Unlicensed boarding homes that might exploit disabled residents worry officials in Austin, Texas

The intro of a longer story in the Austin American-Statesman. Emergency officials have been called to the boarding house pictured 147 times since Jan. 1, 2008.

Last month, Austin police arrested Tommie Yvette McKinney, saying she'd opened a credit account at a local electronics store in the name of another woman and racked up $1,100 in charges. The alleged victim, who is mentally disabled, was renting a room from McKinney at the time.

It wasn't McKinney's first brush with the law. Court records show she was arrested in 1989 for taking another person's food stamps and public assistance checks. A 2002 arrest affidavit out of Travis County reported, "McKinney's criminal history shows she had 14 theft convictions."

State criminal justice records show she has been sent to prison three separate times on felony theft convictions in three different counties. She filed for personal bankruptcy in 2004.

McKinney, 46, has operated several boarding homes in Northeast Austin in recent years. Charging about $500 per person per month for meals and a bed, the facilities house a dozen or more tenants in single-family homes, which McKinney typically leases from owners who live out of town. Most of her tenants are disabled or elderly and can afford no other place to live.

"It's a difficult clientele," McKinney said in an interview with the American-Statesman this spring, before her arrest. "But for me, it's a fun business. It's hard. But it's a God thing."

McKinney has not been convicted of the latest charge; her next court date is in two weeks. She did not return calls after her arrest. Acquaintances said she had turned away from her criminal past and was running decent businesses.

But housing and mental health advocates say she highlights a yawning regulatory gap in how communities care for some of their most vulnerable residents. While their tenants often have little or no income other than public support payments, such as Social Security and food stamps, boarding homes such as McKinney's operate largely out of sight, unlicensed and unregulated by any state or local agency.

That separates boarding home operators from nurses, massage therapists, locksmiths or any of the dozens of professions whose government oversight limitsemployment by those with a criminal history to protect the public. "It's unbelievable that someone like her could be in this business," said Robert Dole, who as program manager of the Austin Travis County Mental Health Mental Retardation Center's Assertive Community Treatment team keeps track of the agency's clients living in the community.

This spring, after years of debating how to tackle the problem, the Texas Legislature passed a law giving individual cities a framework to license and regulate boarding homes. There is no money attached to the law, however, and Austin officials said they are unsure if they will participate. While the City Council's public health and human services subcommittee has discussed the new legislation, Austin "has not yet indicated whether it will change current regulations about boarding houses," said Jennifer Herber, a spokeswoman for the city's Solid Waste Services and Code Compliance department.

Many boarding homes provide decent and dignified housing at a affordable cost to challenging clients. "You're not going to find a bunch of angels and saints," said Rouzan Barton, whose family ran JJ's Care Home in East Austin for decades before recently converting the facility into a motel.

Some, however, don't. With no one checking regularly on conditions, the homes can be unsanitary. "The general consensus is that some people will not send their dogs to go live in a board and care," said Marilyn Hartman, a spokeswoman with the Austin chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

They also can be dangerous. In February, Austin police arrested Calvin Shepard, charging him with raping a woman who lived in a Northeast Austin boarding home he operated. The woman had run out of her pain medication and, according to the arrest affidavit, Shepard told her he would give her some if she had sex with him. When she refused, Shepard raped her, the affidavit said. His next court hearing is scheduled for late September.

The homes exact a public cost, as well. Active in the University Hills Neighborhood Association in Northeast Austin, Joan Bartz has tried to get regulators to pay attention to the drain placed on the city's police, fire and ambulance services by what she calls "rogue homes," including one until recently located across the street. "At times our cove resembled a staging area for some emergency," she said.

Since 2008, public records show that Austin police have received 622 calls for service to five boarding home locations McKinney said she had managed. "People don't realize the magnitude of the problem," said Bartz.