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Group Home Proposal Frustrates Residents
The residents of Waterfowl Drive in the Stonelake neighborhood of Elk Grove were supposed to enjoy their upscale homes without worrying about a group home moving into the neighborhood. The problem is the real estate market didn't cooperate.
After long stretches of trying to sell, the Fremont owner of the home at 9825 Waterfowl Drive arrange to have members of the religious-based Dream Center's Door of Hope Ministry move in.
Now residents in the enclave of homes at Elk Grove's west end are in an uproar over what some believe is intended to be a group home for women newly released from prison. The neighborhood's homeowners group, the Stonelake Master Association, announced it has won a temporary order in Sacramento Superior Court blocking the home's owner from opening the group home.
The complaint says the home violates the community's covenants, conditions and restrictions, which state that owners may not lease their property for transient purposes, or for less than 30 days. The CC&R's also state that no trade, business or commercial uses are permitted.
Stonelake is not the first association to take such action.
"It is common for homeowners' associations to use the commercial provisions (of a homeowner group's rules)" to preclude this type of use," said Sacramento attorney Tim Blaine of Porter Scott law firm, which handles homeowners association cases fro associations and individuals. "They have generally been successful in doing so."/p>
Telephone messages to the home's owner, Melinda Taloma, were not returned.
Meanwhile, five other homes on Waterfowl Drive last week had small wooden stakes planted in their front lawns. Attached to these were identical declarations--- photocopies of a sign with the faded word: "For Sale."
These mock for-sale signs are a protest, one Waterfowl Drive resident said. But the worsening real estate conditions that have aggravated residents in Stonelake- and elsewhere - are real.
Throughout the region, neighborhoods are coping with long-empty homes that don't sell, bank-owned houses with yellowed lawns, and desperate owners looking for ways to stern their own financial bleeding.
"I think (the real estate market) is what had created the opportunity for this situation to arise," said Chris Pechacek, a Waterfowl Drive resident who objects to the home's planned use and is one of the few homeowners willing to speak publicly.
"It's a very inappropriate location for it," Pechacek said of the group home. 'there are other areas more appropriate that don't have a high concentration of children, that don't have a school nearby."
Details of the group home's focus remained unclear Friday. A spokesman for the Dream Center did not return calls. Its Web site, www.sacramentodreamcenter.org, offered little insight into the ministry, save that it provides a residence for "hurting women."
The door opened to the Door of Hope after the owner's failed efforts to sell the house.
Real Estate conditions in Stonelake, of course, are no worse than in other places in the Sacramento region, said Douglas Watson, Realtor for Investors Network in Rancho Cordova.
But that's not saying much.
Watson estimates that the value of high-end homes in Stonelake has fallen as much as $100,000 over the past 12 to 18 months.
Even with that, he said, 'stonelake is really a desirable area."
Taloma's house on Waterfowl Drive has been on the market several times. Most recently, it was listed for more than 120 days by Rick Singh, a Realtor with VM Group in Elk Grove. The price, $509,000, was below that of prior listings.
'the home was not selling," Singh said in an interview, adding that the owner decided to take it off the market (in August) until next summer.
The group home proposal surfaced soon after.
No one has moved in yet, neighbor Chris Pechacek said.
For now, a lockbox remains in the front door.
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