A neighborhood group wants to know why patients of Agnews
Development Center in San Jose are moving to Taylor Avenue and
Ginger Way.
Morgan Hill – A neighborhood group wants to know why patients of Agnews Development Center in San Jose are moving to Taylor Avenue and Ginger Way.
The state-run hospital for people with developmental disabilities is slated to close in 2008, and more than 250 patients are being scattered into community-based housing.
Two adjacent homes in north Morgan Hill will house 10 patients who are mostly bed-ridden or in wheel chairs. Each home will include professional care providers working around the clock, including medical nurses to attend to their needs. The state is contracting with non-profit organizations to purchase, develop and run the homes.
Some parents of Agnews patients are raising concerns about the largest move in state history of people with disabilities into the community. While the hospital’s closure reflects a cultural and political shift away from institutions, the parents are nervous about how the state will provide adequate health care for their children.
Additionally, residents on Taylor Avenue and Ginger Way are worried about the safety and quality of their neighborhood after the homes begin operating. If the two care facilities aren’t run properly, they argue, or if the homes disrupt the neighborhood with parking, traffic, or waste-disposal problems, the neighborhood’s serene quality of life will decline.
“As someone who lives two doors away from there, I have a lot of concerns,” said Taylor Avenue resident Gloria Pariseau. “This is a quiet, out of the way neighborhood.”
At a neighborhood meeting last week, more than two dozen local residents voiced concerns about parking, traffic and whether the medically fragile patients would go unsupervised near their children. The homeowners also questioned why the San Andreas Regional Center, one of 21 non-profit agencies contracting with the state to provide major life services for people with mental or physical impairments, picked their neighborhood to open the facilities.
“It’s not that we’re being cold hearted, we want these people to have the best care they can possibly have,” said Bob Reinhardt, whose family has lived in the neighborhood since it was built 10 years ago. “But they’re not going to receive that in our neighborhood.”
A lack of sidewalks, parks, libraries, shopping and other amenities, Reinhardt said, make the neighborhood a bad fit for people with language, mobility, learning, self-help and independent-living problems. But his main concern is parking. The two homes are located on cul-de-sacs.
“They are basically running a business in a residential neighborhood,” he said, alluding to shifts of workers coming and going and trucks dropping off medical supplies.
While sensitive to the issues of parking residents brought up, the steering committee responsible for selecting the location of the two facilities said there were no other single-story homes of comparable square footage for sale in Morgan Hill. But residents found real estate listings showing a number of homes for sale for less than $700,000, cheaper than the $900,000 the state is paying for the two homes in the neighborhood.
“The bottom line is they didn’t do their homework and they’re not making the best selection for their consumers and are of course wasting tax-payer money,” wrote Stephanie Reinhardt, Bob’s wife, in an e-mail.
For their part, state officials point out the homes are legal and do not require public notice or local approval. They deny the suggestion of being a “bad neighbor,” saying they’re protecting the civil rights of people with disabilities by not disclosing who is moving into the homes, as some neighbors have demanded.
“How is that being a bad neighbor?” asked Dave Dodds, a consultant for the California Department of Developmental Services, which supports more than 200,000 children and adults with a developmental disabilities. “Did the people living in that neighborhood ask permission to buy homes there? The whole idea (behind the legal plan to close Agnews) is to treat disabled people like anybody else.”
While some Agnews patients have acted violently toward themselves, and require intensive training and supervision, Dodds said those patients would not be housed in Morgan Hill.
“These are not dangerous people, they are just different,” he said of the patients who would occupy the Morgan Hill homes. “And they’re getting a bum rap.”
