Cities Accused of Dumping Troubled Youths : Delinquency: Some officials complain that urban toughs sent north to group homes in Shasta County, a largely rural area, are creating problems.

A peacock tattooed on James’ forearm covers up the Spanish words Mi Vida Loca --My Crazy Life.

A butterfly tattooed on the back of the 16-year-old’s neck covers the insignia of his former gang, the Dead End Locals of the Central Valley town of Merced.

These new tattoos covering old tattoos are a sign of James’ rehabilitation, say the operators of the Remi Vista group homes for troubled teen-agers here in this Northern California city of 70,000.

But, while operators of Redding-area group homes are proud of such success stories, their enthusiasm for working with troubled youngsters is not shared by everyone here in Shasta County. Local law enforcement officials complain that tough urban kids from other parts of the state are being dumped into their largely rural county for “pine cone therapy.” Group home children, critics say, trigger gang problems, increase the delinquency rate, cause discipline problems at schools and are generally a bad influence on local youngsters.

In response to the controversy, legislation was passed this year in Sacramento declaring a one-year moratorium beginning Jan. 1 on state Department of Social Services licenses for group homes for delinquents in Shasta County.

The moratorium, authored by Sen. Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), also allows for reimbursement of some costs to local authorities in dealing with group home children and calls for a statewide study by a task force into the practice of placing children in group homes outside their own counties.

Group homes are privately operated, publicly funded facilities for housing and treating youngsters with an array of problems, including mental illness and emotional disturbances. The children are classified both as delinquent and non-delinquent and are frequently the products of abusive or neglectful parents. They are referred to the homes by probation, social service, mental health and school officials. Many--probably most--of the youngsters in group homes have been in conventional foster homes, but were found to be in need of tighter supervision and therapy.

Group home operators acknowledge that there is an over-concentration of such facilities in Shasta County but maintain that problems caused by their youths are exaggerated by critics and point to an estimated $25 million to $50 million per year that their homes are adding to the local economy.

“Your kid and my kid don’t bring anything into the community,” said John Tillery, executive director of Remi Vista group homes. “They use resources. These children bring resources into the community.”

Officials in Shasta County say that relatively cheap real estate prices and “spinoffs” from existing group homes have led to a glut of these facilities in their area. They point to state figures indicating that there were 511 group home beds for troubled youngsters in the county last year--one bed for every 290 residents. By way of comparison, San Diego County--which regularly ships children north to Shasta--had one group home bed for every 91,840 residents last year.

Group homes are a $500-million-per-year industry in California, funded by a combination of federal, state and local money. Care in these homes is not cheap. The cost ranges from $1,094 to $4,637 per child per month, depending on the level of supervision and therapy provided. The average cost is $2,849 per child per month--or $34,188 per child per year.

The 1,800 homes statewide range from family-size to large facilities that house dozens of youngsters. Group homes are run by nonprofit organizations, which in turn are controlled by a wide variety of operators, ranging from large established charities to individuals who views the endeavor as a business.

The most common group homes provide care for six youngsters because state law allows facilities with six or fewer residents to operate in any neighborhood without having to seek the approval of local authorities. Only a license issued by the state Department of Social Services is needed. It is common for a single group home operator to run several facilities housing six children each. Operators frequently invest in single-family houses and then rent the structures as group homes to the nonprofit organizations they operate, thus building up private real estate holdings in addition to whatever salaries they are paid.

Group home youngsters attend both private and public schools and receive group and individual therapy. Supervision is provided by “counselors” who frequently have little education and who are often poorly paid.

The lack of local control over group homes has caused controversies throughout the state, but facility operators and child advocates say that without the freedom to locate afforded by state law, no group home would be allowed to exist anywhere because of the opposition of neighbors.

Terry Starr, chief probation officer of Shasta County, says he believes in the need for group homes. But he said that his department has placed only 40 children in such facilities, while his county has been inundated with “garden variety thugs” from other parts of the state.

“I’ve got some concerns whether it makes sense to take a kid and move him miles and miles from his home on the theory that it’s less violent up here,” said Starr. “It may be less violent, but in some respects they’re just exporting their problem.”

Starr maintains that troubled youngsters should be treated near their homes unless there is a special therapy required that is only available elsewhere.

“I honestly think,” he continued, “that kids who are in deep trouble in their community ought to be dealt with in their community.”

Los Angeles County, officials say, has a relatively large number of group homes, but some urban counties have few such facilities to handle their own youngsters.

The San Diego County Probation Department currently has about 20 youngsters placed in Redding-area group homes and routinely sends most of its delinquent youths out of the county or even out of state.

“San Diego has big land costs, high labor costs and a high NIMBY (not-in-my-back-yard) syndrome,” said Doug Willingham, deputy chief probation officer for San Diego County.

Tillery of Remi Vista argues that it is often impractical for a child’s home county to provide care because the family and local environment are often major causes of the difficulties.

“I think it would be nice if each of the counties would deal with the problem,” he said, “but that’s not realistic. . . . Sometimes it’s best to remove a child from his peer group.”

