GUILDERLAND —  Pastor Charlie Muller is committed to opening a respite-care foster home in Guilderland although the state agency that the town believes would certify that home hasn’t received an application from Muller.

Muller doesn’t think he needs to apply to the state’s Office of Children and Family Services to proceed.

He has bought a six-bedroom home at 4755 Western Turnpike in Guilderland that he and his Victory Christian Church are outfitting to provide respite care for foster children. And he has hired a staff member, who now lives there, to run the home.

When Muller came before the Guilderland Planning Board on Sept. 11, the board was unsure whether it had jurisdiction over the project, and several members of the public were not happy with the proposal.

This week, town planner Kenneth Kovalchik said, since the Sept. 11 meeting, he has received correspondence from OCFS, stating that a residential program like the one Muller plans cannot open without it issuing an operating certificate, which it hasn’t done.

Kovalchik emailed The Enterprise, “OCFS cannot make a determination on the use i.e. foster care, group family home, congregate care facility, etc. until such time the applicant has submitted the necessary paperwork to OCFS and described their intent.” 

Kovalchik said the town will wait until OCFS has received the necessary paperwork to determine how to classify the project. 

Muller told The Enterprise this week that he does not need licensing, that the process is no different than it would be for an individual or family who wanted to foster children at their home. He said further that he is going through a certification process through Berkshire Farm Center & Services for Youth.

Julie Brennan, spokeswoman for Berkshire Farm, said, “We have great respect for Pastor Charlie and the positive work and impact he’s had on the community. We do not have a professional affiliation with him at this time.” 

Staff from Berkshire Farm did run a class for members of Muller’s church, Brennan said. The class, known as MAPP, she said, or Model Approach to Partnership and Parenting, provides the training needed for certification. Some members of Muller’s congregation participated, but they are still in the process of training and have not yet reached the end-point of becoming certified, she said. 

Berkshire Farm does “not currently own or operate any residential programming in the Guilderland community, nor do we plan to in the future,” Brennan said. If Muller is successful in opening a home for foster-care respite, she said, Berkshire Farm would not run or oversee it. 

An OCFS spokesman would not allow The Enterprise to use his name and declined to be quoted.

The OCFS website says, “A foster parent, other than one providing therapeutic foster care, is eligible for respite care and services when: the foster child has special needs due to a high level of disturbed behavior, emotional disturbance or physical or health need; the foster parent demonstrates a need for additional support in order to continue caring for a foster child, if without the service the placement has little likelihood of being sustained and it is in the best interests of the child to remain in that foster home; a foster parent is suddenly hospitalized due to accident, injury or illness; or the foster parent is absent due to the death in the immediate family of the foster parent.” 

Muller’s plan 

Respite involves offering support to foster parents by caring temporarily for their foster children, Muller told The Enterprise. Maybe the foster parents want to be able to attend an event out of town. Maybe they’re new to fostering and a bit overwhelmed, or they’ve been doing it a long time and would appreciate a few days off, he said. 

The church has named the Guilderland house “Our Home,” and uses the tagline “A haven of light” on its website to describe it. 

“We’ll just be able to get a call — ‘Thursday, one night,’ or, ‘A week starting Friday,’ and we’ll be able to accommodate that,” Muller said, adding that Our Home will also be able to ask questions and to turn away children whose needs are beyond its ability. 

The home, situated on 3.3 acres, is located in a rural-agricultural zone. According to Guilderland’s assessor, Karen Van Wagenen, the house was built in 2010. It is assessed at $425,000, Van Wagenen said, and was purchased for $380,000 on Nov. 30.

Its six bedrooms will have themes — the Adirondack Room, the Princess Room, the Fort Room. The house’s main living space has several large couches with a flat-screen television and, behind them, a dining table and a piano.

The spacious kitchen has a huge island that overhangs stools. The backyard has a completely fenced-in pool, with a three-foot shallow end and five-foot deep end.

There will soon be a playground with a rock-climbing wall, Muller said. A trampoline and a basketball hoop are in the front yard. He will be putting in a greenhouse outside. There is a small rec room in the home’s lower level, he said, and the plan is to add a theater room. 

“We had 170 loads of fill come in. We made the backyard,” Muller said. He explained that the church selected the location because it is still in Albany County  “which we’ve served for the last 25 years” — but also has land and is relatively far from neighbors. The property is just west of 84 Lumber and A Metro Self Storage, and it’s almost 200 feet to the house next door. 

“We want to have adventures,” Muller said. “We want to say, ‘OK, kids, we’re going to England,’ and then show them a movie” and follow up with related field trips or activities. 

The staff member who will be living in the house is Rob Monroe, who is 38 but looks 25. Monroe “has been with us several years, a real solid guy,” Muller said.

