On Their Own : Disabled Buy Homes With Help From Their Parents as Key to Future Security

In his quiet moments, Bob Goldstone is haunted by an admittedly irrational but visceral fear.

The Palos Verdes Peninsula realtor imagines that after he dies his mentally impaired adult son will be left to wander the streets alone. And because no one gives him his medications, he succumbs to epileptic seizures.

“When I’m gone, it’s permanent,” Goldstone said. “I can’t come back for another day and take care of this person. I have to do what I can for him now.”

Parents of adult children with disabilities such as mental retardation, autism and cerebral palsy live with these kinds of concerns every day:

When they’re gone, who will watch over their children? Will they have jobs? Opportunities to socialize? Food on the table? Health care? Will they be safe?

Some Southland parents of disabled adult children are tackling their biggest worry--where will their children live--in an innovative way.

They are convinced that the purchase of permanent housing for their adult children is the key to both their future security and self-sufficiency.

Group homes, one of the most popular living arrangements for the disabled, are too impermanent, the parents believe, and stifle their children’s independence.

So in 1989 about two dozen parents formed a nonprofit group in Culver City called Home Ownership Made Easy (HOME). With federal and local grants they buy housing that is then rented at low rates to their children and to other persons with disabilities.

And a group of Torrance-area parents is going beyond buying rental homes for their disabled adult children.

The nonprofit group Home Ownership for Personal Empowerment (HOPE) will guide persons who have mental disabilities through the maze of actually purchasing their own homes or condos themselves. No homes have been purchased, but they have several candidates for homeownership.

And other parents acting on their own, like Long Beach resident Candy Kimble, have bought homes for their disabled adult children and established them in separate households.

HOME, the older of the two housing groups, has purchased a Culver City duplex and a four-plex in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles accommodating 14 disabled tenants. Rents range from $187 to $237 a month.

The group also has received a $500,000 grant from HUD to purchase four more condos in Inglewood and is applying for a $1 million HUD grant for 20 more housing units in Culver City, Hawthorne, Santa Monica and Los Angeles.

HOME’s purchase of the Culver City and Fairfax buildings was preceded by lots of legwork and struggles with red tape.

HOME members visited a variety of neighborhoods, said board member Rob Dodson, looking for safe, clean areas that are close to public transportation and shopping. When they did find properties in a good area, the living units sometimes had to be gutted and retrofitted with a ramp and extra-wide doors to accommodate a wheelchair.

Lining up the money to buy the properties can take longer than finding them--months, even years. The parents often got lost in a maze of bureaucratic red tape.

Funding for both the Culver City and Fairfax properties originated with HUD and in Culver City was funneled through the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency. The duplex was purchased outright with a grant for $425,000.

HOME bought the Fairfax four-plex with a $200,000 grant from the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency. It was matched with an equal amount from HUD, which was administered by the state Department of Housing and Community Development. The grants need not be repaid, but both the CRA and HUD said they check periodically to make sure the facility is being used as specified in the grant.

Groups such as HOPE and HOME are part of a growing trend across the country, according to Derrick Dufresne, president of Community Resource Associates, a St. Louis consulting firm that deals with housing issues of the disabled and the disadvantaged.

He said federal dollars are beginning to flow once again for the development of low-income housing, but this time federal officials are looking at “new and innovative ways to solve old housing problems.”

As a result, said Dufresne, states such as Texas, South Dakota, Michigan and Florida are using federal funds to establish agencies that are looking into progressive programs such as HOME and HOPE to address the need for affordable housing.

In Ohio and New Hampshire, residents with disabilities have already purchased some 50 units, ranging from condos and houses to mobile homes.

Dufresne predicts that such efforts are “just the first ripple in a huge wave” of disabled-owned housing that will sweep the country.

The concept was introduced in California a half-dozen years ago by Mike Danneker, the director of the Westside Regional Center in Culver City, one of 21 state-supported agencies scattered across California dispensing services to persons with developmental disabilities.

Inspired by a seminar on independent living for the disabled, he applied for and received state funds to start a pilot program that would address the housing needs of the handicapped. The HOME project was born.

“The developmentally disabled are just like anybody else,” Danneker said. “They have abilities and we’re trying to give them opportunities to contribute to society. We’re teaching them how to take care of themselves rather than our taking care of them.”

However, he abhors the creation of what he calls “developmentally disabled ghettos”--buildings where all the occupants are handicapped. Instead, HOME’s future units will be scattered through large condo complexes and neighborhoods of single-family homes.

The idea, however, is not to place the disabled in housing and then forget them. An elaborate support system coordinated by the Westside Regional Center makes their independent living possible. Social service agencies such as Life Steps, Independent Focus and Project Live offer training in housekeeping, money management and transportation.

“We try to make it fun,” Philip Pacheco said of Life Steps’ tutoring of clients in the basics of cooking.

And, he said, preparing a meal touches many other important skills areas, such as the use of public transportation to the supermarket, choosing healthy foods, appropriate behavior in public and money handling.

Life Steps even provides counselor Doris Bubis to help with roommate problems. She was visiting the other afternoon with Robin Stevens and Kathy Salter, who live in HOME’s Fairfax duplex. They are both 31 years old and have mental disabilities.

Bubis was helping Stevens, a shy young African-American woman, to handle her roommate’s temper tantrums, which make Stevens withdraw. Bubis emphasized that coping on her own is part of independent living.

