Apartments for Disabled Make Dreams Come True

They were unlikely trappings for a dream come true--a modest lamp, wastepaper basket and set of dishes.

But for Mary Lou Holm, the housewarming gifts represented victory in the battle to win independence for her son Gordon, 44, whose cerebral palsy was once so bad that doctors advised her “just to put him away.”

“He’s got his own apartment for the first time in his life,” said Holm, who speaks for her son because a lack of motor coordination still impairs his speech. “This is an answer to many prayers.”

Gordon Holm is among 52 disabled people to benefit from the construction of Carbon Creek Shores. It is the first government-subsidized housing for disabled and their families in the state, say officials at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs, which funded the bulk of the project. And it is the first government-subsidized housing for the handicapped in Orange County, say local housing officials. (Statewide, there are four other housing projects for the low-income handicapped, but their able-bodied relatives must live elsewhere.)

The 40-unit complex, on Carbon Creek in Anaheim, opened formally with a ribbon cutting in November. In October, residents had already begun moving into the $2.7-million project built by Access Anaheim. A nonprofit organization, Access Anaheim was founded by the project’s sponsors, the Dale McIntosh Center for the Disabled in Anaheim and Retirement Housing Foundation in Long Beach.

“We started advertising in May and we had 150 applicants by July,” said Paula Margeson, program director at the McIntosh Center. “We interviewed probably 100 and took the top eligible 60 and visited them at home.”

Some Were Homeless

Some of the applicants were homeless; others had been living in their cars. Many had been living in an emergency shelter run by the McIntosh Center. Most were severely disabled. Still, need was not enough to qualify, Margeson said.

“We were looking for people who would say that this is just a steppingstone to their personal development,” she said.

With the complex already full, 20 people have been placed on a waiting list, Margeson said. The complex, in the 3000 block of Frontera Street, contains 26 one-bedroom, 10 two-bedroom and four three-bedroom apartments.

Among its features are adjustable kitchen countertops, wider doorways for wheelchair accessibility, markings on ovens and thermostats, doorbells and smoke alarms with blinking lights for the deaf and special grooves on the sidewalks to guide the blind.

Gordon Holm, who has spent the past decade in and out of more living arrangements than his mother can count, effortlessly rolls his wheelchair across seamless linoleum floors and stops before a kitchen countertop lowered so that he can easily reach the sink and a microwave oven.

His mother, who lives in an Irvine trailer park, admits that she finds the transformation remarkable.

“I used to have to hold him in my arms to feed him,” she said. “Now he’s not only living by himself but cooking his dinner and doing his own dishes.”

So happy, in fact, were the Holmses with the apartment that they and “20 or 30” gift-bearing friends recently celebrated with a housewarming party.

Others have benefited, too.

Cuts Apron Strings

Cynthia Burke, 26, said moving to the complex offered an opportunity to cut apron strings. Stricken with muscular dystrophy during her senior year in high school, she had been living with her parents in Tustin since receiving a bachelor’s degree in social work from Chapman College in 1982.

She is fully mobile but tires easily and is weak from the waist up. She hopes that living in a building where grab-bars line the walls and where doors and windows practically glide open will help her focus her energy on developing a career as a medical social worker for the handicapped.

“I can become totally self-sufficient so that I can then help others to achieve the same goal,” she said.

A 32-year-old mother of two who was rendered legally blind in recent brain surgery said a two-bedroom apartment at Carbon Creek has offered financial independence from an estranged husband.

A former accountant who asked not to be identified, she said that all of her $780 monthly disability payments was being absorbed by the $800 in rent she had been paying for a modest two-bedroom Whittier apartment.

Now her rent is an affordable $200 a month, and she is able to provide for her two sons, ages 1 and 3. In addition, an abundance of natural and artificial light allows her to make the most of her remaining vision.

“I feel like I’m starting fresh,” she said.

Helen and Gerald Poncy, a disabled couple in their 60s, said Carbon Creek made it possible for them to continue living together after they failed to find other affordable housing.

“I found that there was an 11 1/2-year wait for low- and moderate-income housing,” said Helen Poncy, who is confined to a wheelchair with complications from the polio she contracted as a young woman. “I had made up my mind that if we couldn’t work something out, I was going to go into a rest home.”

sh Look Like Other Complexes

Other residents include a quadriplegic who was injured in a fall from a beach cliff shortly before his first child was born earlier this year; a former auto mechanic fighting Lou Gehrig’s disease; a young, deaf couple who married this month, and a Vietnam veteran who is a double amputee.

