MARYSVILLE — One adult family home has been closed by foreclosure and the state Department of Social and Health Services has warned residents at a second nearby adult family home that theirs could face a similar fate.
Both homes are owned by the same couple, Dean and Shirley Wicka of Everett, who say they plan to appeal the state’s actions.
“We were wronged by this,” Dean Wicka said. “They act first and think second.”
DSHS summarily suspended the license of the first home, known as The Beach House, at 1355 Beach Ave. on July 30, said Pat Jennings, who works in residential care services for the state agency.
The two men and two women who were being cared for at the adult family home ranged in age from their late 70s to their 90s, Jennings said. Last week, they and their family members were notified that they had several days to move and all four have now left, she said.
When the house was foreclosed on last month, a sheriff’s deputy was sent to the house with an order of eviction effective Aug. 3, she said. He discovered that it was an adult family home and called DSHS.
Dean Wicka said the patients cried when they were forced to leave. Five staff members lost their jobs, he said.
Wicka said he and his wife were in the process of finding a new buyer for the house when the foreclosure occurred and a new owner probably could have been secured within two weeks, he said. “We got in a financial bind,” he said. “A lot of people are.”
After working in the adult family home business for 20 years and then being told by the state that the adult family home was being shut down in three days, “we were devastated,” he said.
State officials also summarily revoked the license of the second home, known as Lakeviews Cedar House, over what they said was the potential for foreclosure on it, too.
That means that no new patients can be admitted to the Cedar Avenue adult family home. Meanwhile, six residents now living there “can certainly choose to remain there,” Jennings said.
The state will conduct unannounced checks on the residents to assure their safety, he said.
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486, salyer@heraldnet.com.
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