Hill v. Community of Damien of Molokai

• Decision Date: 09 January 1996
• Docket Number: No. 21715,21715
• Citation: 121 N.M. 353,911 P.2d 861,1996 NMSC 8
• Parties: , 64 USLW 2519, 14 A.D.D. 667, 7 NDLR P 356 William G. HILL, III, Derek Head, Charlene Leamons, and Bernard Dueto, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. The COMMUNITY OF DAMIEN OF MOLOKAI, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: New Mexico Supreme Court

Page 861

911 P.2d 861

121 N.M. 353, 64 USLW 2519, 14 A.D.D.

667, 7 NDLR P 356

William G. HILL, III, Derek Head, Charlene Leamons, and Bernard Dueto, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. The COMMUNITY OF DAMIEN OF MOLOKAI, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 21715.

Supreme Court of New Mexico.

Jan. 9, 1996.

Rehearing Denied Feb. 9, 1996.

[121 N.M. 356] Appeal from the District Court of Bernalillo County; Gerald R. Cole, District Judge.

Protection and Advocacy System, Nancy Koenigsberg, Albuquerque, for Appellant.

William J. Darling & Associates, P.A., William J. Darling, Margaret P. Armijo, Albuquerque, Sylvain Segal, Albuquerque, for Appellees.

Michael B. Browde, Albuquerque, Singer, Smith & Williams, Nan E. Burke, Albuquerque, for Amici Curiae ACLU, et al.

OPINION

FROST, Justice.

1. Defendant-Appellant Community of Damien of Molokai (Community) appeals from the district court's ruling in favor of Plaintiffs-Appellees, enjoining the further use of the property at 716 Rio Arriba, S.E., Albuquerque, as a group home for individuals with AIDS. Plaintiffs-Appellees argue that the group home violates a restrictive covenant. The Community contends that the group home is a permitted use under the covenant and, alternatively, that enforcing the restrictive covenant against the group home would violate the Federal Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 3601-3631 (1988) [hereinafter FHA]. We note jurisdiction under SCRA 1986, 12-102(A)(1) (Repl.Pamp.1992), and reverse.

I. FACTS

2. The underlying facts of this case are not in dispute. The Community is a private, nonprofit corporation which provides homes to people with AIDS¹ as well as other terminal illnesses. In December 1992 the Community leased the residence at 716 Rio Arriba, S.E., Albuquerque, located in a planned subdivision called Four Hills Village, for use as a group home for four individuals with AIDS. The four residents who subsequently moved into the Community's group home were unrelated, and each required some degree of in-home nursing care.

3. Plaintiffs-Appellees, William Hill, III, Derek Head, Charlene Leamons, and Bernard Dueto (hereinafter Neighbors) live in Four Hills Village on the same dead-end street as the group home. Shortly after the group home opened, the Neighbors noticed an increase in traffic on Rio Arriba street, going to and from the group home. The Neighbors believed that the Community's use of its house as a group home for people with AIDS violated one of the restrictive covenants applicable to all the homes in the sixteenth installment of Four Hills Village. Installment sixteen encompasses the Community's group home and the Neighbors' houses. The applicable covenant provides in relevant part:

2. USE OF LAND

No lot shall ever be used for any purpose other than single family residence purposes. No dwelling house located thereon shall ever be used for other than single family residence purposes, nor shall any outbuildings or structure located thereon be used in a manner other than incidental to such family residence purposes. The erection or maintenance or use of any building, or the use of any lot for other purposes, including, but not restricted to such examples as stores, shops, flats, duplex houses, apartment houses, rooming houses, tourist courts, schools, churches, hospitals, and filling stations is hereby expressly prohibited.

Reservations, Covenants and Restrictions, Four Hills Village (Sixteenth Installment) (filed in the Bernalillo County Clerk's Office, Apr. 5, 1973) (emphasis added). The Neighbors specifically argue that the term "single family residence" does not include group homes in which unrelated people live together.

4. On August 12, 1993, the Neighbors filed for an injunction to enforce the covenant and to prevent further use of the Community's house as a group home. The Community defended on the grounds that the covenant did not prohibit the group home and, in the alternative, that enforcement of the covenant would violate the FHA. The Community also counterclaimed to permanently enjoin enforcement of the covenant and to recover attorney's fees. After hearing evidence at two separate hearings, the trial court held that the restrictive covenant prevented the use of the Community's house as a group home for people with AIDS and issued a permanent injunction against the Community. The trial court entered specific findings that the Community's use of the home generated a significant number of vehicle trips up and down the street and that the increased traffic had detrimentally altered the character of the neighborhood.

