I think community living is amazing for medium and high functioning individuals, if you can be guided into being safe for yourself and around others reasonably easily by a staff member? Community Living gives you a more “Normal” life. Low functioning individuals however that pose a danger to themselves and others end up far more isolated with community living than they’d be in an institution. MDC, the institution I worked at had just as horrific a history as most of the other institutions did, I think though, after working there, that was more due to the times than it was due to it being an institution, as, like I said, as of 10 years ago, there was two weeks of training before staff was even allowed to start working on any of the wings, meanwhile with community living I was kind of just thrown into the fire and had to figure things out as I went. Positives with community living mentioned though, I DO have to once again point out we live in a capitalist society, and Community Living requires more funding spread out, which is harder to pry from the government, than an institution gets, which means it inevitably ends up getting less funding for its residents.