Hamilton House to Open : Retarded Adults Will Get a ‘Dream Home’

The house at 739 W. Glenoaks Blvd. in Glendale doesn’t look like much from the outside. It is of faded pink stucco and in need of paint.

But, to the retarded adults who do light assembly and packaging jobs in the Self-Aid Workshop run by the Glendale Assn. for the Retarded, the modest structure eight blocks from the workshop at 1544 W. Glenoaks Blvd. is their “dream house.”

In a matter of months, the three-bedroom house and a two-bedroom house behind it will become the only residential home for dependent retarded adults in Glendale and surrounding foothill communities.

Renovation of the two buildings into a seven-bedroom home that will house 10 retarded adults and a full-time staff of two live-in house parents is expected to get under way this month and be completed by spring.

Ada Hamilton Honored

When the workshop organized a contest and asked its 38 members to come up with a name for the home, “Dream House” was voted the most popular suggestion, said Carole Jouroyan, executive director of the Glendale Assn. for the Retarded, the nonprofit organization that will operate the home. But the popular vote gave way to sentiment, and the home will officially be known as Hamilton House in honor of Ada Hamilton, the 97-year-old woman who until a little more than a year ago was a volunteer tutor at the workshop.

To “Mrs. Ada,” as she is affectionately called, 739 W. Glenoaks Blvd. is the address of a “miracle.” Her life has been devoted to working with the retarded from the time she was a young schoolteacher in Salem, Mass. in the 1930s. She moved to Glendale after her husband died in 1950 and became a volunteer tutor with the association when it was formed by a group of parents in 1954.

On Monday, Hamilton, who now lives in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union Home in Eagle Rock, got her first look at the soon-to-be Hamilton House. “It’s just a miracle that this has happened,” Hamilton said as she toured the bare rooms of the two houses. “It’s wonderful. These young people are coming into their own and they deserve every bit of it.”

HUD Grant

The association made a $140,000 down payment on the property in September after it was awarded $218,291 in federal Housing and Urban Development community block grant funds by the City of Glendale in May. Escrow on the property closed in December, Jouroyan said, and this week the city finally was given the remodeling plans for approval.

The rest of the block grant funds will be used to renovate the property, purchase furnishings and household supplies, pay utilities and cover insurance costs for the first year of operation, Jouroyan said. The $50,000 mortgage on the house, and staff salaries will be covered by the residents’ board-and-care fees, donations from the community and fund-raisers, she said.

In the past, the city has used block grant funds to build a large apartment complex where physically disabled and developmentally disabled adults live. Opened last year, the 22-unit, one-bedroom Maple Park Apartments on Maple Street houses disabled adults who are able to live independently. Hamilton House will be strictly for retarded adults who do not have the independent living skills to take care of their own finances or nutritional needs.

‘Learning Process’

Jouroyan said she expects the operation of the home to be a “learning process” for both the association and the community. One of the first lessons came last September when the association had to apply for a variance from the city’s parking regulations. Because the home is officially classified as a boarding house, parking regulations would have required one parking space per bedroom, or seven parking spaces. There is only a two-car garage on the property.

The variance was eventually granted, but not without making a few assurances to the other people who live in the neighborhood that the presence of the home would not disrupt the area.

When Zoning Administrator John McKenna held a public hearing to consider the association’s variance application, several neighbors expressed concern about parking problems on a street dominated by three-and four-unit apartment buildings. And, unaware of who would be living in the home, neighbors were also fearful that it would become a halfway house for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts or former prison inmates, said Madge Botts, who has lived in the neighborhood for 15 years.

Residents Won’t Drive

Botts said the neighbors who attended the hearing were told by Jouroyan that none of the residents of the home, except the house parents, would need a parking space, since none would be capable of driving.

“If that’s the case,” said Botts, “maybe we’re better off than having an apartment there.”

The association will purchase a van to take care of the residents’ transportation needs, Jouroyan said, but most of the residents who will be working at the Self-Aid Workshop will be able to walk the eight blocks to the workshop. There are also bus stops at each end of the block.

As a condition of the variance, McKenna stipulated in a ruling made in October that the home be occupied only by “handicapped persons who are incapable of holding a driver’s license of any state and two employees.” If the association vacates the home, McKenna stipulated, then the property must be converted to one dwelling with no more than three bedrooms and a two-car garage. McKenna also required that the home “shall not be occupied as a halfway house by any persons with criminal records.”

