Not in my backyard

There’s a corner house not far from where we live where the owner, an older African-American woman named Lillian, was often outside gardening or watering in the early evening. She never failed to stop her yard work and say hello to us when we were out, encouraging our son with physical and other disabilities to keep using his walker with his slow, halting gait. She would always say that our son was “coming along.” 

Contrast that old-fashioned neighborliness with a very nasty court battle raging a few hundred miles north from us in a quiet suburb in the Bay Area. There, the neighbors of an 11-year-old child highly impacted by autism are suing the boy’s parents, alleging that the child’s “disruptive” behavior created an “as-yet unquantified chilling effect on the otherwise ‘hot’ local real estate market” and that “people feel constrained in the marketability of their homes as this issue remains unresolved and the nuisance remains unabated.” 

Here’s the background: In their lawsuit, filed in June of 2014, two neighbors in Sunnyvale — an area home to many well-educated, high-tech sector employees — said the parents, Vidyut Gopal and Parul Agrawal, had not done an adequate job in supervising their son, who has an autism diagnosis. The two couples said the boy has slapped or kicked their children and, in at least one instance, bit an adult. The neighbors filed the lawsuit, they said, after many years of trying unsuccessfully to create a neighborhood safety plan. 

The parents of the boy with autism, meanwhile, said they were trying a number of strategies to improve the boy’s behavior, such as new medications and enrolling their son in a special education program, and that the events were far less severe than reported in the lawsuit. Since the lawsuit was filed, Gopal, Agrawal and their son have moved out of the neighborhood, renting  out their home  to tenants, and said that they haven’t had any problems with the new neighbors.

But because the parents still own the house, the “public nuisance” lawsuit remains active in the court system, with the plaintiffs requesting access to the boy’s school and medical records. On Sept. 22, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Maureen A. Folan called on all parties to enter into mediation. The couples who filed the lawsuit said they are concerned that Gopal and Agrawal may move back into the neighborhood since they still own the house that they are renting out. 

Whatever the eventual outcome of the court-ordered mediation, this case has sent a strong gust of icy cold wind blowing among parents of children with autism and other developmental disabilities. If this 11-year-old can be legally declared a “public nuisance,” what kind of precedent would this case set for other homeowners in other, even more upscale neighborhoods? Will the property values of Beverly Hills suddenly collapse because a kid who lives there sometimes “flaps” his arms on the sidewalk when he’s excited? Will the sight of our child with cerebral palsy chewing with his mouth open be banned from public restaurants? And in a less far-fetched scenario, what about when our children are grown-up adults with developmental disabilities, living in the community and maybe in the house or condo next door?

There’s new federal legislation concerning home and community-based services (HCBS) mandating that all residential Medicaid-waiver funding — which is the main source of funding for adult disability services — be used for non-institutional placements where adults with a variety of challenges, such as people with mental illnesses, intellectual or developmental disabilities and/or physical disabilities, can live side by side with typical community members. These new rules issued from the Centers on Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) state that “CMS is committed to ensuring that individuals served in Medicaid home and community-based programs have access to the benefits of community living and have full opportunity to be integrated in their communities.” How is this new rule going to square with intolerant, litigious neighbors?

Jill Escher, president of the San Francisco Bay Area Autism Society, and a parent of two autistic children, has called the lawsuit an outrage. In an opinion piece in the San Jose Mercury News she writes, “Given the ubiquity of this developmental disorder, heavy-handed, expensive and protracted lawsuits such as the one filed by the Sunnyvale neighbors cannot possibly provide a civil, constructive and useful answer to community conflict. We simply can’t sue disabilities out of our neighborhoods.” 

Escher has it right — it will take neighbors talking to other neighbors and together working out solutions, whether it is better supervision of children and adults with challenging behavior, or even adding a gate or fence. 

As for us, we are sad to find out that our neighbor Lillian recently passed away, and can only hope that the next homeowners will share her same affirming and caring approach to being neighbors. 

Michelle K. Wolf writes a monthly column for the Jewish Journal. Visit her Jews and Special Needs blog at jewishjournal.com/jews_and_special_needs.