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Addiction centers flee Costa Mesa, move to less regulated OC cities

“California is a great state to open an addiction treatment center, and an even better state to open a sober living home,” one how-to site advises.

“On the positive side, the state has a high number of folks in recovery and a very low level of regulation for sober living homes … making it an ideal home for your sober living organization.”

But not, perhaps, quite so ideal for the neighbors.

Costa Mesa knows this well: It has spent years fighting a lonely and expensive battle to regulate oft-disruptive recovery homes, urging other cities to stand by its side as it tries to protect the quality of care for recovering users, as well as the quality of life for residential neighborhoods. Other cities hesitated.

But a funny thing happened: Costa Mesa’s regulations have borne fruit, even as they’re challenged in court. Today there are far fewer addiction treatment centers and recovery homes in Costa Mesa, and far more in many other Orange County cities, than there were in 2017, according to state data.

As the Rehab Riviera migrates, Costa Mesa’s issues are becoming other cities’ issues. Those cities are now lining up behind Costa Mesa, hoping to finally bring the drama and trauma of unwatched, unprofessional treatment and recovery centers to the attention of state lawmakers who can do something about it.

“The on-the-ground reality is that many sober living businesses are unregulated by either federal or state officials and are springing up in the middle of residential neighborhoods, often in close proximity to each other, which creates an institutional type of environment,” says a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Costa Mesa, filed in federal court by the League of California Cities, the Association of California Cities of Orange County, and the cities of Newport Beach, Fountain Valley, Mission Viejo and Orange.

“This case threatens many cities’ ability to separate different and incompatible land uses – e.g., keeping the oil refinery away from the local school. This undermines a fundamental aspect of local government.”

They’ve asked a full panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to reconsider a smaller panel’s decision favoring the sober homes.

“The Panel’s decision has the potential to move big business into any residential zone in any city – merely by the business claiming it has a policy that will assist unidentified disabled individuals,” the cities say. “En banc review is necessary to consider the national implications of a ‘deemed disabled’ standard on the ability of cities to regulate commercial uses via local zoning laws.”

Sober homes are indeed lucrative businesses, another how-to-open-your-own site says. “Unfortunately, there are a few homes in it for the money and nothing else.”

A room in an Orange County sober home can go for about $1,000 per month, while some have pulled in tens of thousands of dollars  per month. State-licensed treatment homes can pull in thousands of dollars per client per day. And Orange County is Ground Zero of the Rehab Riviera; the U.S. Department of Justice says O.C. has overtaken South Florida as the national epicenter for addiction industry fraud.

Spreading pain

Since 2017, the number of state-licensed addiction treatment centers in Mission Viejo has increased by 50%. In Anaheim, it’s up 22%. In Newport Beach, it’s up 58%.

Meanwhile, in Costa Mesa, it has plummeted by nearly half. And the number of unlicensed sober homes rises, or falls, in tandem with the number of licensed treatment centers.

Folks in Mission Viejo are begging for help.

“We have an incident every three or four months — a screamer — always between midnight and 3 in the morning,” said William Young, a 44-year resident of Mission Viejo, at a public forum last year. “They kicked out two residents, a couple, about midnight. Lots of screaming between staff and the people being ejected in the middle of the night. You just feel sorry for them. This is someone’s son, someone’s daughter.”

The saddest part wasn’t that the neighbors were kept awake all night — the couple returned, yelling, three separate times — but how the operators “discarded these two individuals just like they were trash,” Young said. “They didn’t have an exit plan, didn’t arrange transportation, just dumped them in the street…. God knows how much money they’re making. They’re laughing all the way to the bank.”

Lisa Foto, who lives beside a state-licensed center, has cringed as people vomited in the neighboring back yard as drugs left their systems.

“I’m not against somebody getting help, but should they be getting help in a neighborhood or in a hospital?” she asked. “I think it should be in a hospital. With accredited doctors running it.”

Elizabeth Ann Dyer noted that she had to fill out a form and get approval from her neighbors before putting in a patio and painting her house — but nothing was required when a rehab moved in next door.