No Further Complaints

Botts said those conditions have calmed the neighborhood. She said she hasn’t heard of any further complaints from her neighbors. But one man, who declined to give his name, said he is reserving his comments until after the residents have lived in the home for a while. “I don’t know what it’s going to be like,” he said.

Another woman, who also declined to give her name, said she has no fear of living next to a home for retarded adults. “I wouldn’t care if they were Martians; it wouldn’t bother me at all,” she said. “They have a right like everybody else to live. It’s good that they have a place.”

The effort to make Hamilton House a reality began two years ago, Jouroyan said. The association was prompted to consider such a project, she said, by the poor care that two of the Self-Aid Workshop’s 38 clients received when they were placed late in 1982 in a privately run group home for retarded adults in Los Angeles.

“It was our first experience with a placement,” Jouroyan said of the two young women who continue to live in the home. “We realized very quickly that they were receiving poor hygiene and nutritional care. Once they brought in a potato salad sandwich for lunch.”

Hope for 2 Women

Jouroyan declined to disclose the name of the Los Angeles home but said that the association is hoping that the two women will come live in Hamilton House once it is completed.

The association determined in 1983 study that one-third of those in the workshop program, whose ages range from 19 to 45, would need to be housed outside their parents’ homes within the next two years, Jouroyan said, because one parent had already died and the other would soon be unable to care for them.

“The reality is that the developmentally disabled are living longer today than in the past,” Jouroyan said. “They are outliving their parents. The worst thing that could happen to a son or daughter is to lose their parents. The state would immediately place them in an unfamiliar facility.”

Trend to Smaller Homes

In contrast to the past, when the state would place retarded adults in large facilities with as many as 100 beds, the trend in recent years has been toward smaller group homes, said Robert Ortiz, resource developer for the Frank D. Lanterman Regional Center. The center is one of seven state-run organizations in Los Angeles County that contracts services for the developmentally disabled and monitors operation of residential homes.

Ortiz said the idea behind the smaller facilities is to simulate a family atmosphere. Most residential homes near to Glendale are in Pasadena, Los Angeles and Hollywood, Ortiz said. He said more homes are needed in Glendale, Burbank, La Canada Flintridge, Eagle Rock and the eastern part of Pasadena.

“Any home opening up in Glendale is very welcome,” Ortiz said.

A privately run group home, the South Pacific Guest Home, did exist in Glendale for nearly two years, Ortiz said, but closed last July “over a difference of opinion on how the home should be run.” Ortiz, who would not elaborate on the problem, said that was a board-and-care home for six retarded adults.

The operators of Hamilton House, Jouroyan said, have a go-ahead from the state Community Care Licensing Department. The association will begin taking applications for residency in the home later this month, Jouroyan said. At least six of the home’s 10 residents must be from Glendale, she said.

The minimum age for residents is 18, Jouroyan said. They must be ambulatory and able to feed, bathe and dress themselves, she added. The board-and-care fees of the residents will be paid by Supplemental Social Security Income of the residents, Jouroyan said.

One of the prospective residents of Hamilton House is Martha Ellen Fleming, a 26-year-old woman from La Crescenta who said she loves to boogie and play her drums to “mellow rock ‘n’ roll.” Fleming, who visited Hamilton House along with “Mrs. Ada” and Jouroyan, was eager to know two things: where her drum kit would be set up and who else was going to live in the home.

Anxiety About Moving

But her enthusiasm over the possibility of living in Hamilton House was tempered by her anxiety about moving away from home: “I promised Carole (Jouroyan) I would live here three months and, if I wasn’t happy, I could go back to my other house.”

Jouroyan said she wasn’t surprised by the woman’s fears. “Let’s face it,” she observed, “moving out from your parents can be a very traumatic experience for anyone.”

Martha Ellen’s mother, Jane Fleming, is aware of her daughter’s mixed feelings about living at Hamilton House but said she expects the experience to be good for her daughter and the rest of the Fleming family.

“It’s a big change. She’s lived with us all her life,” Fleming said. “I think she’ll like it once she gets there. The beauty of it is she can come home for the weekends. It’s not like we’re sending her to some far-off place.”

And, for herself, Fleming said, Hamilton House represents “a sort of peace of mind knowing that (Martha Ellen) has a place to stay in the future.”