About two months ago, Chestnut Hill Village management decided not to renew more than 20 apartment leases held by Project Transition, a Chalfont-based, for-profit, psychiatric treatment program that seeks to reintegrate its patients into society.

The problem is that no one from the Chestnut Hill Village management office or AIMCO, the Denver-based apartment management company that owns Chestnut Hill Village, told Project Transition CEO Luke Crabtree that all of his patients would need to be out by June 30.

In a phone interview on Friday, Crabtree anticipated moving about half of his Chestnut Hill Village tenants out by June 30, reducing the number of units leased by Project Transition to 11, but it was his understanding that the last of his tenants would not have to leave until March 2010.

“I have to come up with a plan,” he said. “We have various lease term dates.”

Crabtree said he had arranged the March 2010 end date with former Chestnut Hill Village manager Juan Lent, who resigned in April.

“It could be there was something that wasn’t communicated from Juan back to corporate,” he said.

Cindy Duffy, AIMCO’s director of corporate communications, told the Local last week that Project Transition members were supposed to be out of Chestnut Hill Village by June 30. She declined to explain why the Project Transition leases were not renewed.

Three Chestnut Hill Village residents have alleged that assistant community manager Alicia Waters lied about the Project Transition presence at Chestnut Hill Village and failed to address incidents of Project Transition participants harassing other Village tenants.

(Last week, the Local reported that Violet Gilchrist, 26, has refused to use the laundry room at Chestnut Hill Village ever since an unidentified man from the program asked her, in the laundry room, if she walked the apartment complex grounds alone.)

Duffy said previously that she had not spoken directly to Waters about those allegations.

In a May 1 e-mail, the Local asked Duffy why there was a discrepancy as to when Project Transition participants would be leaving Chestnut Hill Village, why Crabtree had not been informed of residents’ complaints to management about his program’s participants and what was being done to address the problem.

“March 2010 is when the last of the project transitions [sic] leases expires,” Duffy replied in a May 4 e-mail. “Luke has been speaking with our regional property manager in Philadelphia about expediting that timetable. Most of the leases will expire in the next few months and will not be renewed.”

Crabtree told the Local he was “frustrated and upset” that allegations of harassment were not brought to his attention by Chestnut Hill Village management.

“There is no reason why a Chestnut Hill Village resident should have to put up with nonsense,” he said. “I will always err on the side of protecting the community.”

In reviewing an incident log covering the previous 60 days, Crabtree said he found only a report about a broken fire alarm.

Crabtree also noted that he had heard nothing troubling from his on-site supervisor, Mark Williams, who has more than 20 years experience in the field.

Project Transition protocol calls for apartment managers at Project Transition’s eight sites — based in Philadelphia, Montgomery, Bucks and Berks counties — to notify an on-site supervisor or Crabtree if a problem arises with a program participant.

Crabtree said that he attends monthly meetings with apartment managers at Chestnut Hill Village and checks in by phone at least once a week.

Waters still has not responded to the following questions, which were posed in an April 10 e-mail:

“Many residents have expressed security concerns related to the transitional housing program. How will those concerns be addressed? How many documented incidents of altercations between regular residents and people from that program have you received in the past 12 months? How many of those incidents required police intervention?”

Waters has declined to be interviewed in person and has requested that all questions be sent to AIMCO’s corporate office via e-mail.

Duffy has also been reluctant to address the issue.

Crabtree is taking the allegations of harassment seriously. He said that any Project Transition participant who harasses another resident would be removed from the premises immediately. He is committed to maintaining the integrity of the program, which he believes serves an important role in the region.

“We work with folks who have mental illness and tend to have significant trauma,” he said.

“Many of our folks have significant difficulties interacting with society.”

These are people whom society has deemed lost causes, Crabtree said, but for more than 25 years Project Transition has striven to help them lead normal lives.

According to the program’s Web site, “Individuals referred to Project Transition have been through a lot. So have their family members. Multiple efforts to support the person have left everyone exhausted. The individual may be described by others as being challenging, difficult, or treatment resistant.”

Program participants must be at least 18 years old and must have received a psychiatric diagnosis. They average eight to 16 months in the program, which specializes in the treatment of borderline personality disorder, substance abuse and a range of other mental illnesses.

“Project Transition cultivates trust and hope through relationships, treatment, skill development, wellness training, and supervised independent living,” according to its Web site.

The level of treatment and supervision is reduced over time in order to promote self-sufficiency.

The success stories are what keep Crabtree going. He recalled the story of a woman whose “extreme social anxiety disorder” made it impossible for her to hold a job. She was educated and had career aspirations, Crabtree said, but she was terrified of being in public.

Project Transition helped her control that anxiety and become a productive member of society, according to Crabtree.

“Over the course of about a year she continued to progress and became interested in psychiatric nursing,” he said. Now she’s a nurse at the state hospital where she used to receive treatment.

Crabtree understands that Chestnut Hill Village tenants are concerned about their safety. He said that, for the time remaining, he would be amenable to putting Project Transition participants in one building to allay those concerns. He noted that the June 30 reduction of the patient population will lead to consolidated living arrangements for many of the remaining participants – but he worries about them being stigmatized.

The Project Transition model does not “separate and isolate our community based on disability,” he said, adding that he would not feel comfortable letting the program participants leave the program without experiencing the challenges of coexisting with other people in a community.

Still, Crabtree does not want his program’s goals to undermine the quality of life for other residents.

 “It is not fair to Chestnut Hill Village residents,” he said. “They need to enjoy their homes.”