Monroe is originally from California and worked for 15 years with the city of Los Angeles in youth and recreation programming, said Muller. He also has a background in videography. Monroe has a 3-D printer, videography equipment, and a drone. “We want to teach them all kinds of things they wouldn’t ordinarily have,” Muller said. 

Monroe will live at the home, said Muller, explaining that the church purchased the house in November 2018, and, after sanding was done, Monroe began living there in April. Monroe needs to establish residency for six months before he can be certified to care for foster children in the home; he will be eligible for certification on Oct. 1, said Muller. Monroe has completed all the necessary paperwork, the pastor added. 

The home is not yet running, but kids have come out to visit a few times.

“Pastor brought the J.C. kids out here, let a couple of them fly the drone,” said Monroe, referring to kids who attend free camp offered by the church. “They didn’t want to leave.”

“This is what churches are supposed to be doing,” Muller told The Enterprise. “That’s why we do get the benefit of tax write-offs. We’re supposed to be helping the community. 

“You have the megachurches, with 3,000 to 5,000 people, and they don’t have respite homes for children.” 

He hopes this respite home is only the beginning. “If we had 15 of these throughout the Capital Region, imagine how much we could do,” he said. 

“Thinking outside the box” 

Muller’s Victory Christian Church started 25 years ago and now has two locations, 118 Quail St. in Albany, and 1312 Central Ave. in Colonie, with about 100 congregants in each, he said. A number of congregants have recently gone through the training to become certified as foster parents, he said, and he hopes to see more do it in the future.

Muller, 62, is no stranger to starting programs no one has ever seen before, he says.

The pastor’s gun-buyback programs are well known. During a two-week buyback period this summer, he said, the church “got over 35 handguns off the street.” At Christmastime, he said, his church sometimes runs a “Gifts for Guns” program, offering gift cards in exchange for guns. Depending on the type of gun, his organization pays between $50 and $150, he said. 

Muller’s daughter runs J.C. Club, at First and Quail streets in Arbor Hill, which Muller describes as a feeding center; this program offers free after-school and summer care. All summer, the children in its care are provided free lunches, Muller said. The church also holds free farmers’ markets for kids and their families in Arbor Hill, providing fruits and vegetables free of charge, according to Muller. 

Eighteen years ago, his church started handing out free lunches full-time in parks throughout the city, which was the first program of its kind, Muller said, although there were other programs that provided food for children at their schools. 

His church has given Christmas presents to children living at group homes and other locations including St. Anne Institute, the LaSalle School, Vanderheyden, and the Schuyler Inn in Menands, Muller said, noting that the Schuyler Inn functions as a transitional place for families that are trying to get into housing.

For the past two summers, the Victory Christian Church’s mobile Smoothie Truck has handed out about 600 free lunches a week to needy children in Troy, Miller said. At the end of August this year, his church filled a 26-foot truck with clothes and sneakers for kids to wear back to school; at the end of the day, they had only 12 bags left, he said. 

The church will continue its activities in these areas while also running the foster respite home, Muller said. 

Muller also hopes to open a church office in Albany, he said, to include a storage area for items like clothing or school supplies where foster parents would be able to come and get things they need. 

All of these programs are funded by church offerings and by the proceeds from a small thrift shop next to the Colonie church. An annual golf tournament in June also helps fund the summer programs. Two area businessmen have been staunch supporters, Muller said; one of them helped the church buy the Guilderland house. 

“We’ve tried to look for the needs,” Muller said. The area of greatest need now, he said, is respite. 

Muller grew up in Europe, he said, with a father who was in the Air Force. The family “drifted around” and then landed in New Lebanon in Columbia County when his father, who had family in the area, retired. 

Muller was an amateur boxer before experiencing an “awakening,” he said, adding, “I had an experience with the Lord, and felt a strong call not to hit anybody any more.” 

He became a minister through the Independent Assemblies of God, he said, a process that involved one year of Bible school, followed by 12 years of service. A spokesman at the Independent Assemblies of God said no one with Muller’s name is registered there.

Asked about this, Muller responded, “We are independent but I was ordained under my minister who was under the Independent Assemblies.” He added, “My schooling degree was through Buddy Harrison School of Ministry.”

The Enterprise left a message with the Faith Christian Fellowship International, based in Oklahoma, of which Harrison’s wife, Pat, is president, but did not get a call back before press time.

The first ministering Muller did, before starting his church, was a form of respite, although no one called it that at the time, he says. He went to a home for foster youth each weekend, met with the kids there, and took them on outings. 

Asked if he tells the children about God, he says, “In summer camp, we do some Bible. We share with the kids, and try to instill in them that God loves them.” Children respond to the love that is shown them, he said. 

The kids who will stay in the Guilderland house “are not bad kids,” Muller said. “They’re kids who are hurting.” 

Muller and his family took in a 12-year-old “off the street,” he said, and he graduated from college in Maine a year ago, he said. “He might want to be a Trooper,” said Muller.

