Group Homes

The Bel Air Board of Town Commissioners passed unanimously an amended version of a bill that would have banned group homes for drug addicts and alcoholics in residential areas.The amended version will allow the group homes for recovering addicts and alcoholics.Opponents of the original bill had complained that it violated the Federal Fair Housing Act by denying those in recovery the right to live in neighborhoods."We really were trying to make sure that we met all of the fairness criteria in our ordinance," said Board Chairman Stephen C. Burdette.

State-licensed group homes for people with disabilities no longer need to be put through community hearings or any other kind of review process.Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr., after studying a recent decision by a U.S. District Court judge in Baltimore, agrees that holding hearings and notifying neighbors violates the federal government's Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988.As long as the homes meet state regulations on safety and other requirements, the state will not require the operators to notify neighbors of their plans to move into an area.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court made it more difficult yesterday for counties and cities to insulate neighborhoods of single-family homes from becoming sites for group homes, such as those for the disabled or for recovering addicts.A federal law against discrimination in housing does not allow local governments to exclude group homes by defining "family" so that most group homes would be shut out automatically, the court said in its 6-3 ruling.The court's decision seems to scuttle zoning ordinances in communities across the nation, including Baltimore and other Maryland communities, that seek to protect single-family communities from groups of residents who are not related to one another.

Youth Services International Inc., an Owings Mills-based operator of educational and correctional programs for troubled youths, said yesterday that it plans to acquire Developmental Behavioral Consultants Inc. and its 18 group homes in Arizona.Youth Services said it expects the Phoenix-based company's homes for emotionally troubled young people to add about $4 million to its annual revenue, which came to $34.9 million last year. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.The publicly traded Maryland company, led by Jiffy Lube founder W. James Hindman, operates 12 programs in seven states that provide counseling and education to delinquent children or children at risk of becoming delinquents.

Jan and Michael Power fear the peace and serenity they find behind their secluded home in Davidsonville will be shattered when the owner of a group home next door begins construction to triple the size of the home.The back yard, with its white granite fountain, is "our retreat from the world," said Mrs. Power, 45, of Whispering Oaks Lane. "Now, it'll be ruined."The controversy over the facility has led County Councilman John J. Klocko III, to draft legislation to tighten controls on group homes.

One in five Baltimore County residents is 60 or older. The county has more senior citizens than any other Maryland jurisdiction. And it has a rate of senior-population growth second only to Dade County, Fla., in all the United States.Yet faced with these jarring statistics, the local government has been woefully slow to provide "assisted-living," neighborhood-based group homes that each serve from four to 15 seniors. In fact, since Maryland started the program 17 years ago, group residences have been established in every state jurisdiction, except in Baltimore County.

Tucked away in Howard County neighborhoods, where houses usually feature basketball hoops and bicycles, is an exploding number of homes outfitted instead with extra handrails on the walls and sit-down elevators running along the stairways.In this county, the number of small group homes for the elderly certified by the state Office on Aging has skyrocketed from 10 in 1990 to 56 today, an increase of 460 percent.The number of larger homes licensed by the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene also has increased, although exact figures are not available, state officials said.

THE FUROR OVER group homes, which has flared most recently in Baltimore County's Loch Raven and Anne Arundel County's Pasadena, is not difficult to understand. "Families" of the mentally ill, the disabled, recovering alcoholics and troubled youths do not fit the suburban dream.Yet these groups have a legal right to live alongside everyone else. We do not, in most cases, have a say over their right to move in, any more than we have veto power over any other neighbor. Such power breeds discrimination.

As more elderly people grow too frail to maintain homes and find they need help with daily tasks, group "sheltered homes" can provide a less costly alternative to nursing homes. Licensed operators of such homes provide independent living with 24-hour monitoring, congregate meals, housekeeping and help with daily tasks like eating, bathing, grooming or using the bathroom.Any home with at least four but fewer than 12 unrelated elderly residents can be certified by the Maryland Office on Aging as sheltered housing, provided the home meets state requirements.

Owners of the unlicensed assisted living facility in Owings Mills where a caretaker was fatally stabbed this week were running four other group homes in the area, health officials learned yesterday. One of the owners of A Touch of Love Assisted Living Group Inc. told health investigators last night that the company provided service to 24 mentally ill men and women at five group homes in the Owings Mills area. Four of the homes were in the Briarwood apartment complex where the stabbing occurred, and the fifth was nearby.