabilities often rely on supplemental security income, or SSI, to pay their bills, but the report found those monthly payments are not enough to cover housing and other costs in the region. The payment level in Oregon, $783 per month, falls short of the median cost of a one-bedroom apartment in the Portland area. Across the river in Washington, the supplemental security income level was just above average rental costs, “but would leave little remaining for other basic necessities,” the report concludes.

The report points out that rental costs are only growing further out of reach for people reliant on supplemental security income.

“Over the past two decades, average nominal monthly rents in the Portland metro area grew 83 percent, while nominal monthly SSI payments grew only 50 percent,” the report said, citing data from the state’s Department of Housing and Community Services.

Borrowing from a Colorado study’s methodology, ECONorthwest counted about 6,600 adults in Oregon and southwest Washington with intellectual or developmental disabilities who were “cost-burdened,” or spending more than 30% of their income on rent.

The number of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities at risk of losing their homes based on potentially losing an aging caregiver was almost three times as high, according to the report. The ECONorthwest report suggests nearly 18,000 adults in Oregon and southwest Washington are “at risk of housing instability, given the chance of the caregiver developing an incapacitating illness or dying in the next 8-10 years.”