Overview: FRONTLINE and ProPublica go inside New York's supported housing program in a special investigation called 'Right to Fail' - exploring human struggles and the complex debate behind giving people with severe mental illness the right to live independently and succeed on one's own terms with the right support, but also the right to fail.

DVD Verdict: In 2014, a federal judge ruled that New York State had violated the civil rights of people with severe mental illness by allowing them to languish in adult homes - group housing that had been plagued by allegations of abuse and neglect.

The landmark ruling gave a class of about 4,000 adult home residents the chance to move into their own subsidized and supported apartments, have the freedom to cook in their own kitchens, administer their own medication and budget their own expenses with help from private case management agencies.

Prosecutors quickly filed lawsuits against en masse of developers, including the mainstay of the ruling the Durst Organization and Glenwood Management, in what had become a long-running dispute over whether buildings erected under New York City’s accessibility law meets federal requirements.

The lawsuit claimed that Related’s TriBeCa Green building, at 325 North End Avenue, completed in 2005, and One Carnegie Hill, on East 96th Street, finished in 2006, are inaccessible to disabled tenants because kitchens, closets and bathrooms are not big enough for someone in a wheelchair to maneuver within, mailboxes are mounted too high, and room identification signs lack raised-letter Braille for persons with visual impairments.

"We will not allow developers and architects who deprive people with disabilities of accessible housing to evade the consequences of their failure to comply with clear, longstanding federal civil rights laws,” Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said in one of the earliest statements made on the ruling.

This brand new and highly fascinating hour long documentary showcases both sides of the argument, with the New York developers insisting that they have complied for the past 25 years with a city law requiring them to ensure that all apartments they build are accessible to disabled people.

The local law, developers and city officials say many things in counter, but that, and essentially everything done meets the requirements of the federal Fair Housing Act.

The ruling was front-page news, but until 2019, there's been little known about how the plan to move people from institutions to independence has actually worked out.

Sure the federal law was toughened three years after the city law passed, but still developers, city officials and federal authorities have not agreed on whether the city requirements meet the standards of the current federal act.

“We’ve got a disagreement,” said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York. “We never resolved, what is the difference between the local law and the Fair Housing Act?”

Ergo, 'Frontline: Right To Fail' takes you from the start to what is currently the faltering end here and asks you, come said fend, to make your own minds up about who did what correctly (or not) and if there truly is more work to be done to comply. This is a Widescreen Presentation (1.85:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs.