ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : That Drawbridge Mentality

With all the attention that dysfunctional families have been getting of late, a half-way house for abused children that has a proven, celebrated track record ought to be welcomed in a suburban neighborhood as nothing less than an heroic institution.

Not so in Anaheim Hills, where neighbors trying to block the arrival of the Eli House have disregarded all the evidence to the contrary and raised their “Not in My Back Yard” flag, saying that the abusers of these new and needy neighbors will fill up their streets.

The city Planning Commission heard out this rhetoric in a five-hour hearing in March and properly voted to approve the request for the house to move to Anaheim Hills from Orange. The group, which has been cited by former President George Bush as a “point of light” and by President Clinton as a recipient of a Presidential Citation, should be allowed to move. The City Council, which will consider the matter at a public hearing next month, likewise should approve the plan.

The neighborhood setting is needed for the shelter to do its work, and good work it is. The facility now helps more than 1,000 clients a year, most of them young people who have suffered emotional, physical or sexual abuse.

Even though many of the residents of the expensive Anaheim Hills area have moved from more urban areas in an effort to leave some problems behind, they should know too that domestic abuse knows no socioeconomic or geographical boundaries. What happens in the cities also can happen in the tony suburbs; exclusivity does not provide a wall of separation from reality.

Volunteers are going to do the rehab work on the building, and those manning the drawbridge should ponder the possibility that this effort actually will upgrade the neighborhood. The building is dilapidated and has been declared “unsafe to occupy” by city authorities.

There is no place to go but onward and upward with this worthy project, to improve on a neighborhood eyesore and to help eradicate what often is a less readily visible blemish, the scourge of child abuse.