NEW YORK (AP) - The state must provide new apartments and small homes to thousands of mentally ill people advocates had claimed were being "warehoused" in dismal nursing facilities, a judge ruled Monday.

In a written decision in federal court in Brooklyn, U.S. District Judge Hon. Nicholas Garaufis ordered the state to create 1,500 units in New York City in each of the next three years.

The judge's ruling "means 1,500 people a year are going to live like normal human beings," said lawyer Cliff Zucker, of Disability Advocates, an Albany-based nonprofit group that sued the state in 2003.

The state had proposed developing 1,000 units over the next five years. Any more was "not feasible" given the "current fiscal crisis," it said in court papers.

But the judge cited evidence at a non-jury trial showing that the state would save an average of $146 per mentally ill person annually.

"The court is disappointed and, frankly, incredulous that defendants sincerely believed this proposal would suffice," the judge wrote.

The judge had ruled following the trial last year that the state had violated the Americans with Disabilities Act by housing more than 4,300 mentally ill people in large nursing homes rather than integrating them into the community.