An Orange County judge has ruled Anaheim can’t require transitional or supportive housing operators to get permission from the city to open after the City Council denied a nonprofit from opening a group home in 2021.
State law governs group homes, such as when they need to be licensed and how many people per bedroom. Anaheim’s laws required transitional or supportive housing with seven or more people to get a permit from the city to open in all types of neighborhood zones.
Judge Walter Schwarm issued the order April 26; it comes out of the city’s loss in the nonprofit Grandma’s House of Hope case, where the city tried to prevent a transitional home for women from opening in its Anaheim Colony Historic District.
Schwarm’s new order rules that Anaheim must allow Grandma’s House of Hope to house more than six residents at its facility in the neighborhood. He also said the city’s law requiring transitional and supportive housing for seven or more residents to get a permit to open is void.
Schwarm ruled in February that the city violated state housing laws by not allowing the nonprofit to open the transitional housing facility. In that ruling, Schwarm wrote that Anaheim doesn’t require single-family homes with seven or more residents to get permits, therefore it can’t require transitional housing to do so.
The City Council in 2021 had voted unanimously to deny issuing a needed permit for the Anaheim Colony group home after community opposition.
The home would have housed 16 women in an eight-bedroom home, which the nonprofit has said would have served mostly homeless women over 40 with mental health issues and recovering from trauma. The nonprofit then sued the city in 2022 and was later joined in the lawsuit by the state.
The city will need to notify other transitional housing operators that Anaheim no longer requires permits for transitional or supportive housing. It will also have to post an update on its website with a copy of the notice sent to…
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