CORONA NORCO : Neighbors Voice Opposition : Norco Council Blocks Care Home Expansion

A board-and-care home in northeastern Norco may not accept additional residents beyond the six already there, the City Council decided Wednesday night.

By a 3-2 vote, the council overturned a Planning Commission decision that would have allowed up to 15 elderly residents at Leota Wright’s home on Hillside Drive.

“My big problem is their security,” said Marie Cox, one of three neighbors who had appealed the Planning Commission’s decision to the council. “I don’t think they have enough security for the six (residents) that they have, let alone the 15 they’re trying to get.”

Cox told the council of two incidents in which residents of the boarding care home had entered her residence next door. One morning, she said, she emerged from her bathroom to find an elderly stranger standing in her living room.

“I almost shot him in the face (with Mace),” she said in an interview. “I didn’t know who he was.”

Cox claimed that a man living in the home entered an enclosed patio behind her house and urinated on her plants.

She told the council she should be able to live “without the constant fear that someone might be in my living room or patio.”

Wright, the home’s owner and operator, did not address the council. But her attorney, Frances Mullane, said that the elderly residents posed “a minimal threat” to neighbors and that the board-and-care home was not inconsistent with surrounding agricultural and residential uses.

The three neighbors opposing the home were acting “on personal, self-centered and selfish” motives, Mullane said, adding that there had been only four complaints during the 10 years that Wright has been operating the home. She cares for two women and four men ranging in age from 62 to 90.

Support Voiced

Some of Wright’s other neighbors, interviewed before the council vote, said they had “no reason at all” to object to the home’s expansion.

“People get old and they have to have a place to live,” said Florence Riley, who lives across the street. “It’s kind of sad that no one seems to want them in the neighborhood.

“Mrs. Wright has always told me that if there’s any problem, just to call.”

Councilman Steve M. Nathan, who made the motion to overturn the Planning Commission’s ap proval, said the city should “withdraw commercial use from the (agricultural) area rather than increase it.”

Barbara Wilson, another of the protesting neighbors, said:

“I’ve seen them out in the street, and I’m afraid (a motorist) is going to hit them.

“If they were elderly and just couldn’t take care of themselves it would be one thing. But when they start wandering into houses, I can’t go along with that. Or when they start wandering down the street, not knowing where they are.”