GARDEN GROVE : Day-Care Center Eviction Battled

Attorneys said this week they will seek to overturn a recent Orange County Superior Court ruling in an effort to keep open a day-care activity center that provides outpatient care and classes for about 50 mentally ill homeless people daily.

Crystal Sims, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society of Orange County, said she intends to appeal a decision earlier this month by Judge James Smith that allows Garden Grove officials to evict the center.

Sims also said she expects to file for a hearing in federal court, claiming that the city is discriminating against the mentally disabled.

Garden Grove City Atty. John Shaw said that Smith ruled that the city didn’t discriminate and predicted that the lawyers for the center will have “a very hard time” proving their case in federal court.

City officials earlier this year ordered the mental health facility to move from the center at 10672 Chapman Ave. because it didn’t obtain a conditional-use permit from the city. The Mental Health Assn. of Orange County, a nonprofit organization that operates the center, filed suit to block the eviction.

The city was successful when the judge ruled on Oct. 8 that the dispute was a land-use matter and that the center violated city zoning by being located in a commercial zone, and refused to order the city to issue a permit for the center.

City officials have claimed that mental health leaders failed to indicate that meals would be served and that there would be laundry and shower service.

Mental Health Assn. officials claimed a city planning department employee was informed of the specific uses and told that a conditional-use permit was unnecessary. City officials said they had been led to believe that the center would be an office and would provide clinical services and not meals, showers and other activities.

City officials took action against the center after protests by residents about it being in their neighborhood.