“We took custody of him,” Muller said. “His dad was in prison, his grandmother was 82 and almost blind. He was on the street most of the time.” 

Muller’s daughter, Cassie, took him with her when she went to college in Alabama, and he stayed there with her until she returned to the Capital District to do her senior year of college online so that she could work with children in his church’s programs during the day.

After suits filed recently, after the passage of New York’s Child Victims Act, in which now-grown adults allege they were abused as children by priests and church employees who were supposed to be caring for them, The Enterprise asked Muller about the potential for abuse.

“Every person who works here is vetted,” Muller said. “Rob has worked with young adults and kids; he’s had not a spot of controversy. We’ve been working with kids 25 years and not one incident.” 

Muller said that there had been a congregant who had had “a history with abuse.” The congregant didn’t tell Muller about it, but Muller found out. “I put him right out,” he said. 

Muller concluded, “We can’t let the horror of what the Catholic Church did come into our sphere of what we do.”

Pushback

Kovalchik said at the Sept. 11 planning board meeting that the town code is silent on foster-care respite homes, and that the town’s chief building and zoning inspector, Jacqueline Coons, determined that the closest category is “day-care facility,” which is permitted if the property fronts on a state or county road. 

“So we’re going to be processing it as as a day-care use, but it’s still a foster-care facility,” Kovalchik said at the meeting. 

Planning board Chairman Stephen Feeney said that, if there were a need to be licensed — for instance, as a group home — the issue would be outside of the planning board’s jurisdiction, making it simpler.

At the meeting, Muller encountered pushback on several fronts: from a couple who own a nearby home; from Patrick Horan, who said he was a former police officer; and from board members.

Muller told the board that he had reached out to the town ”more to introduce ourselves” and that he was not seeking approval for a group home. 

“It’s no different from anyone else buying a single-family home and taking in foster children,” Mark Pratt, the church’s chief financial officer, told the planning board.

A memo from Kovalchik posted on the town website says that the home would be able to provide respite for children from age 1 to 19, as well as handling emergency placements. Muller told the board the children would actually be between the ages of 4 and 15 or 16, and in many cases not older than 11 or 12. 

A board member asked if the adults who are trained as foster parents are able to handle multiple children who may have emotional issues. Pratt said that, while people from the church are trained as foster parents, they are not psychologists; Berkshire Farm, which trained them, has people on staff who come in as needed, he said. 

 Emergency placements occur, for instance, when children are first taken from their own homes and placed into the foster-care system. A number of agencies can take emergency placements.

“If a kid is taken out in the middle of the night for whatever reason, the agency calls us up, CPS most times is the agency,” Pratt said, referring to the county’s Child Protective Services.

“They call us up, and they say, ‘We have this child that we need to place; are you able to take it?’ We would then ask questions: How long, what’s the situation, how old is the child? … If the child has drastic special needs, we’re not equipped for that … There are other organizations throughout Albany County that do this. 

“As a church, that’s our mission: We want to help kids. We want to see kids’ lives change. We want to be a part of that. That’s why we’re doing this,” Pratt told the board. 

The applicants were asked by board member Gustavo Santos if anything similar already exists in the area. “No, this is new,” Muller said. Muller also said that he did not know of a similar facility anywhere in the country. 

When Muller mentioned the home would also be available for emergency care for foster children, board member Thomas Robert said, “There may not be trouble, but there’s certainly going to be drama. If you’re bringing kids in the middle of the night —” 

Kovalchik asked if children staying for, say, a week, would be placed in Guilderland schools during that time. Pratt said they would attend their home schools. If, Pratt said, children stayed at the Guilderland house longer term and could not go back to their home schools, they would attend a private Christian school on scholarship. 

Yafei Cao, who owns a house nearby, at 4739 Western Turnpike, said day care is by law to be provided “less than 24 hours a day” and “by someone other than a parent/guardian.” He said this proposal meets neither condition. It is closest to a congregate-care facility, but it provides many more functions, he said.

Cao told the planning board, “This facility is more like a rehabilitation center for children and parents from troubled families. It is a combination of a boarding home, a YMCA, and a hotel. Equating this facility to a day-care center is like calling a gun shop a hardware store.”

Horan, who said he had worked for many years as a police officer and school resource officer in the city of Schenectady, said that the children coming to Our Home on emergency placements could be children who are “tearing through a foster home like a Tasmanian devil.”

Horan said this might mean police response or ambulance response. “Now you have police cars and ambulances going up and down the driveway,” he said.

Certification is not only required for an individual adult caregiver, but also for the caregiver in a particular home, where he or she must live around the clock, Horan said. If the home were to have a rotating paid staff, that would be “more of a group-home formula,” he said.

“We’re not resolving this tonight,” Feeney said. He also said, “I need to hear it from these agencies themselves, what they consider what you’re doing.”