5. The Community appealed the trial court's order, and we granted a stay of the permanent injunction pending this appeal. We now review, first, the Community's claims regarding the proper interpretation of the restrictive covenant, and second, the applicability of the FHA.

II. FOUR HILLS RESTRICTIVE COVENANTS

6. The first issue before us is the applicability of the Four Hills restrictive covenant to the Community's group home. As this Court noted in Cain v. Powers, 100 N.M. 184, 186, 668 P.2d 300, 302 (1983), in determining whether to enforce a restrictive covenant, we are guided by certain general rules of construction. First, if the language is unclear or ambiguous, we will resolve the restrictive covenant in favor of the free enjoyment of the property and against restrictions. Second, we will not read restrictions on the use and enjoyment of the land into the covenant by implication. Third, we must interpret the covenant reasonably, but strictly, so as not to create an illogical, unnatural, or strained construction. Fourth, we must give words in the restrictive covenant their ordinary and intended meaning. Id.; see also Wilcox v. Timberon Protective Ass'n, 111 N.M. 478, 483, 806 P.2d 1068, 1073 (Ct.App.1990) (applying four-part test to restrictive covenant prohibiting mobile homes), cert. denied, 111 N.M. 529, 807 P.2d 227 (1991).

A. Operating a Group Home Constitutes Residential Use

7. At issue here is the proper interpretation of the restriction, "No lot shall ever be used for any purpose other than single family residence purposes." The trial court held that the Community's use of property as a group home for four, unrelated individuals with AIDS violated this restriction. In reaching its conclusion that the group home violated the residential use restriction, the trial court made two specific findings regarding the nature of the current use of the home. The court found that the "Community uses the house ... as a non profit hostel for providing services to handicapped individuals" and that the "Community uses of the residence are much closer to the uses commonly associated with health care facilities, apartment houses, and rooming houses than uses which are commonly associated with single family residences." Thus the trial court apparently concluded that the property was being used for commercial purposes rather than residential purposes. However, we find that the trial court's conclusions are incorrect as a matter of law.

8. It is undisputed that the group home is designed to provide the four individuals who live in the house with a traditional family structure, setting, and atmosphere, and that the individuals who reside there use the home much as would any family with a disabled family member. The four residents share communal meals. They provide support for each other socially, emotionally, and financially. They also receive spiritual guidance together from religious leaders who visit them on Tuesday evenings.

9. To provide for their health care needs, the residents contract with a private nursing service for health-care workers. These health-care workers do not reside at the home, and they are not affiliated with the Community in any way. The number of hours of service provided by the health-care workers is determined by a case-management group assigned by the state pursuant to a state program. The in-home health services that the residents receive from the health-care workers are precisely the same services to which any disabled individual would be entitled regardless of whether he or she lived in a group home or alone in a private residence. The health-care workers do most of the cooking and cleaning. The residents do their own shopping unless they are physically unable to leave the home.

10. The Community's role in the group home is to provide oversight and administrative assistance. It organizes the health-care workers' schedules to ensure that a nurse is present twenty-four hours per day, and it provides oversight to ensure that the workers are doing their jobs properly. It also receives donations of food and furniture on behalf of the residents. The Community provides additional assistance for the residents at times when they are unable to perform tasks themselves. A Community worker remains at the house during the afternoon and evening but does not reside at the home. The Community, in turn, collects rent from the residents based on the amount of social security income the residents receive, and it enforces a policy of no drinking or drug use in the home.

11. The Community's activities in providing the group home for the residents do not render the home a nonresidential operation such as a hospice or boarding house. As the South Carolina Supreme Court noted when faced with a similar situation involving a group home for mentally impaired individuals:

This Court finds persuasive the reasoning of other jurisdictions which have held that the incident necessities of operating a group home such as maintaining records, filing accounting reports, managing, supervising, and providing care for individuals in exchange for monetary compensation are collateral to the prime purpose and function of a family housekeeping unit. Hence, these activities do not, in and of themselves, change the character of a residence from private to commercial.

Rhodes v. Palmetto Pathway Homes, Inc., 303 S.C. 308, 400...