WESTMINSTER : City Wants Control Over Residential Care

In an attempt to regain its authority over the location of residential-care facilities, the City Council has adopted a resolution asking the Legislature to return control over them to local government.

Spurred by residents’ complaints of noise at a residential alcohol and drug rehabilitation house on Tillamook Avenue and by the opening of a care facility for the elderly in the same neighborhood, the council unanimously approved the resolution last week.

The council asked the city attorney to evaluate concerns voiced by neighborhood residents and to explore legal avenues available to the city, Planning Director Mike Bouvier said. It also ordered City Manager Jerry Kenny to draft a resolution asking the Legislature to return control over the regulation, placement and operation of board-and-care homes to the city.

No city license is required for care facilities where fewer than six people reside, Councilman Frank Fry said. The city must be notified if the facility houses six to 12 residents but has little authority to regulate the home, Fry said.

All such facilities require state licenses. A board-and-care home can include alcohol and drug rehabilitation, as well as care for the elderly, handicapped, mentally disabled or children. In these types of facilities, the city can only enforce Building Code requirements.

State regulations do establish required distances between such homes, Bouvier said.

“The state has usurped city control,” Bouvier said. “If the city doesn’t want (facilities) in a certain area, city regulation is preempted. We can only apply residential statutes.”

Rod Woody, director of the Sierra Home for Sober Living which is at the center of the dispute, said he has not had previous complaints from neighbors in the 12 years he has been directing rehabilitation homes. He also operates three other Orange County rehabilitation houses for drug and alcohol users.

Woody, who has operated the Westminster house for four years, said the main complaints were based on one incident two weeks ago, in which former Sierra residents got into an argument with neighbors, who Woody says routinely taunt the residents of his house.

“They stirred up trouble which is not necessary and are creating a bad public image which we never had before,” said Woody.

Woody contended that many of the neighbors’ complaints were untrue or embellished. “Lives are saved because guys have these houses to go to,” he said. “We only want a chance for people to get sober and to have good lives.”

The home is nonprofit, Woody said. All residents must hold jobs, be in bed by 11 p.m. and must stay sober. He says seven men live there now, along with a 24-hour supervisor.

But residents last week submitted a petition to the council asking it to shut down the Sierra Home, citing noise and disturbances.

“There have been more and more problems over the last few months,” Wayne Grothe, a neighbor, said. “Guys hit us up for change, drugs, and a lot of them are drunk. A lot of panhandling. It’s mostly the element that’s come into the neighborhood.”

The issue that brought the matter to a head, Bouvier said, was the residential care facility for the elderly that recently opened in the same neighborhood as the rehabilitation house. Though owners say it is not a nursing home, residents fear the neighborhood will be further disrupted with ambulances and visitors.

“It’s not a business zone, and they felt it was not the place to put a facility of that kind,” Bouvier said. “But the city can’t say no to it.”