Sonoma autism facility resident faces wrongful eviction, parents say

For just over 100 days, Anna Maria Alejo and Shepard Nevel have been trying to keep their daughter from being evicted from Sonoma County’s only long-term housing facility for adults with autism.

Their daughter, Elena, 29, they say, is being forced out of the facility, Sweetwater Spectrum. The eviction threats began less than a year into her lease, and have increased in intensity ever since, they say.

Administrators say Elena continually exhibits aggressive behaviors that violate the terms of the lease, but Alejo and Nevel argue that their daughter’s behavior is typical of people with autism. They say these behaviors, such as wandering into other people’s rooms and handling their property, are easily addressed with behavioral services, which took nearly eight months into her lease to secure.

If Elena is ultimately evicted, the family is back to square one after a seven-year search for housing that supports Elena’s needs.

Her case illustrates the difficulties parents of adult children with autism face in finding secure long-term housing across the country. Alejo and Nevel, who live in Colorado, spent years on waiting lists with housing facilities, with their only other option to keep Elena at home, supported by expensive services.

“We have exhausted our resources to get in here,” Nevel said. “We both work and have to continue working to pay our bills and to pay for the additional expenses,” which provide access to enrichment programs and outdoor and indoor activities like gardening, hiking, swimming, art and music.

“We are privileged to do it because you want to go where there’s community,” Nevel said. “We know what happens to individuals like Elena who don't have communities like this — growing old in their parents’ living rooms.”

Abuse allegation

Elena’s parents question whether her eviction is related to the fact that as she was settling into her new home at Sweetwater, she was physically abused by a caregiver over a two-week span in July. The abuse, which was reported to Sonoma Police, did not result in an arrest, but the employee was removed from Sweetwater.

Sonoma Police Department report of abuse

Three months later, the North Bay Regional Center — which provides coordination and oversight of services provided to residents with developmental disabilities — placed the agency that provides services to Sweetwater under a corrective action plan, noting that its employees had been inadequately trained.

The report was sent to Nevel, Alejo and Sweetwater administration on Sept. 23.

On Oct. 6, Sweetwater’s quest to evict Elena began when the family received the first formal eviction notice, after previous warnings.

“(Since the first notice,) we’ve tried seven times; we’ve requested a face-to-face meeting, and they’ve refused,” Alejo said.

And on March 4, after Sweetwater had denied multiple requests from the Nevels’ lawyer to discuss their attempts to evict Elena, she was served a final notice that gave her until March 8, to vacate the premises. Two weeks later, the standoff continues.

Corrective Action Plan for Lifehouse

Reasons for evictions

The first legal step toward Elena’s eviction came on Oct. 6, two weeks after the North Bay Regional Center’s abuse report, in the form of a 10-day “Cure or Quit Covenant” notice.

The notice refers to the form landlords must send to notify their tenants that they’ve broken the terms of their lease, to outline those breaches, and allow the tenant 10 days to fix the lease violations.

Sweetwater stated that Elena had been entering other’s rooms without permission, touching other’s belongings, had shown aggressive and inappropriate behavior, and had broken a plate and a mug in the common kitchen area.

A caregiver at Sweetwater, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation by their employer, has worked directly with Elena and described her as “sweet and sometimes funny.” But, like other residents, there are times when she presents assertive behaviors, when she wants something and cannot communicate what it is.

“One time she got into another house, another’s room, and she was touching things, but she was just being curious,” the caregiver said.

The Nevels acknowledge the behaviors, according to their attorney, who said some of the breaches seem to be over-exaggerated and did not take into account that Elena who had not secured full services at the time of the October notice.

In fact, they say she only met her assigned behavioral therapist for the first time on Oct. 6, the day the form was issued to the Nevel family.

“This is a place for people with these kinds of behaviors, but to write up something like that, ‘wandering in a room,’ it's very frustrating,” Nevel said.

The 10-day notice also pointed to two instances when Elena, who needs assistance to use the restroom, posed health hazards in common living areas.

“Elena, like other residents, is diapered,” Nevel said. “She needs help cleaning up and it was always from the beginning that it wasn’t a problem, if it's kept inside her room. But how demeaning is that to weaponize an accident like that?”

And many of these incidents occurred months ago and have decreased in frequency as Elena’s services continued to ramp up, her parents said. Sweetwater’s legal representation disputed these claims after publication of this story.

“What's remarkable is that during this time Elena is doing so well, it's not like we still have these problems,“ said disability rights attorney Aaron Fischer, who practices in Berkeley and represents the family. ”Even the things that they're saying they were concerned about, they’ve dissipated significantly … It’s not like there's more to report on. They’re still relying on things that happened months ago.“

The Nevels requested an assessment of Elena in February from the North Bay Regional Center to determine whether Sweetwater was an appropriate placement for Elena, considering her behaviors.

“Ms. Nevel is a shining example of an individual successfully utilizing and engaging with support services to live a full and enriched life while residing in the community,“ service coordinator Antonio Martinez wrote on Feb. 22. ”While these supports continue to be built out, all of Ms. Nevel’s targeted behaviors have stabilized at baseline or decreased in frequency.“

A representative for the regional center declined to comment on the specifics of Elena’s case.

The Nevels say they are appalled by the lack of patience from Sweetwater; how, in only the first year of their daughter’s lease they’ve weaponized her behaviors while she waited for Regional Center services, and acclimated to her new environment.

Elena’s lease had a clause that notifies the tenant that every resident living at the housing facility has a developmental disability, and may have “impaired development in social interaction and communication and restricted, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior,” and that the resident must assume the risk of these behaviors creating “temporary or repeated inconvenience or stress.”

“To forcibly remove Elena after all these months of transitioning, adapting to a new home, and all these years of struggling to find a good match, it would be so disruptive and cruel,” Nevel said.

‘Clear retaliation’

From October to March, the Nevels and their attorneys have made seven attempts to sit down with Vain and her lawyers. None of their requests were answered.

The timeline of events that followed the report of abuse and the failure to communicate are clear markers that Sweetwater is acting out of retaliation, said Fischer, the disability rights attorney.

Fischer was referred to represent the Nevels after they’d acquired legal representation in October through LegalAid, a state agency that provides low-cost or free legal representation.

Sweetwater has failed to participate in “the interactive process,” Fischer said. California law requires that a workplace or dwelling must discuss a reasonable accommodation requested by someone with a disability prior to firing or evicting them, and that the process be timely and conducted in good faith.

“It’s in their requirements to engage in a meaningful interactive process, and not just send letters threatening them and then, regardless of what happens, saying: ‘Not good enough, we’re still pointing back to what happened months ago, and we're still kicking you out,’” Fischer said. “That's not what disability accommodations law requires. It just kind of didn’t make sense to me.”

Fischer’s statement to Sweetwater administration

Prior to publication, Sweetwater’s San Rafael-based attorney, Neusha Ghaedi, declined to comment on the communications between her client and the Nevels, or on Sweetwater’s motives for eviction.

Shortly after the article was published, Ghaedi commented on behalf of the organization.

“Sweetwater Spectrum is a nonprofit organization that provides 20 adults on the autism spectrum with the opportunity for community housing,” the statement read. “The decision to begin these proceedings was put into motion because it was necessary to protect the health and safety of the other disabled tenants after exhausting all other options. The Nevel family’s claims are baseless and will be defeated. To protected the privacy of all tenants who have been impacted by this situation, we are unable to comment further at this time.”

But the Nevels and their representation believe the motivation is clear.

“The timeline strongly suggests that these are retaliatory actions for the family that was rightfully reporting problematic situations of abuse and trying to go through the appropriate channels to have it addressed for their daughter,” Fischer said.

San Francisco based tenant rights attorney Michael Bracamontes agrees with Fischer’s assessment.

“The notices to terminate the tenancy really coincide with the complaints and then findings by the outside agency — the corrective action — with respect to the physical abuse that Elena suffered,” Bracamontes said.

Bracamontes was assigned to the Nevels’ case after the March 1 eviction notice.

“There's going to be some conduct that you would see in this type of living situation that you typically wouldn't see in an able-bodied mainstream complex, so to me, they should be a little more forgiving in terms of accommodating that kind of conduct,” Bracamontes said.

At this stage, Bracamontes said there is no choice but to sue.

“I think that once we get into the lawsuit, they're not really going to be able to produce people who substantiate any of these claims that Elena was either harassing or dangerous to other people,” he said. “Attorneys can put whatever spin they want on something but at the end of the day, you need evidence from witnesses to substantiate those arguments.”

Hopes to remain at Sweetwater

Ultimately, Elena’s parents hope the issue can be resolved and that Elena can remain at Sweetwater. When she first moved in, it seemed to them like the perfect placement.

“The beauty of Sweetwater is they are community first and they build a residency through community,” Nevel said. “Elena is a human being. She's not a package to be stored. She likes to go outside and ride her bike, and go to the community room. That is all on the premises.”

In the midst of the calls for eviction, Elena was able to secure tailored day services in November through a North Bay Regional Center agency, All About Ability.

Twice a week, a support staff member from the agency provides one-on-one support for Elena to engage in Sweetwater’s community activities while also providing enrichment away from Sweetwater, including museum and library visits.

“It’s like a school, it’s what you do every day,” Alejo said, speaking about the day services. “That also took months to get. We had to go and look through other programs and we finally found one that’s a perfect match.”

While the services are currently only set up for two days a week, Alejo said they are hoping to increase the services to five days when staffing at the agency improves. Pairing the day services with the behavioral services has not only improved their daughter’s behavior, she said, but also began providing the fulfillment they had long hoped for.

“We don’t know what we’ll do next,” Nevel said. “The implications of her being forcibly removed by a sheriff, which is what they're trying to do after this most recent notice … is so challenging for us.”

Bracamontes filed a demurrer — an objection to the eviction — on March 8.

While the family waits for it to work its way through the courts, they hope that “reasonableness will prevail,” Bracamontes said.

This story has been updated to reflect the addition of comments from an attorney representing Sweetwater.

Report For America corps member Adriana Gutierrez covers education and child welfare issues for The Press Democrat. Reach her at Adriana.Gutierrez@pressdemocrat.com.