Beverly Hills Rejects Seniors Housing Plan

The Beverly Hills City Council unanimously rejected a proposal early Thursday to build the city’s first group home for senior citizens, delaying efforts to find housing for older residents who are no longer able to live on their own.

“It is a practical issue,” Mayor MeraLee Goldman said just after midnight as the council prepared to vote on the hotly debated matter. “The fact that we want congregate housing . . . doesn’t excuse putting the right thing in the wrong place.”

After sitting through hours of often rancorous public testimony from both sides, the city’s five council members agreed that the proposal--for a 67-unit building of separate apartments where senior citizens could opt to share meals and services--was too large and afforded too few parking spaces for a quiet neighborhood along North Arnaz Drive.

The decision marked the council’s second rejection of developer Ron Weiner’s plans, in part because of neighbors’ objections that the project would destroy their community of single-family homes and small apartment houses.

“I was sadly disappointed,” Weiner said Thursday, adding that he is investigating ways to put the measure to a public vote. “They’re making no accommodations for the elderly whatsoever.”

The issue of senior citizen housing, increasingly a concern for local governments as the American population ages, is particularly salient in Beverly Hills, where nearly a quarter of the residents are 65 or older.

“It used to be felt that the elderly were the worthy needy, that they worked all their lives and that the community had an obligation to provide them with housing and services,” said Jon Pynoos, a Beverly Hills resident and a professor of gerontology at USC who specializes in the housing needs of the elderly. “Now, I think, you’re running into opposition to that idea.”

Weiner first sought and was denied permission to build the “assisted living” facility in 1985. In 1993, he returned to the city’s Planning Commission and began working on a revised proposal for a building with luxury efficiency, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments. At least 13 of the units were to be set aside for low-income senior citizens, Weiner said.

Weiner said it was his goal to integrate the senior citizens into the rest of the population, making the proposed four-lot site, which now holds small apartment buildings, an ideal setting.

“The seniors belong not in a commercial district, but in a quiet, tranquil, tree-lined street with a park,” Weiner said. “If my grandmother were alive, that’s where I’d want to put her--not on Olympic Boulevard.”

The Planning Commission denied Weiner’s second bid in February, prompting Wednesday’s appeal before the full council.