NEW ORLEANS -- A quiet neighborhood in Mandeville is having a hard time staying that way. The woman who owns a home-based daycare now sits next door to a building housing recovering addicts.
18 months ago, Nathan and Susan Eberhardt started a new business out of their home in the Old Golden Shores subdivision in Mandeville.
“I applied through the city and followed all the rules for an official daycare,” said Susan Eberhardt.
She took in six children, and a few months later the house next door at 226 Cindy Lou Place took in six women. She dropped by to introduce herself and learned that it was a group home for recovering alcoholics, known as Oxford House, and the six women were not related.
Mandeville city law prohibits more than four unrelated people from living together.
She found out it was the second Oxford House in the neighborhood, the other being one block away at 141 Cindy Lou Place. It has been there since February 2008.
Susan was shocked, but since the women didn't cause much trouble, she didn't complain – until things changed.
“We were on vacation and when we came back, it was an all men's home,” she said.
"Every day there was loitering outside the house,” Nathan said. “It's kind of been that continuously now. Various people come by. There's high traffic. They're constantly smoking. I have two young girls in the home - one's 10, one's 14 - and I don't even want them going outside anymore."
Especially, Susan said, after one of those men cat-called her 14-year-old daughter. So she called her councilwoman, Carla Buchholz, who called the police.
Buchholz said a detective told her that the man lied on his application to join the home and had been evicted.
“It didn't provide any comfort to me at all,” said Susan Eberhardt. “More can fill in. They can lie on their application and the process is broken.”
She contacted the old Golden Shores Neighborhood Association, whose president, Ted Ralph, had already begun asking how the houses had slipped into their neighborhood without proper approval.
"I challenged the houses on two grounds initially,” Ralph said. “One was the number of people in the house and the other was the distance of the two houses between each other. These two houses are 850 feet apart."
According to David Cressy, the Mandeville city attorney, the Oxford House does violate the city ordinance that prohibits a home to be occupied by more than four unrelated adults, but the city ordinance may be trumped by federal law that prohibits discrimination in housing.
A string of e-mail messages obtained by Eyewitness News shows council members Trilby Lenfant, Carla Buchholz, then-Mayor Eddie Price and Cressy debating the problem throughout all of last summer.
But they never found a solution. The closest they came was a resolution drafted by Lenfant that would have required public hearings before a group home could be approved. But the resolution was not formally introduced.
Around the same time, Price wrote this e-mail to the city attorney and others:
“I am not opposed to group homes. I believe that people with handicaps should be afforded a place to live … the intent was to allow for the homes because of the Fair Housing Act, but they shouldn't change the nature of the neighborhood in the process. That is certainly not fair to the other homeowners whose biggest purchase ever is the investment in their homes."
Cressy said the city didn't know about the transactions since they were business deals with private owners. He said he agrees that the Oxford Houses violate city ordinance, but he also believes the occupants are protected by the part of federal law known as reasonable accommodation.
Reasonable accommodation basically says exceptions to rules and laws must sometimes be made to give people with disabilities, including recovering alcoholics, equal access to housing.
"They should have asked for reasonable accommodation as soon as they knew they violated our ordinance, yes,” Cressy said. “We don't have a radar. I mean, we really don't know who's living in that house. We don't know if the people living next door to me are alcoholics."
But now the neighborhood knows about the houses, and nervous residents call police over the slightest suspicion. Just last week police were called three times.
Oxford House is a national organization that runs 1,200 group homes throughout the country. Marty Walker oversees the 55 Oxford houses in Louisiana. Nine of them are in Saint Tammany parish.
Walker said residents are required to follow strict rules, which include staying sober, finding a job, paying rent and continuing treatment.
"Everybody here works a job. Everybody here goes to meetings. We don't hold parties. We don't throw beer cans in neighbor's yards. We're not disruptive. We go to great lengths to make sure that we're not,” Walker said.
Susan Eberhardt said she's running out of time to talk.
“Since they've opened, I've lost three children, one of which came forward and stated it was due to the Oxford Homes,” Susan Eberhardt said, speaking of her daycare business. “These are kids I had since I opened. There was no reason other than that. “
She's afraid soon she'll have to pick up the toys in the playroom for good.
“I'm in an extremely tough situation,” she said. “I’m losing my property value. I’m losing my children, my employment. Suffering the safety of my children, having to contemplate moving during a bad economical time – all because I did what I'm supposed to and it's benefitting the people who did not.”
Eyewitness News contacted newly elected Mayor Donald Villere about the complaints, and he said he is planning a meeting on the issue. He said they will have an open house at one of the homes to help clear the air between occupants and their neighbors.
To find out more about Oxford House, click here.
