Los Angeles City Council to make it harder for unrelated adults to share single family homes

[Liberal_in_LA]

our local right wing talk radio has kept up the drum beat against group homes. People have been making money by using single family homes as home for peodophiles and alcoholics to the objection of the community. But this law would have unintended consequences. sharing a home is a way for poor adults, elderly and the disabled to have a quality home


Group Home Law Passes First L.A. City Council Hurdle

The city attorney is ordered on a 12-1 vote to draft an ordinance regulating group homes in single-family neighborhoods

Despite an outpouring of opposition from advocates for seniors, the homeless, the disabled and recovering addicts, the Los Angeles City Council advanced a measure to better regulate group homes in single-family neighborhoods.

The 12-1 vote sends the measure to the city attorney's office, which will draft an ordinance for a final council vote. But some concerns, raised as recently as last week, remain to be ironed out and that prompted Councilman Richard Alarcon and other opponents to urge city staff to return to the drawing board.

"This is not ready for prime time," Alarcon told his colleagues. "This has serious problems."

The ordinance has been three years in the making, prompted in large part by complaints from neighborhoods throughout Los Angeles of problem group homes, many of them sober living homes. Such homes are not regulated by the state but are protected to some extent by state and federal housing anti-discrimination laws, making it difficult and time-consuming for the city

http://brentwood.patch.com/articles/group-home-law-passes-first-la-city-council-hurdle-2

For People With Disabilities In Two States, Opposite Fates


The second is a proposed ordinance in California. If it passes, it will widely be seen by people with disabilities and their advocates as an enormous loss.

Earlier this month in Los Angeles, the city council voted almost unanimously to draft an ordinance that will essentially make it impossible for people who collect disability checks to live under the same roof in a single-family home –- that is, in a group home.

Neighbors often object to having group homes placed in their communities because they can bring violence, drugs and crime to neighborhoods. But everyone has to live somewhere, and if the final ordinance passes next week, many people with disabilities, mental illnesses and serious drug and alcohol addictions are expected to wind up living on the streets, or in seedy "residential" hotels. Or in noisy institutions.

Peggy Edwards, the executive director of the advocacy group United Homeless Healthcare Partners, said it was hard to track the number of people living in group homes in L.A., but she warned that if the ordinance goes through it could "significantly increase the homeless rate."

"People who are in violation of this ordinance could be evicted," she said. "There just isn't enough affordable housing, even if they could afford it."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/23/group-homes-chicago-los-angeles_n_882610.html?ir=Chicago

[The Wielding Truth]

1. If it's your private home how could anyone tell you who can live there?

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. Proposed new law.

This proposed bill will state that everyone has to be on the same lease. Would outlaw one person owning/renting home to a bunch of others who aren't on the lease. At least that is how I read it.

[MADem]

5. If the home is OWNED, not leased, I can't see a problem.

The owner would simply amend the "lease" everytime a roommate moves in or out.

If some sex offender rents a house and invites all his prison buddies to move in, without mentioning it to the homeowner, well, that's a horse of a different color.

I don't think it is a bad idea to regulate things like sanitary conditions, or electrical and fire safety in group homes; these sorts of regulations protect the disabled/elderly.

[The Wielding Truth]

7. It's a lease agreement break to rented property then. Okay..I get it.

Thanks. I see that it is the owner's right to know his occupants.

[amborin]

9. R-1 zoning means one family...but this is often ignored...sewage is a clue

[MADem]

11. I think most people wouldn't want their disabled loved one

stuffed in a "group home" that didn't have some kind of zoning board variance/oversight. I also think if people are honest about what kind of facility they're running, it's good for the residents and good for the neighborhood.

Clearly, if you've got a houseful of addicts, you don't want them running around at three in the morning doing B and Es to get a fix. A little oversight will make sure that there are "house rules" in place and a bit of enforcement as well as consequences.

I think sloppily run "sober houses" where the residents aren't necessarily sober and are bad neighbors are what's causing the push for these new zoning rules in the first place. I would not be surprised if, after pulling the string, there's some "gubmint money" to be made warehousing the indigent/disabled and elderly, drunks and other addicts--sort of like bad foster care for misfit-adults. When you're dealing with private agencies, they're usually out to make a buck. The non-profits are often not quite so mercenary, but there are exceptions.

[WinkyDink]

10. Zoning boards, that's who. E.g., Can't turn a house into a dormitory willy-nilly.

[Igel]

3. I don't see the problem.

5 people, unrelated, one lease. Voila, you've complied with the ordinance.

It means that those 5 people have to be trusted enough and trustworthy enough to sign a one-year or 6-month lease. It cuts down on transients, but at the same time makes everybody on the lease responsible if one person flakes out.

In other words, increased peer pressure to not scram but to stick with the program.

It prevents things like 20 people in a house--that level of trust isn't going to happen with that many people, at least not of the people signing the lease understand it. Unless it's something like a frat. Then again, if they don't understand this they're not likely to understand the lease in the first place.

Oddly, this is exactly how the landlords treated me and roommates in Oregon and Los Angeles. They refused to sign individual leases with each of us but had no problem with unrelated people "sharing" a lease--and when one of us would leave, we'd ask to have the lease modified and it generally wasn't a problem. Then again, we generally would have a replacement name to take over. Otherwise you're left in the awkward position of essentially renting a room--meaning that it's not a single family residence any more and you've run afoul of zoning.

At the same time, I dislike how some people in my neighborhood make ends meet: They bought a house and now can't afford the mortgage. So they have adult children, nephews, nieces, etc., etc., move in and pay rent. The result is that at night there are 4 cars or trucks in the driveway and 3 on the street. Now, it's convenient to not have to pull into the garage every night and, on rare occasion, park on the street--both are violations of the HOA rules, but something pretty much everybody does anyway. But when you get 7 cars associated with 7 adults in one house, only two on the mortgage, the HOA starts enforcing the rule on that household--it's no longer a matter of convenience, it's impossible to get 7 cars/trucks in a 2-car garage. Then, to avoid lawsuits, they have to enforce it on everybody--except that the household already at risk of losing their house actually has the least to lose and the most to gain by ignoring the HOA. They comply, they lose the house because they can't have as many boarders; they don't comply, the worse that can happen is they lose the house after a lot of legal hoops that they simply ignore. Everybody else though, those making their mortgage payments, has to live under more anal enforcement of the rules or get hit by fines that they actually pay.

[jwirr]

6. Okay, but when tax time comes can a group home that is providing

a service to the elderly or the disabled work it out as an expense for the care of the patients? There are many factors to be considered here. The language of the bill needs to be reworked in order to protect community based service providers. This would be disastrous for the disabled.

[monmouth]

4. I used to take depositions at times in Group Homes where the defendant

was living. Most orderly, clean and structured places I'd been in. Their success rate was great (this is back in the 70s and 80s) and mostly run by counselors... This would be very bad. What about Hollywood residents in the industry who live together with their children but are not married? Is this a factor I wonder?

[MurrayDelph]

8. It depends on the nature of the group home

When I lived in Los Angeles (in a middle-class part of the Valley), there was a "group home" at the end of the cul-de-sac that was supposed to function as a "halfway house."

Instead, it had addicts wandering through the neighborhood at all hours of the day and night, mailboxes were ransacked, homes were burgled (they attempted to do so to mine, but my dogs apparently scared them off, so they just stole my recyclable bottles and cans, breaking a couple of solar lights on their way out of the yard), and panhandling was common.

Now, they have been closed, and it is a nicer neighborhood again.

Oh, and I should point out: there are three churches on my block, and another four within two blocks.