CORONA NORCO : Council OKs Expansion of Board-and-Care Home

A Norco board-and-care home can house 15 elderly residents, the City Council voted Wednesday night.

The 4-1 vote reversed a council decision made last month that denied Leota Wright a permit allowing more than six residents in her home on Hillside Drive.

Three of Wright’s neighbors had appealed to the council to deny the permit, but other neighbors and some residents of the home spoke in favor of the expansion Wednesday night.

In addition, Wright agreed to add sensors to the gates on her property so that her employees can monitor the residents’ comings and goings.

That agreement was enough to sway the votes of Mayor Naomi R. Feagan and Councilman John W. Casper, both of whom voted to deny the permit last month.

Many of the Norco residents who testified before the council stressed that there is a need in Norco for housing facilities for its elderly.

“It appears that little if any consideration has been given to the fact that the proposed increase in capacity at the home will, in fact, help address that need,” Wright’s attorney, Frances H. Mullane, said of the earlier decision to deny the permit.

The objections of neighbors opposed to expansion, Mullane wrote in a memorandum, were “totally insufficient” to support the council’s earlier finding that expanding the board-and-care home would be “detrimental to the neighborhood.”

The chief complaint the neighbors had offered was that the elderly residents of the home often left the Wright property, sometimes wandering into the street, where they might be injured.

Councilman Steve Nathan cast the sole dissenting vote, saying he believes expanding the board-and-care home would make it a commercial enterprise and therefore inconsistent with the agricultural zoning of the eastern Norco neighborhood.