Neighbors Oppose Home for the Terminally Ill : Westlake Lake: Some residents want Thousand Oaks to intervene in the plan. But officials say city has no control in matter.

The slender spit of land that extends into Westlake Lake is usually a friendly place.

The residents on Leeward Circle tell each other if the sailboat is about to come loose from the dock, they drop by with floral offerings from their garden, they know the names of their neighbors’ dogs.

But a little war is being waged on the shores of this man-made lake straddling the Ventura County-Los Angeles County line.

“Hearses. Gurneys. Corpses,” Jeannine Allen said, one foot on her front lawn and the other in Isobel Oxx’s driveway.

Allen turned to look at the beige and brown house, which Oxx plans to convert into a home for the terminally ill. “Right here. This is where they’ll have them.”

Allen gave a little shudder, then turned to go through her own gateway and into her back yard, a neatly cropped patch of green grass sloping down to the tranquil waters of Westlake Lake.

The formerly friendly neighbors have been fighting for about two weeks. A visiting electrician passed the news to a resident of Leeward Circle that he had been doing work on Oxx’s house, which he vaguely described as being turned into a hospital.

The neighbors then learned that Oxx had applied for a license from the state Department of Health Services to run a “congregate living health facility” in her four-bedroom home. The facility would house up to six terminally ill patients, who will receive 24-hour nursing care in a home setting during their final months of life.

With visions of medical waste floating across their pristine lake, the Windward Shores Homeowners Assn. banded together, hiring attorney R. Thomas Wire to represent them and circulating petitions against the facility. They say they already have 1,000 signatures.

Tuesday, residents will go before the Thousand Oaks City Council to ask that the council intervene. Allen and others are so distraught they say they are willing to go to court to stop Oxx.

They may have to.

City Atty. Mark Sellers said the city has no control over the facility. State law preempts local authorities from stopping the licensing of congregate living health facilities. A section of the health and safety code was written in 1980 to ensure that such facilities could not be discriminated against.

According to the state, as long as there are only six patients living in the facility, they should be considered a family. The city cannot require any more permits, zoning variances or clearances than it asks of a single-family residence in the same zone.

“The city is certainly limited,” Sellers said. “The state has specifically taken the city out of the process.”

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Councilwoman Elois Zeanah said she will ask staff members to lobby the California League of Cities for a change in the state code. She said she has concerns about parking at the proposed facility and its proximity to neighbors, as well as what it might do to property values in the neighborhood.

“My understanding is that the state’s intent was to try and return these people to a homelike environment so they can be assimilated into a friendly neighborhood,” Zeanah said. “But at the same time it should not damage or destroy the community or residential goals.”

Oxx, who is a certified nurse’s assistant, said she got the idea for the facility after her husband died two years ago.

“I’ve been rattling around in a five- or six-bedroom house by myself, and I was looking for someone to share it with me,” she said.

Oxx, 65, has not received her license yet. Bill Jennings, the district administrator for the Department of Health Services, said the state is well aware of the dispute in Westlake.

“Of course it is of concern when neighbors find out that a facility like this is going to be in their neighborhood,” Jennings said. “We tried to explain the law to them and help them understand that this is legal.”

But for residents who live day in and day out with Thousand Oaks’ restrictive building codes, it is hard to understand that the proposed facility could be opened without city input.

“If I want to paint my eaves I have to submit color chips to the city,” said Jane Rieder, a neighborhood homeowner. “But she (Oxx) doesn’t have to tell the city anything.”

Jan Kiblinger, who lives two doors down from Oxx, was equally exasperated.

“This law has totally taken away our rights,” she said. “It’s taken away our say-so.”

Jennings said no license will be issued until the department’s lawyers have had a chance to review the neighbors’ concerns.

“From our side we are going to need legal advice,” Jennings said.

There is only one licensed, congregate living health facility in the county, Jennings said. Meridan Neuro Care in Oxnard has been operating without incident for about a year, he said. Much like hospices, the facilities undergo different licensing requirements.

Oxx said she hopes her neighbors will come to accept the facility, which she plans to call My Father’s House.

“I hope they will welcome a family of six just the way they would anyone else,” she said.

But fear runs rampant among her neighbors.

“To know that my neighbors will be six dying people?” Allen said. “That would be really hard. I could get mentally attached to them.”

Residents worry about their property values and accuse Oxx of being duplicitous in not telling of her plans earlier.

“Had I known I would have sold my houses and got out of here,” said Rieder, who makes her living in real estate and owns two residences near Oxx.

They are anxious that others not consider them heartless in opposing the facility.

“Don’t take this that we are not sympathetic to people that are ill,” Rieder said. “We just don’t want them in our neighborhood.”

Rieder cited concern that drugs--such as morphine--kept at the facility would attract crime or that medical waste from AIDS patients could be sloppily disposed of and end up in the lake.

Oxx said fears of medical waste floating in the lake are absurd.

“Be reasonable,” she said, adding that she intends to adhere to stringent health department requirements in disposing of medical waste.

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Residents worry that their children will be traumatized by the sight of ambulances and hearses pulling up to Oxx’s house.

“One of the young boys was already saying to me, ‘Are we going to have to look at dead bodies?’ ” Allen said.

Prof. Gerald Larue, a teacher at University of Southern California’s gerontology department who specializes in the study of death and dying, said the facility could actually provide a valuable lesson for children.

“I would see this less as a blight on the neighborhood and more of an opportunity for children to become aware of the reality of death,” said Larue, who lives in Huntington Beach.

“Children need to become aware of death in a real way,” he added. “A hearse is a hearse and an ambulance is an ambulance, they see them all the time on television. I think this is a very wonderful thing for a neighborhood.”

Oxx said she believes her lakeside home, with its decks and balcony, will give patients a pleasant and peaceful place to die.

“Sick people like a beautiful setting too,” Oxx said.