Community Profile: Vail Place

Located in Hopkins, Vail Place is a nonprofit dedicated to helping the mentally ill get back on their feet.

According to Kate Gillen, a Vail Place spokesperson, the nonprofit works “by providing connections to essential services such as employment, housing, social-recreational, and health and wellness.”

The aim, she said, is to help seriously mentally ill Minnesotans help themselves for free by building “a series of links” to other people in the community who they can rely on, to safe and stable homes, to jobs, and to ways the center’s clients can become engaged in community life.

The model Vail works off of, she said, started in the 1940s. A group of mentally ill New Yorkers upset that their community had “virtually no understanding” of their personal worth and potential to get better. They formed their own support group called We Are Not Alone, Gillen said, which grew into “The Clubhouse Movement” by the early 1980s, when Vail Place was founded.

In 1988, the group added a branch in Minneapolis’ Uptown neighborhood, but it still remains the only Clubhouse-affiliated organization in Minnesota, Gillen said.