Anaheim to Ease Rules on Operation of Shelter

ANAHEIM HILLS —  Under pressure from a federal agency, the city has agreed to lift restrictions on the soon-to-open Eli Home for abused women and children that supporters said would have made the place resemble more a prison than a shelter.

City officials said Friday that the Planning Commission would meet Thursday to revoke regulations imposed last year that no children over 12 be allowed to live at the home, all children be inside no later than 7:30 p.m. every day and that an “extraordinarily high” block fence be built around the property.

Eli Home Director Lorri Galloway said such conditions would hurt the anticipated 23 residents’ already low self-esteem and make the abused children feel as though they must be segregated from the community.

“It will feel like a prison to these people,” Galloway said Friday. “I will not have them revictimized.”

The shelter’s lawyer, Ron Lais, who is also a neighbor of the home, added: “The restrictions would have set the city up for trouble. You can see it now. All these neighbors coming out with their videotape cameras and timers monitoring every move of every resident here and then running back to City Hall and demanding action.”

Department of Housing and Urban Development officials launched an investigation into the shelter restrictions last year, several months after the City Council approved the project. Saying some of the rules discriminated against children and violated the residents’ civil rights, HUD officials last year told the city to omit the conditions.

City Atty. Jack L. White said the city, after a year with correspondence with HUD, will now comply with the department’s directive.

He said city officials were confused by HUD’s involvement because Galloway and her husband, Michael, “wrote the rules themselves.” The Galloways own Eli Home Inc., which provides emergency shelter and counseling to women and children at three satellite facilities; the Anaheim Hills location off Santa Ana Canyon Road will be its main office and shelter when it opens Dec. 7.

“It seems strange to us that they would present these regulations and say, ‘This is how we’ll operate,’ and encourage us to accept their plan, which we do, and then have contact with HUD which says we can’t do this,” White said. “We approved the project as it was presented to us. We thought we were doing right by them.”

Galloway, however, said she presented the conditions as “a guideline” of what the shelter’s normal daily schedule would be. She did not intend it to be rewritten into conditions of Eli Home’s existence, she said.

“We did it to show we are an organized facility with house rules,” Galloway said. “Every household has guidelines, and every household has exceptions to those guidelines. What if we want to have a barbecue in the yard one summer night? Why can’t our children do that?”

For two years, a nasty fight has brewed among the shelter, the city and neighbors, some of whom vowed from the beginning to block the project. Opponents retained lawyers and hired private investigators, while the Galloways filed defamation lawsuits against three neighbors. The hard feelings continue in this upscale community, where homes sell for up to $300,000.

Gene Secrest, who lives across the street from Eli Home, has led neighborhood opposition. She questioned why the Galloways are concerned about the residents’ quality of life when each family is charged a monthly fee up to $350.

“It’s incredible to think they’re champions of civil rights when they’re running a hotel over here and passing it off as a shelter,” Secrest said.

Galloway said the fee is on a sliding-scale basis and helps Eli Home pay for services such as counseling. No family would be turned away if they couldn’t pay, she said.

“Very often, that [sliding] scale slides down to zero,” Galloway said.