Rocky path to control over rehab homes

In the ongoing debate over how to control drug and alcohol recovery facilities in Newport Beach, city officials have long said their hands are tied by state and federal restrictions.

But in the last several months, residents have increasingly demanded action. Some suggest the city is hiding behind state and federal laws that protect the homes rather than enforcing local rules such as the zoning code. Critics say the recovery homes have popped up all around the city and are not always good neighbors. They complain of noise, litter and overcrowding, and they worry about who’s in the homes. Under state law, some nonviolent drug offenders must go to drug treatment instead of jail.

So city officials are caught between the laws of the land and the will of the people.

Denys Oberman, a Newport resident who’s been active in the rehab home issue, asked the City Council on Jan. 23 to place a three-year moratorium on drug recovery houses. City officials don’t seem to have a clear idea what they can do to regulate the homes, so maybe during a moratorium they could figure it out, she said.

City officials admit that part of the problem is that they don’t know how many residential drug recovery homes are in the city because only those that offer drug treatment must have a state license. According to the state, there are 22 licensed facilities in Newport Beach, but residents believe there are at least 112 recovery homes in the city.

“The city is loath to administer local land-use policy … and the citizens are at a loss to understand why,” Oberman said.

City Atty. Robin Clauson disagrees. A maze of state and federal laws protect the right of recovering addicts to live in the community, whether they’re receiving treatment or just living in a sober environment, and case law has overwhelmingly gone against cities that try to restrict drug recovery homes, she said.

Here’s what the laws say:

“If it’s, ‘We don’t want those people here,’ … then that wouldn’t be the basis for denying a permit,” said Cathy Wolcott, a contract attorney for Newport Beach. “That’s the way the law looks at it.”

Clauson said that under state law, state-licensed homes that house six or fewer people must be treated like any other residence. And federal protections still apply to other homes, including the larger, state-licensed homes and facilities of any size that don’t need a state license, Wolcott said.

City officials are pinning their hopes on getting the law changed, but Wolcott said they’re also exploring other avenues. For example, state law forbids the city to charge drug treatment homes for a business license, but it might be possible to require them to hold licenses but not pay a fee.

State Sen. Tom Harman will propose a bill to address spacing of sober living homes, and a city-sponsored conference in March will look for support for the bill from around the state. At residents’ prompting, the City Council earlier this month voted to form a committee to research issues associated with drug rehab facilities.

The goal of all this activity is to help the city learn the size of the issue and get more control over it.

But to some residents, the wheels of government are grinding too slowly to stop the explosion of recovery homes.

At a Wednesday meeting of the West Newport Beach Assn., Mayor Steve Rosansky was questioned by residents about who would be on the proposed committee and whether meeting once a month will be enough.

Among them was Lori Morris. In an earlier interview, she wondered, “If you don’t know what’s going on in your city as a city government, why don’t you put a stop to it and find out what’s going on?”

WHAT’S NEXT

The city of Newport Beach is taking several approaches to address residents’ concerns about drug recovery homes in the community. Here’s what’s happening.

QUESTION

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