DANA POINT : Fee Waiver Denied for Halfway House

A halfway house that is clinging to existence after a series of battles over city regulations lost its latest scuffle with the City Council this week.

The council voted 3 to 2 Tuesday against granting the home’s backers a waiver of a $1,900 deposit fee toward a conditional-use permit. City guidelines stipulate that nonprofit groups may be granted such fee waivers.

The council voted after listening to an emotional plea in support of the house by R. H. Dana Elementary School student Christopher Eagle, 10, who lives at the halfway house with his family.

The vote could ultimately force Christopher and his family out of the house, said Marc Ely-Chaitlin, who converted the five-unit Olinda Drive apartment house into a soup kitchen and halfway house last spring. An arbitration hearing on the status of the house has been set for Tuesday at City Hall.

“We will have an arbitration hearing next week, but there’s no doubt we will be railroaded out of here,” Ely-Chaitlin said. “The council is not hurting me; they’re hurting a group of people who cannot afford to live anywhere else. If they put us out of here, this council will have to wear that badge for the rest of their political careers.”

But Mayor Mike Eggers said the halfway house was “an inappropriate use for the area” and put the blame for the council’s actions on Ely-Chaitlin, who he says has failed to respect the city’s rules.

Ely-Chaitlin “has shown a total disregard for the city since last spring,” Eggers said. “The city would extend a helping hand to those who want to work with the city, but not those who work against the city.”

Eggers and council members Judy Curreri and Bill Bamattre cast the votes against a fee waiver. Bamattre said that he agreed that the halfway house was inappropriate for the Lantern Village area of town but added that the council majority had missed the point.

“We were not voting on the merits of the conditional-use permit; the issue was whether the application fee should be waived,” Bamattre said. “They have been recognized by the state as nonprofit. That being the case, we should be consistent with our treatment and grant them the waiver.”

Bamattre called the vote after the boy’s testimony “a difficult thing.”

“There are social services available for these people, but when you see a family like that, it’s difficult when they are facing you,” Bamattre said.

The council’s vote was the latest setback in the saga of the halfway house and soup kitchen, which was launched without city approval last April and ordered closed by the council last summer. Ely-Chaitlin closed the kitchen, but he is seeking funding to buy the apartment building and keep the halfway house in business.

“The council is using me as a scapegoat on this,” Ely-Chaitlin said. “But it would have been just as easy for them to grant us a waiver as to not grant one. They say they want to clean up the area, but our house is the only building on the corner not involved in drug traffic. . . . The bottom line here is that (the council) is just cruel.”

Councilwoman Karen Lloreda applauded Ely-Chaitlin’s ideas but said he has been “uncooperative and unresponsible.”

“Obviously his intentions are terrific, but he just has not shown that he acts in good faith,” she added.