CRVI History
A Brief History of Crystal Run Village (CRVI, Inc.)
Crystal Run Village was founded in 1959, in Middletown, New York by the Isaacs Family. Crystal Run Village first operated as a summer camp and then as a private residential school for developmentally disabled children. Today, Crystal Run Village, Inc. programs serve more than 700 people with developmental and psychological disabilities and their families, in three counties in New York’s Mid-Hudson and Catskill regions. Crystal Run Village, Inc. with an operating budget of $33-million, employs approximately 770 employees to carry out its mission of providing services for the integration and empowerment of people with disabilities.
Expansion of Crystal Run Village began soon after the 1972 expose of the unacceptable living conditions that people with disabilities were faced with at institutions like Willowbrook. The Isaacs purchased and renovated a former Catskill resort, the Flagler Hotel in Fallsburg, in anticipation of the deinstitutionalization of people with developmental disabilities.
On December 27, 1973, approximately 150 developmentally disabled adults arrived on three busses at the renovated Fallsburg Campus. The individuals came from huge institutions like Letchworth and Wassaic. Some who came from private schools like Devereaux and Greenwood had been living temporarily on the agency’s primary campus in Middletown.
In 1979, a group of parents established the facility as a non-profit corporation, after purchasing the school from the retiring Isaacs Family. The children in the school grew-up, stayed, and by 1985 the agency became a residential program primarily for adults.
In 1990 the New York Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities issued a call to agencies to apply for the responsibility of providing care to people living in the bankrupt institution at Greer-Woodycrest in Pomona, New York. As lead agency in a consortium of caregivers in Orange and Rockland Counties, Crystal Run Village, Inc. was awarded the contract to oversee the transition to new and vastly improved care for the children and adults of Greer-Woodycrest.
In what has been described as an “incredible feat of skilled management and astute provision of care,” all 108 Greer-Woodycrest people were in new homes within two years, with 65 of the most behaviorally challenged individuals coming to live in programs directly managed by Crystal Run Village, Inc. The special needs of some of these long-time institutionalized people, whose disabilities presented significant challenges to care, resulted in the design of a unique system of habilitation. The system evolved into the Steppingstones program. Steppingstones prepares people isolated for most of their lives for community integration.
By the beginning of the year 2002, all of the people living on the three Crystal Run Village, Inc. campuses relocated to 44 residences in the communities of Orange, Rockland and Sullivan Counties.
In addition to residential services, the agency offers Mental Health Services, Vocational and Skill Development Programs, Service Coordination, Respite House and Recreation. Most recently Crystal Run Village, Inc. has been awarded the opportunity to open group homes for individuals living in the community with their families. These individuals have parents who may be getting on in years and who have become unable to care for their children. In other instances, the young people have come of age and have the natural desire to move on to experience a life of their own.
On June 1, 2022, CRVI, Inc. became part of ADAPT of the Hudson Valley, which is a subsidiary of ADAPT Community Network in New York City.