Seniors Home May Become Jail Facility : Studio City: The Planning Commission will conduct a hearing today on the proposal to house low-risk prisoners on work furlough.

A retirement home in Studio City may be converted to a work furlough facility for low-risk prisoners under plans scheduled for a hearing today before the Los Angeles city Planning Commission.

The program would allow drunk drivers, check bouncers and others convicted of nonviolent misdemeanor crimes to work at their regular jobs while serving their sentences. The minimum-security facility would be on the site of the Ventura Retirement Villa, a 146-bed home for elderly people requiring supervision but not medical care.

It would be Los Angeles County’s second privately run work furlough residence, said Carl Curtiss, program director for the county’s Probation Department. A work furlough program with 220 beds opened recently in south Los Angeles, and Curtiss said the county hopes to establish more such facilities to relieve overcrowded jails.

Reaction to the proposal among neighborhood residents so far is mixed. Members of the Studio City Homeowners Assn. last week voted 28 to 12 to oppose the plan.

Barry Rubin, whose Long Beach-based company, Working Alternatives, submitted the proposal to convert the retirement home, said residents had nothing to fear. “This is not a program for serious felons,” he said. “It’s for Uncle George who drinks too much and Aunt Mary who doesn’t pay her bills.”

Working Alternative’s application for a conditional-use permit must be approved by the Planning Commission. A decision may be reached today, although the commission could also wait if there is much opposing testimony.

What will happen to residents of the Ventura Retirement Villa, at 11201 Ventura Blvd., is not clear.

The home’s owner and operator, Donald Gormly, could not be reached for comment. The district manager for the state Department of Social Services, which licenses such facilities, said it had received no notice of plans to close.

Lydia Thomas, the department’s district manager, said 85 of the home’s 146 beds were filled during an inspection earlier this month. Thomas said residents and their guardians should be given adequate notice so they can make other arrangements, and she expressed surprise at plans to change the facility’s use.

Gormly would continue to operate the facility even if it began housing prisoners, according to Curtiss. Gormly is a vice president of Working Alternatives, Curtiss said.

Curtiss and Rubin said participants in the work furlough program would be screened by the Probation Department and approved for assignment there by a judge. They would pay for their room and board on a sliding scale according to income. Residents would be strictly monitored and would be allowed to leave only for work. The facility would hire private parole officers to check on them at their jobs.

Some nearby residents want to keep the work furlough facility out, despite those assurances.

“The problem is you don’t take people that are felons . . . and put them in an area where there’s very rich people shopping on one side of you and dope dealers on the other side . . . The temptations are too great,” said real estate broker Mort Allen. He said the facility should be “in a blue-collar area like Ventura Boulevard and Magnolia.”

But Jerry Hays, former president of the Studio City Chamber of Commerce and a homeowners association board member, said the plan did not bother him.

“When I read about thousands of criminals being released by judges back into the community who have committed serious crimes because they have no facilities for them, I think that presents a lot more of a hazard to my community than a person who committed a stupid mistake,” Hays said.