Board And Care Homes Los Angeles

State and county health authorities shut down a board-and-care home for suspected health and safety violations Wednesday, forcing about 40 elderly residents to be relocated to other facilities. Residents at the Ambassador Care Home at 10161 Hillhaven Ave. were not receiving proper care, and the facility had been operating without a license since April, said Doug Harvey, a supervising investigator with the state Department of Social Services. "They were unlicensed and illegal," Harvey said.

State and county health authorities shut down a board-and-care home for suspected health and safety violations Wednesday, forcing about 40 elderly residents to be relocated to other facilities. Residents at the Ambassador Care Home at 10161 Hillhaven Ave. were not receiving proper care, and the facility had been operating without a license since April, said Doug Harvey, a supervising investigator with the state Department of Social Services. "They were unlicensed and illegal," Harvey said.

Operators of a network of two dozen unlicensed board and care homes in Los Angeles and Tulare counties have been running a grim skin trade in which elderly and disabled homeless people are recruited off Skid Row, kept in often substandard housing and fleeced of Social Security and disability checks, according to federal authorities.

Were it not for one of the wildest Los Angeles gunfights since the West was won, Georgia Mayo might still be trapped in a room with no windows, an open bucket for a toilet and a padlock securing the door. The rundown Pasadena house in which she was kept belongs to Valerie Nicolescu-Matasareanu, former operator of a home for the disabled and the mother of one of the robbers killed in the North Hollywood bank shooting in February.

The afternoon phone call jolted Laird Jackson: Her 82-year-old father had just been evicted from the Huntington Beach board-and-care home where he had lived for several years. "I couldn't believe it," she said. "There was no notice until a marshal showed up at the door with a foreclosure notice. " Jackson's experience in January, unfortunately, is becoming commonplace in California, with incidents reported at board-and-care homes in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, Contra Costa, Alameda, San Mateo, Napa, Yolo and Placer counties.