Even so, Redding police say that some form of local control is needed.

“They keep dumping these kids in here,” said Redding Police Chief Bob Blankenship. “There needs to be some local say as to how many group homes can be established in a county.”

Redding police maintain that problems caused by group home Youngsters is a drain on the department’s time and money. These youths account for about 10% of delinquency arrests in Redding and about 30% of reported runaways, according to police statistics.

Adding to their problems, police say, are privacy laws that prohibit group home operators from informing law enforcement agencies when a youth with a serious criminal background is brought into the county.

“The main concern,” said Capt. Chuck Byard of the Redding Police, “has been introducing kids who have extreme criminal histories into a neighborhood without anyone knowing about it.”

In some cases, Byard said, group home youngsters who get into trouble in Redding are sent back to their home counties only to be returned to Shasta County by juvenile court judges who do not want the youths in their jurisdictions.

Sen. Thompson’s bill requires that officials of the county receiving the child in such a case be allowed to testify at the juvenile court proceeding before the youngster is sent back.

Byard tells of a 17-year-old group home youngster who was arrested by Redding police in January, 1991, in the strong-arm robbery of a Raiders jacket from another youth.

The boy, who had previously been arrested by Redding police in connection with a fight, was returned to his home county of San Francisco but was sent back to Shasta County by a juvenile court judge without the knowledge of local authorities, according to Byard.

“The judge said he didn’t want to see the kid within 150 miles of San Francisco,” Byard said.

Redding police did not know the youth was back in town, Byard said, until the boy stole a car and led officers on a chase that ended when the stolen auto smashed into a store.

Group home operators say police exaggerate the problems caused by their clients by regularly trotting out the same old stories.

“They’ve blown it out of proportion,” said Paul Endraske, executive director of Project Alert, an organization that runs six group homes in Shasta County.

“They’ve got a serious youth problem in Shasta County, and it’s not going to go away by blaming the group homes.”

Neal Sternberg, executive director of Stepping Stones, which operates 10 group homes in Shasta County, also said the police “make misrepresentations” about group home children.

“He (Chief Blankenship) is doing his best to reduce the workload of his department,” said Sternberg. “And, therefore, if he can reduce licensed facilities, he can reduce his calls.”

The police, on the other hand, contend that some group home operators preach altruism but are motivated by money.

“It’s a real estate acquisition mechanism,” Byard said.

Some operators of Shasta County homes are indeed acquiring property in connection with running the facilities.

David C. Favor is executive director of Victor Residential Center Inc., a nonprofit corporation that is the parent organization controlling the 10 Stepping Stones group homes in Shasta County as well as 19 group homes in other parts of the state. Favor also operates several private schools for group home children.

Favor, who is paid $111,538 per year as executive director of Victor Residential Center, told The Times that he has a personal financial interest in 15 of the group homes used by the corporation. Favor leases this property to Victor Residential Center as group home residences.

State regulations allow such lease-back arrangements if the rent does not exceed a fair market formula. Favor maintains that his leases provide stability for his group homes and that other landlords might be reluctant to rent to such an operation.

“We’re not going to sell the houses out from under the nonprofit corporation,” he said.

Still, has the publicly funded group home system allowed Favor to obtain a great deal of real estate for himself?

“You could look at it that way,” he said. “You can also look at it in terms of I have put a great deal of my own personal resources into the physical plants so that the kids could have decent places for programs.”

Favor’s group homes are paid $4,637 per month per child or $55,644 per year per child, and they grossed $9.4 million last year. Because Favor handles such hard-to-place, severely disturbed children, his group home operation has not been affected by California’s budget crisis.

Some group home operators in Shasta County have not been so fortunate. A significant share of the cost of group homes has been shifted from the state to the counties during the last year, making some counties reluctant to place children in such facilities. As a result, Shasta County has received 30% fewer group home children over the last year, according to some estimates, and some operators have gone out of business.

Tillery--whom police credit with running “excellent” facilities--says the state budget crisis will lessen the concentration of group homes in Shasta County, but it will also mean that a lot of children who need help will not get it and will continue to be abused and neglected by their families.

As a result of tighter funding limits, those youngsters who are being sent to Shasta County are increasingly those who are the most troubled and difficult to place. And this bothers the police.

“I think it’s good that we’re reducing the numbers,” said Byard. “But . . . we’re going to be dealing with a more hard-core kid.”

James, for example, was sent to Redding last March after a gang-related stabbing in Merced.

“I got drunk one night,” said James, which is not his real name. “My sister was at a party and the guy didn’t want to let her go. So I broke a bottle and stuck it in his face two or three times.”

James, who has an alcohol problem, joined a gang when he was 11, has been in and out of juvenile hall, was thrown out of another group home and faces a sentence in a California Youth Authority institution if he fails at Remi Vista.

He has been attending group therapy sessions for alcohol addiction and other problems.

James has found that local Redding youngsters are not very streetwise, but he is not anxious to return to his homeboys in Merced.

“I don’t want to go back home,” he said. “I’m afraid to be with the people that got me in trouble.”