EL MODENA : Homeless Shelter to Get New Operator

For years, neighbors of the Jerry McGee Home, a homeless shelter and boardinghouse, have complained that the facility is a blight on the area and an inadequate provider for its mentally ill residents.

The neighbors tell stories of people sleeping in back-yard tool sheds, of mentally ill residents robotically marching hour after hour on the playground of nearby La Purisima Catholic Church’s elementary school, and, worse, of shelter residents accosting parishioners.

Now, Episcopal Service Alliance, a nonprofit group that serves the Orange County homeless, has obtained a $356,000 state grant to take over the two-story home at 18792 Drew Way and open a 15-bed shelter for the mentally ill and disabled at the site.

But still, even though officials promise that the facility will be renovated and residents strictly supervised, the neighbors aren’t completely convinced.

“I don’t expect any change, I have to see it with my own eyes to believe it,” said Leonard Ferrara, owner of Ferrara Colonial Mortuary, which is located next to the shelter. Ferrara said the shelter has been bad for business, recounting days when residents wandered into his funeral home and disrupted services.

“I certainly would like to see these people cared for because I’m a care-giver myself,” Ferrara said. “But I can’t be concerned about helping people when I a have a chapel full of mourners and a funeral going on.”

The county Health Care Agency had been sending clients to the Jerry McGee Home since 1986, but it stopped in December, 1989, when it discovered that the shelter did not have the permits necessary to run a community care facility.

In the last year, the county Sheriff’s Department has received 17 complaints about the home, mostly minor incidents ranging from petty theft to disturbing the peace.

McGee, who currently operates the shelter, was not available for comment.

But now, after three years of effort, Episcopal Service Alliance Executive Director Dennis White says a new facility is being designed and should open by August.

He said the shelter will be the first in the county devoted to the mentally ill, but county officials said it will also serve other homeless clients.

White is confident that neighbors will see the shelter improve under the new management. He said shelter residents will receive 24-hour supervision and will be away from the home during the days, when they will be ferried to a counseling program that includes job training and other services.

Of the estimated 10,000 to 12,000 homeless in Orange County, about 2,500 are mentally disabled, according to Doug Barton, Health Care Agency deputy director.

While acknowledging past problems at the shelter, Barton said the perception of the mentally ill as dangerous is “highly exaggerated.”

“If anything, our experience is that the mentally disabled are more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators,” Barton said. “A lot of these folks are very passive and withdrawn.”

Such assurances provide little comfort to the parishioners of La Purisima, who spent $27,000 on a wall to keep the shelter residents off the school playground.