Royal Ranch group home is a royal pain

From the Times Ledger:

Residents of the Royal Ranch section of Glen Oaks said a group home for autistic teenagers has been a nightmare for the community ever since it opened in February.

One of the teens stabbed a worker at the home with a pen, while another snuck into a neighbor’s backyard and masturbated, residents said. Other problems include vandalized cars and increased traffic near the home at 70-25 267th St., they said.

“It was a quiet neighborhood,” said Cindy Markopoulous, who lives near the group home, where houses are valued close to $1 million. “Tough luck for us, I wish I knew. There’s a lot of problems.”

The group home is run by the city chapter of the Association for Help of Retarded Children, which could not be reached for comment.

Markopoulous accused AHRC of “bad management” for hiring workers who she said were not equipped to handle the six teenagers with autism who live at the home.

Since a community meeting was called three weeks ago to address issues at the group home, she said AHRC has not let the teens outside.

“Now they have them caged like Alcatraz,” Markopoulous said. “Not only are they caged in, we’re caged in. I won’t let my daughter go out and play by herself.”

She said she doubted the improved conditions in the neighborhood will last.

“They just want us to shut up,” she said.

Royal Ranch mourns loss of sense of community

From the NY Times:

Many New Yorkers have not heard of Royal Ranch — an enclave of just five or six streets on a hill in the farthest reaches of northeastern Queens — and the residents like it that way.

The postage-stamp neighborhood, near the Nassau County line, was built as a single development of one-family ranch houses in 1954. And to this day, that 1950s ambiance is what Rhonda Kontner, the president of the local civic association and the program director of a nearby special-education school, loves most.

It is best embodied by the Royal Ranch Club, a grand name for the simple outdoor pool that homeowners built in 1960. Long the prize of the neighborhood, the pool is falling victim to an unexpected side effect of the recession.

And Ms. Kontner, 55, worries that the downturn is also accelerating another change in the neighborhood that makes her wistful for the old days: the increasingly transient, work-focused vibe of its residents.