I can't imagine a worse case nightmare scenario than to wake up one morning and discover that the house next door has been turned into a high priced flop house for drunks and drug addicts! They are turning up in very upscale, waterfront properties in Newport Beach! It's unimaginable! CA has "no smoking" laws all over the state for apt. renters...and yet a person who owns a multi-million dollar home is subjected to 20 drug addicts living next door! We are losing our freedoms and our inalienable rights! CA is doomed!


Local resistance to sober-living homes growing
By Dana Bartholomew, Staff Writer
Article Last Updated: 06/22/2008 11:18:32 PM PDT


A year ago, Tamir Dayan sank his life savings into building a 21-foot-ceiling dream home in which to raise his two little girls.

Then up to 20 recovering drug addicts and alcoholics moved into the house next door.

"They moved in; it's a nightmare," said Dayan, 45, of Tarzana. "Saturday morning you can't go outside because of the cigarette smoke. And foul language: `F--- you, f--- you, f--- you.' I can't open my bedroom window. I'm afraid to let my 3-year-old daughter go into the backyard."

Dayan is one of a growing number of California residents, city officials and lawmakers calling for a crackdown on state-funded sober-living homes - supportive residential facilities whose residents are treated off-site.

Los Angeles leaders are hoping to pass an ordinance by this fall to deal with the homes, and there are two state bills in the works to address the issue.

"During the past few years the placement of these homes in neighborhoods has escalated into a community crisis," City Councilman Greig Smith wrote an in e-mail to the Daily News during a city trip to Japan. "It is believed that thousands of these homes exist in the San Fernando Valley alone. I have seen single blocks with three such homes on them."

Unlicensed and unregulated, sober-living facilities of six or fewer residents have been impervious to city zoning regulations because of federal fair housing protections.

But after passage of the Proposition 36 voter initiative in 2000 to offer drug treatment instead of prison time, much larger group homes have proliferated in residential neighborhoods.

Community rage

While some say the larger homes are protected by law, others contend they are open to local regulation following a recent court decision concerning sober-living homes.

Last month, a federal judge issued a preliminary ruling allowing the city of Newport Beach to force 80 percent of its addiction treatment centers to apply for permits to stay open.

"All eyes are on the outcome in Newport Beach," said David Peters, a lobbyist for the California Association of Addiction Recovery Resources representing 180 drug and alcohol treatment providers.

"If Newport Beach is successful in banning treatment facilities and sober-living facilities in residential neighborhoods, you'd have addiction out of control."

But while many such facilities operate under the premise of sobriety, others do not, homeowners and officials say. Some homes, operating under the guise of sober living after treatment, will pack their homes with virtually anyone.

The result, critics say, is blight. And mounting community rage.

"Neighborhoods are suffering," said Peggy Burgess, a member of the North Hills West Neighborhood Council, the first of a growing number of councils to oppose such homes.

"They're being destroyed by addicts, alcoholics, parolees, probationers, including sex offenders. Neighbors are being harassed. Children can't play in their own yards. We can't park or walk in our own neighborhoods."

State legislation

City officials are listening.

In October, Smith called for a study on how to regulate sober-living homes, possibly through conditional-use permits. Officials hope to pass a sober-living home ordinance as early as this fall.

Meanwhile, a committee of lawmakers in Sacramento this week will consider AB 724, a bill that would strictly define who can live at a sober-living home so cities can control imposters. Another bill that would require the licensing of such homes, SB 992, is also in the works.

"I know that there are those who are claiming to be a sober-living home who do not have any kind of program," said John Benoit, R-Palm Desert, author of AB 724.

Smith said sober-living homes have mushroomed in the past 10 years because of a state need to find housing for probationers and others. He said "greedy property owners" have lined up to milk earnings of up to $8,000 a month from rents paid by the state for individual boarders.

The result, he said, is that cities have become powerless to control homes intended for community service that have instead become big business - with "hundreds of such homes in each community" not kept to community standards.

"The answer can only come through a return of local land use controls that protect ALL interests," Smith wrote in his e-mail.

Neighbors' complaints

In Granada Hills, residents complained of a group home containing a dozen men living in a two-bedroom, one-bath backyard house that has resulted in increased panhandling, trespassing and public intoxication.
"This certainly isn't a sober-living home, because many of these guys aren't sober," said Dave Beauvais, president of the Old Granada Hills Residents' Group, who lives two doors away. "Every afternoon, almost without exception, two or three of them will get into an argument, with four-letter words."

In Woodland Hills, a sober-living home housing up to 20 residents for $3,000 a month drew 150 signatures from angry residents for a petition to City Hall.

Residents complain of parking snarls, trash, noise, late-night disruptions and lewd comments made by young adults. A second home sprouted up just around the corner.

"Since they moved into the neighborhood, we've had an increase in mostly petty crimes - eggs being thrown at windows, wine bottles being thrown at windows - one sailed through an elderly couple's window and landed on the bed," said Judy Rucker of the Woodford Manor Association. "I definitely feel there should be regulations, oversight, something."

The state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs currently registers nearly 950 licensed residential treatment facilities and more than 1,000 outpatient centers.

Though it does not regulate sober-living homes, some in the industry want the state to license homes where substance abusers can live, work and regain their lives with group support within their communities.

But give cities the right to regulate - or banish - them, and they say many alcoholics and addicts will suffer.
"If cities are suddenly allowed to say no, there are not going to be a lot of options," Peters said. "By making more facilities get licensed, the state exercises control ... with all kinds of authority to sanction the program operator."

Sober College, a for-profit rehab educational center based in Woodland Hills, runs three sober-living homes where 60 young adult residents pay $6,500 a month.

Last February, it opened the home on Melvin Street that includes some rear apartments next to Dayan's house just south of the Orange Line.

Administrators said they've done everything to appease neighbors, including building an 8-foot fence, restricting cars and consigning smokers to a limited smoking area.

"I feel we're a good neighbor," said Robert Pfeifer, founder of Sober College. "Our students are not involved in illegal activities.

"We're bringing people to the community who give back value - they're getting jobs, they're going to school."

But Dayan, a building contractor from Israel, disagreed. The house next door has caused his children's friends to cancel play dates, he said, adding that it's not fair he must live next to an unregulated business.

"We put all our life savings in here, $1.5 million to $2 million," Dayan said. "Now we have a drug rehab next door. Who's going to buy a $1.5 million-to-$2 million house - or raise their kids - next to a drug rehab?

"All my life savings goes down the drain. I don't know how my girls are going to grow up here, living next to this."

dana.bartholomew@dailynews.com 818-713-3730






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