Solidarity

The law doesn’t leave much room for a city to maneuver. So Mission Viejo officials are knitting together a coalition to magnify cities’ voices as they plead with state lawmakers for better control over rowdy homes.

The South Orange County Sober Living and Recovery Task Force came together last year seeking strength in numbers as it explores common-sense regulations meant to protect the people inside sober homes as well as those who live beside them. Interest has come from Laguna Hills, Fountain Valley, Laguna Niguel, Lake Forest, Rancho Santa Margarita, Costa Mesa and even cities beyond the county lines.

“Just like senior living homes have regulations they need to abide by, these homes need to have regulations and oversight,” said Mission Viejo Councilmember Wendy Bucknum. “We need to make sure the patients in these homes are housed and cared for, that proper records are kept, that they aren’t committing insurance fraud. When it isn’t working anymore for the people who live there, they need to have a safe way to exit back to home.”

This is what Costa Mesa has been trying to do, largely solo, for years.

William Curley, city attorney for Mission Viejo, is trying to craft a sober living home ordinance that can be universally adopted. But city officials fear lawsuits  — not just from operators, but from the state itself.

The California Housing and Community Development department has warned cities with sober ordinances that they’re violating anti-discrimination laws and may lose funding and/or be slapped with lawsuits by the state Attorney General.

“We’ve got people dying and it’s ignored,” Curley said. “We’re almost vilified by the state for trying to regulate or control bad actors. We end up with HCD and the AG waving their fists at us. We’re not trying to hurt these people. We’re not trying to demonize them. We’re trying to get the operators to act competently, ethically, and we’re the bad guys.”

Costa Mesa has spent more than $7 million defending its rules against lawsuits. The reticence of other cities to embrace similar sober living home regulations is a matter of dollars and sense.

Disabled?

Operators say that the majority of sober homes are well-run. Darryl Shinder, who was denied permits to operate recovery housing in Costa Mesa, sees injustice at play in Costa Mesa.

“As for how things were before and after these ordinances, more people miss the larger point that this is about the public good that these homes provided for people who already beat their substance abuse, and just needed a stable, protective environment to rebuild their lives,” he said by email.

“Our clients were all holding jobs in the community, or attending school in the community. And many of them were from the community, able to live near loved ones and family. This is what Costa Mesa, and other cities trying this, are taking away. If you’re truly intending to address the problem of addiction in your community, why strongarm people who are serious about taking back control of their lives and contributing to the community?”

The nitty-gritty of the legal case at the 9th Circuit is this: Who is actually disabled and entitled to federal protections?

After Costa Mesa adopted its sober home rules — no convicted sex offenders, violent felons or drug dealers can run them; 24/7 supervision of clients is required; homes must be at least 650 feet apart; residents must be actively participating in “legitimate” recovery programs; transportation must be provided when residents leave — sober home operators sued. The city was discriminating against the disabled, and people suffering from addiction are, by law, disabled, they argued.

A U.S. District Court judge tossed out those suits before any trial was held. He sided with the city, which argued that sober home operators failed to prove their residents were truly disabled. The operators had to show, on a case-by-case basis, that each individual had “a major life activity substantially impaired by the alleged disability.”

The sober homes appealed, and a panel of judges sided with them. A sober homes’ intent to serve such people is enough to invoke disability protections (which opens the door to discrimination suits from those who feel wronged by city regulations). The opinion was published, which means it doesn’t just apply in this case, but across the land, which is a big deal.

“The natural extension of the Panel’s decision betokens a direct avenue for other ‘disability-serving’ businesses to locate in an otherwise residential area,” the cities’ friend of court brief says. Medial cannabis businesses? Short-term rentals? “(T)he opportunity for businesses using the ‘presumed disabled’ label to insert themselves into residential communities looms large.”

And that’s the crux of it, from neighbor Young’s point of view.

“They’re running a business out of a house, taking advantage of the neighborhood,” Young said at the Mission Viejo town hall. He recalled the face of the woman expelled in the night; she had lesions on her face from meth use. The man moved in choppy, jerky motions. They weren’t all right.

“We need to find a decent way of treating these people,” he said. “We have to do a much better job.”


Source: Orange County Register

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