YORBA LINDA : Unlicensed Halfway House to Shut Down

Operators of a halfway house that was cited for operating without a state license said Wednesday that they will be out of the city by the end of the week.

City officials had threatened to take legal action to close the Victory Outreach Ministry International facility, at the corner of Richfield Road and Yorba Linda Boulevard, if the halfway house wasn’t brought up to code by today.

“We didn’t want to impose on the city any longer,” said Victory Outreach Senior Pastor Bruce Bernal. “We couldn’t get our license as quickly as the city wanted. I’m not going to fight City Hall.”

Yorba Linda code enforcement officers found in late December that the house, which primarily served people with substance abuse problems, contained too few bathrooms and fire escapes for the more than a dozen adults as well as several children who lived in the home, according to Phillip Paxton, Yorba Linda’s community development director.

The city gave the operators of the home until today to correct those problems as well as obtain a state license.

Bernal agreed that the building code violations cited by the city were generally accurate but described them as “minor.” He said he wasn’t sure exactly how many people lived in the house.

Victory Outreach Ministry International, which operates halfway houses around the world, has been negotiating with state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs for more than a year to obtain licenses for the church organization’s California facilities, Bernal said.

Bernal said residents from the Yorba Linda location are being moved to other Victory Outreach facilities in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Yorba Linda house, which Victory Outreach leased from an Anaheim real estate agency, is the ministry’s only Orange County facility. Bernal hopes to open a new halfway house somewhere in the county once proper licenses are obtained.

The halfway house has also been a center of concern in the city because of a robbery at a store across the street from the facility that occurred about a week after Victory Outreach was cited.

Brea police said they are searching for a robbery suspect who lived at the halfway house last year. Detective Mike Carpenter said the former resident, who was not identified, is suspected in the Dec. 28 robbery of a stationery store across the street from the home.

In that incident, Elinor Bigonger, wife of Councilman Roland E. Bigonger and co-owner of the store, was robbed at knifepoint, police said.

The suspect took $150 from the store’s cash register before escaping, Carpenter said.