To the untrained eye, the two buildings making up Carbon Creek Shores resemble, as they were designed to do, any other new apartment complex.

“We wanted the place to look upbeat,” Margeson said. “We don’t want people to feel like they were living in a low-income project and that they have to look and act poor.”

On the outside, the complex is stylish in pink California stucco. Inside, crisp, uncluttered rooms could easily be mistaken for those in any contemporary apartment, except for one pleasant impression: They appear lighter and airier than their conventional counterparts as wide door frames ease the way for wheelchairs and a preponderance of windows pour in light for the visually impaired.

On closer inspection, however, many other wheelchair adaptations surface. Medicine cabinets, shelving and light switches are low for easy reach. The floor is covered with either linoleum or tightly laid carpeting without pile to minimize resistance. Windows slide sideways instead of up and down to take advantage of a seated person’s strength. Cabinets have been removed from under sinks so that wheelchairs can scoot underneath them.

Residents, who had to demonstrate economic need to be considered, pay 30% of their income for rent. From the $533 per month most receive from Supplemental Security Income (the amount paid a single, disabled person who has not worked), a utilities allowance is deducted, making the monthly rent about $130, Margeson said.

‘Steppingstone to Independence’

Blind herself from birth, Margeson said she hoped the two-building complex will serve as “a steppingstone to independence” for its residents who might otherwise be forced to live with relatives or in institutions.

“It’s hard to view yourself as a responsible human being when you have other people taking care of you,” she said. “Before disabled persons can take charge of their lives, find employment or make a contribution to their community, they must have suitable living quarters.”

The complex’s opening ushers in a new era in low-income housing for Orange County’s disabled, sponsors said. Already two other facilities are planned countywide. The Rehabilitation Institute of Southern California plans to begin construction in January on a 40-unit, $2-million complex for the disabled and their family members in Orange, said executive director Praim Singh. Meanwhile, the United Cerebral Palsy Foundation is scheduled to complete construction in June on a $1.4-million low-income, intermediate-care facility for 15 adults with cerebral palsy in Buena Park, said Jackie Popp, Orange County program services director.

Carbon Creek also represents a triumph for the Dayle McIntosh Center. It has been six years since the Anaheim-based, nonprofit independent living center set out to build the handicapped-accessible apartments. It faced funding problems, neighborhood opposition and architectural upheaval.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development initially turned down the center’s application for funding in 1982 because, Margeson said, the organization did not have a track record in housing development.

A year later, HUD approved $2.5 million in financing after the nonprofit Retirement Housing Foundation became the project’s co-sponsor. The foundation has developed 54 government-funded and 24 privately financed projects for the elderly and disabled since its inception in 1961, said Kristin Tuite, foundation development coordinator.

Ultimately, however, additional funds were obtained from local sources because the property site and improvements to it cost more than the amount allotted by HUD for property acquisition, Margeson said. The City of Anaheim contributed $120,000 and Orange County added $238,000, and time and support was put in by both staffs.

When it came to finding a location, Access first set its sights on a relatively inexpensive Westminster lot near stores and doctors’ offices. But neighbors objected in public hearings before the city Planning Commission and City Council, Margeson said.

“They said that they liked what we were trying to do but they just didn’t like where we were trying to do it.”

Cost Too Much

Access considered another site--an undeveloped portion of Liberty Park in Westminster--but abandoned it when a study revealed that it was on top of a peat bog that would require more in improvements than the amount being allotted for land acquisition, Margeson said.

Access board member Lorraine Schulz, a former planner for Orange County, found the current 2 1/2-acre site, which straddles a flood control channel of the Santa Ana River, in 1985.

People’s Housing Adaptability, a Los Angeles architectural firm credited with writing the book on handicapped-accessible housing, was hired to design the complex in 1982. But it was abandoned that year in favor of Los Angeles-based Kurt Meyer Associates, which had designed a number of government-subsidized housing complexes--albeit for the elderly, Margeson said.

Cambell Construction, an El Monte construction firm specializing in housing for the handicapped and elderly, broke ground a year ago. Access began looking for residents six months later.

Not everything is perfect, Access officials acknowledge. For instance, public buses that run through the neighborhood have yet to be equipped with lifts for wheelchairs. And many medical and consumer services needed by complex residents are not available within walking distance, although a convenience store is at the nearby corner of Glassell and Frontera streets.

Then there is the matter of housing for the remainder of Orange County’s handicapped population, which a recent United Way survey placed at 250,000.

“I know that 40 units is just a drop in the bucket,” said Margeson. “But it’s a drop in the bucket that we didn’t have before.”