Shelters for Disadvantaged Arouse Fierce Opposition : Conflict: Class prejudice, fear fuel protests, advocates contend. Homeowners say security concerns are valid.

After seven long years of battle that left hard feelings on both sides, the Episcopal Services Alliance finally won the go-ahead in 1992 to open Orange County’s first shelter for mentally ill homeless people.

Beacon House, a remodeled three-bedroom home, is set to open in Orange in mid-August, but some homeless advocates say there’s little cause for celebration.

Because of the restrictions placed on the project by the county, “all you’re talking about after seven years is 12 beds,” said Tim Shaw, executive director of the Orange County Homeless Issues Task Force. “It’s sad.”

Community opposition to the idea was fierce. What if a child were molested by one of “these people,” cried angry residents of the middle-class Orange neighborhood where the home was proposed. What about the homeless shelter nearby, where derelicts accosted the bereaved on their way to the funeral home?

Unfortunately, social service groups say, Beacon House’s bittersweet victory was an isolated success. Just about any time nonprofit agencies try to open a shelter for battered women, homeless people or abused children they continue to encounter a firestorm of neighborhood opposition, the unabated Not in My Back Yard (NIMBY) syndrome.

Even with the renewed public awareness of domestic violence sparked by the O.J. Simpson case, social services officials lament that the NIMBY phenomenon is as strong as ever--fueled by class prejudice and fears about declining property values.

“It’s the unknown that’s fearful to everybody,” said Carol Williams, executive director of Interval House Crisis Shelters, which succeeded in opening a home for battered women in Seal Beach 15 years ago. “If the group that’s coming in can tell people what the shelter is and what it will really be like, the fear will go away.”

But homeowners who don’t like the idea of having a shelter next door say it is unfair to portray them as selfish and elitist. They insist they do care about what happens to the less fortunate--one of the very reasons, they say, they want them to set up shop in other neighborhoods where they can blend in.

The most recent battleground is the Eli Home, a shelter for abused children and their mothers in Orange that won President Bush’s 338th Point of Light award and, just three months ago, a commendation from President Clinton.

Now, Eli Home officials want to expand and move into an affluent Anaheim Hills neighborhood. But their future neighbors aren’t rolling out the welcome mat. Some have gone so far as to say that those presidential citations aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.

“They say they were President Bush’s 338th Point of Light. So what? They say they got a commendation from Bill Clinton. So what?” says Gene Secrest, a 46-year-old developer and father of two who lives next door to the proposed new Eli Home. “Whenever we ask them questions--like what kinds of security there will be at the facility--we get vague answers.”

For Scott Mather, development director for the St. Vincent de Paul Society, arguments against the Eli Home ring hopelessly familiar.

St. Vincent’s plans for a 28-bed home for welfare mothers in La Habra became mired in neighborhood opposition for more than five years beginning in 1988. The shelter was named Mary’s Home after wealthy benefactor Mary Kretschmar, who bequeathed the society $250,000, stipulating only that it be used “to help somebody.”

During the battle, Mather said, the society had to spend $50,000 on a traffic study alone, to prove to city officials that the home would not cause undue congestion. Now, officials hope to begin construction late next month) and to open the shelter by spring.

In retrospect, Mather says, St. Vincent de Paul officials should have done more to allay their future neighbors’ fears and smooth the way for the approval process.

“We kind of forced our way through and just kept coming politically and pushing,” Mather says. “But you need to spend time in the neighborhood trying to talk to people. If you can get the residents on board, it’s a lot easier to get things done.”

Social services officials say that approach paid off for Regina House--hailed by some as a Cinderella NIMBY story. The multi-service shelter program in Santa Ana for homeless women and their children, which opened in April, is designed to help the women get back on their feet by teaching them job skills. It also offers them and their children counseling.

“They took a different tack,” Shaw said of the Homeless Issues Task Force. “They went to the neighborhood association first and listened to their concerns about gangs and graffiti. They told them they didn’t want gangs and graffiti either if they were going to be bringing single moms into the neighborhood.”

That approach eventually won Regina House the endorsement of the city’s Planning Commission and the City Council as well as the local neighborhood association. The shelter was not an easy sell, said former French Court Assn. President Jim Kendrick, but in the end, neighbors realized that there were far worse alternatives than the shelter--such as another overcrowded house.

The neighbors “decided that we’d rather have something with controls, and with those controls we got a really good project,” Kendrick said.

But unlike the Eli Home, Regina House is situated in a working-class neighborhood, not an affluent one. Social services officials note sadly that this factor, more than any other, might have been responsible for the shelter’s eventual acceptance.

When the Interval House Crisis Shelters tried to open a home for battered women 15 years ago in Seal Beach, 400 residents of the well-to-do community signed a petition against it.

In response, Williams, Interval House’s executive director, said officials decided to start small and win the neighborhood’s trust. They avoided the city’s permit process by opening a shelter for just six people: That enabled their neighbors to get comfortable with the idea of a small facility, which was later expanded.

“Eventually, people learned that there were fewer problems at the shelter house than at the house down the street where the parents would leave town and the kids would throw parties,” Williams said.

Over time, neighborhood residents began volunteering to baby-sit for children from the shelter or to bring over meals at Thanksgiving, Williams said.

Neighbors of the proposed Eli Home, which would be located in a well-to-do section of Anaheim Hills, have a litany of grievances: The building is too small, there would be too much traffic, the home would be too noisy, it wouldn’t be fair to waive parking requirements.

They also say the home could attract estranged husbands, endangering other residents. Privately, some admit they don’t want their children socializing with kids from the shelter--children who have been physically abused and may have a host of emotional problems.

Even though the shelter prohibits its women and children from fraternizing with neighbors, many fear those in-house rules are unrealistic and likely to be broken.

Executive Director Lorri Galloway of the Eli Home believes those arguments are merely a smoke screen concealing deep-seated prejudices against poor people.

“It’s like, ‘This does not belong in our sweet little rural atmosphere,’ ” Galloway said. “They feel it’s someone else’s problem and someone else needs to handle it.”

But Bob Averill, who lives down the street, says that’s simply not true.

“We’re concerned about the risks to the residents living in the shelter,” said the 59-year-old retired engineer. “The top priority is for it to be a safe house, but that house is a blight on the neighborhood, and it sticks out from all the others on the block.”

Robin, a 37-year-old woman who once sought emergency shelter at the Eli Home in Orange with her three young children, says neighbors’ fears are unfounded.

“I lived there for a month, and I never felt unsafe,” said Robin, who asked to be identified only by her first name. “It was such a big help. After going through such a traumatic experience, we were given a room and treated just like family.”

The Planning Commission has already approved the shelter in a 6-0 vote. The two sides will square off again when the City Council meets Aug. 2 to consider the Eli Home’s plan to renovate the building.