“Independence also means paying rent, paying the bills,” Bubis added. “At home Robin’s parents did everything for her. Independence is about making decisions about how to spend money, what type of person she wants to be, what’s in her best interest.

“Robin can’t always call her parents to take care of her. I’m trying to get her to be confident about her ability to live on her own.”

Stevens and Salter, who is assertive and outspoken, have been sharing their sunny, simply furnished, two-bedroom apartment for the past year and a half. A large poster of Michael Jackson adorns Stevens’ bedroom wall and her walk-in closet bulges with clothes.

“I didn’t have a chance to make my bed yet,” the young woman admitted.

Each day she takes a bus to UCLA where she works on a grounds crew. Salter works at a Friends of Animals shelter. In the evening, she enjoys Stevens’ cooking, including spaghetti and fried chicken. Salter budgets the money.

Despite their occasional spats, Salter says she and her roommate are well matched. “She likes the Jackson Five; I like the Jackson Five. We like the ‘Partridge Family,’ ‘I Love Lucy’ and ‘The Flintstones.’ ”

Salter said she would never return to her old board-and-care home. Now she says she is no longer bossed around or has to worry about a roommate taking her clothes. But best of all, she has her own room. “Now I’m not bothered by people who want to go to bed early,” she said.

Considering that just two decades ago young women like these might have been relegated to an institution, their independent living is testimony to the extraordinary strides that have been made in the lives of the developmentally challenged.

However, HOME board member Rob Dodson said a reviving real estate market in Southern California may make this lifestyle increasingly difficult to attain.

The buildings that HOME buys require long escrow periods while the bureaucratic red tape snarling the money is untangled. A long escrow was fine in a slow market, Dodson said, when sellers were willing to wait, but now they may be more impatient.

Members of the HOPE project may face the same problem, because, while the group intends to help disabled individuals to purchase single-family homes, not multifamily units, unwinding the red tape and securing financing will still take a long time.

HOPE director Lisa Shaevitz said the group plans to walk clients and their families through the complicated process of assembling a financing package.

“We’re not going to just hand them application forms to fill out and telephone numbers and leave them on their own,” Shaevitz said. “I’ve been researching this area for two years, and I still can’t understand it.”

To help sort out the confusion, the Harbor and Westside Regional centers are discussing the possibility of jointly hiring a coordinator specializing in the financing of home purchases.

Shaevitz said the funding packages will consist of low-cost bank loans and grants from foundations and HUD to cover a down payment. Clients’ Supplemental Security Income, which for a single adult living on his or her own is $748, will go toward the monthly mortgage payment.

Shaevitz emphasized that the HOPE project “is not a giveaway.” The families will be required to make a modest financial commitment, 3% of the purchase price, toward the down payment.

HOPE hopes to help people like Allison Rivers. The 9-year-old, who has a mental disability, currently lives in a group home because of medical problems. However, her parents, Don and Susan Rivers of Lakewood, will be working with HOPE to purchase a house for her.

Don Rivers, a business executive, explained that the house would probably at first be owned by HOPE until his daughter reaches 18, when her name could be put on the deed.

Susan Rivers, a homemaker, said they would have more control over their daughter’s life if she lived in her own house. While she would have a live-in care-giver, the parents would be able to choose her roommates and the programs that will benefit her.

They also would feel more comfortable visiting any time they wished. “There would just be fewer rules,” Susan Rivers said.

Candy Kimble, whose daughter has Down’s Syndrome, knows well the benefits of independent living that the Rivers’ are looking forward to.

A decade ago--long before HOPE or HOME were started--the Long Beach resident used her own money to buy a home for her developmentally delayed daughter, Carrin Alba.

Kimble found a four-bedroom home in a pleasant, blue-collar Norwalk neighborhood. The property was rundown and overgrown with weeds. She saw its possibilities, but before she bought it she knocked on the door of every neighbor asking if they had objections to her daughter living on the block.

“I didn’t want her moving in and their saying, ‘We don’t want her here,’ ” said Kimble, a retired special education teacher. There were no objections.

Alba, 34, has fashioned an extraordinarily independent life. She is a teacher’s aide in a nursery school and goes to Cerritos College twice a week to polish up her independent living skills.

She cooks, cleans, sweeps the porch and takes out the trash, “only at a little slower pace than we do,” said her mother.

Now all she needs is a roommate. Her previous one, who lived with her for eight years, left when her parents moved to the San Diego area.

Meanwhile Alba thrives on her own. Kimble said her daughter once told her, “I’m like everybody else. I want to live by myself because I’m not young and I don’t need my Mom.”

This kind of independence is the goal of the parents of the HOPE and HOME projects. They have a deep feeling that their children are capable of living on their own, with help.

It is not always easy, as the father of Robin Stevens said: “It’s hard to let go, but you know you won’t always be there to help them.”

“Independent living changes people’s lives,” added Mike Danneker, the director of the Westside Regional Center. “It makes people feel better. You see people taking care of themselves and living on their own and contributing to the community. That’s what’s beautiful.”

Where to Call

For more information about homeownership for the handicapped, call Mike Danneker at Home Ownership Made Easy, (310) 337-1155, Ext. 519, or Lisa Shaevitz at Home Ownership for Personal Empowerment, (310) 540-1711, Ext. 401.