Opinion ID: 1226541
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: ) Nursing Homes.

Text: City advances, as a secondary argument, the contention that regardless of the TLC facility's status as a health facility, services which are nursing homes, as that term is used in section 5120, are not permitted conditionally, or otherwise, in R-2 zones under the terms of the Code. Assuming that TLC's operation is a health facility, if nursing homes are not permitted by local ordinance or permit it follows, under section 5120, facilities for mental care and treatment may not be located in such zones without conditional permits or other zoning authorization. However, TLC need not establish that its facility is a nursing home or hospital, only that such facilities are permitted in R-2 zones. (§ 5120.) City argues that in enacting section 5120 the Legislature adopted the definition of nursing home contained in section 430.12 of the Health and Safety Code, namely, a facility for the accommodation of convalescents or other persons who are not acutely ill and not in need of hospital care, but who require skilled nursing care and related medical services (1) which is operated in connection with a hospital, or (2) in which such nursing care and medical services are prescribed by, or are performed under the general direction of, persons licensed to practice medicine or surgery in the State. City also reasons that the rest homes and convalescent homes permitted by its Code in R-2 zones do not conform to the foregoing definition of nursing homes. Our review of the definitional portion of the City's Code, however, reveals that the functional distinction between these several kinds of facilities is not as clear as City suggests. When the Code definition of convalescent homes is sought, the reader is referred to rest homes. (Code, at § 91.2.21.) Rest homes, in turn, are defined as Permitting nursing, dietary and other personal services rendered to convalescents, invalids and aged persons, but excluding cases of contagious or communicable diseases and excluding surgery or primary treatments such as are customarily conducted in sanitariums and hospitals. ( Id., at § 91.2.53.) A sanitarium means A health station or retreat or other place where patients are kept and where medical or surgical treatment is given, but not mental. ( Id., at § 91.2.55.) Finally, hospitals are categorized as general, special, extended care, and day treatment clinic. An extended care facility is A facility primarily engaged in providing to in-patients the nursing care and related services for patients who require twenty-four (24) hour medical, nursing, or rehabilitation services. These facilities include the following types of institutions: [¶] (1) Convalescent or nursing homes; [¶] (2) Sanitarium. ( Id., at § 91.2.74, subd. (c).) From the foregoing definitional thicket we emerge concluding: (1) section 5120 directs that health facilities which offer psychiatric treatment may be located in any zone where hospitals and nursing homes are conditionally or otherwise permitted by zoning; (2) the Mansel facility is a health facility for purposes of section 5120; (3) City's zoning Code contains overlapping definitions of hospitals, convalescent homes, and rest homes; (4) under the Code, City conditionally permits the operation of rest homes and convalescent homes in R-2 zones; and (5) because rest homes and convalescent homes are equivalent to nursing homes and hospitals under City's Code, section 5120 therefore preempts City's regulation of mental health facilities serving more than six persons in R-2 zones.