10 sober-living home permits at stake at Costa Mesa Planning Commission meeting
Members of the Costa Mesa Planning Commission are scheduled to decide the fate of 10 applications and appeals for sober-living homes during their meeting Monday.
The operators of the homes are seeking permits they need to remain open under city ordinances restricting how close such facilities can be to one another.
One ordinance requires sober-living homes with six or fewer occupants in single-family neighborhoods be at least 650 feet apart. Another ordinance created similar rules for such homes in multifamily-zoned areas.
City officials have said the ordinances aim to prevent the close clustering in residential areas of sober-living homes, which generally house recovering drug and alcohol addicts who are considered disabled under state and federal law.
Some critics of the homes argue they can be disruptive to neighborhoods and contribute to undue amounts of noise, parking problems and secondhand smoke, among other negative effects.
Operators of the homes on Monday’s Planning Commission agenda, however, say that’s not the case with their properties.
One of them, Casa Capri Recovery, has applied for permits to continue operating its all-female sober-living facilities at 166 E. 18th St. and 266 and 271 16th Place.
Casa Capri is seeking permission to house up to 14 occupants in three units on 18th Street and a maximum of 28 in four units on 16th Place.
Melissa Holmes Goodmon, co-founder and executive director of Casa Capri, said Friday that the facilities have been open for years without complaints from residents or problems with police.
“We’re helpful in the community,” she said. “I believe we’re good operators and I believe we’re doing the right thing for the right reasons.”
City staff members are recommending that the commission deny the permit request for 18th Street because it doesn’t comply with the 650-foot buffer spelled out in the city’s ordinance.
Casa Capri could operate at either of the adjoining properties on 16th Place, according to a staff report, but not at both because of the distance requirement.
The buffer rule also is cited in staff’s recommendation to deny a permit application from Windward Way Recovery for its facility at 351 and 357 Victoria St.
Windward Way houses up to 28 men in eight units on the adjoining parcels.
Jeremy Broderick, Windward Way’s chief executive and founder, said Friday that the facility has been open almost seven years and operates “in a conscious manner to negate any kind of negative impact on the community.”
Broderick said there’s an unfair stigma associated with those who are recovering from addiction and that the issue has become overly politicized in Costa Mesa.
“I do everything I can to help people get their lives back together, to help people get their families back, to get back in school and be productive in the workforce,” he said. “I didn’t create the drug problem — I’m doing everything I can to help.”
The owner of two other sober-living homes up for review Monday — at 165 E. Wilson St. and 2041 Tustin Ave. — said his properties also have been open for years without incident.
“I’ve managed the properties so that all my neighbors are afforded peaceful and quiet enjoyment of their properties, just like my tenants are entitled to peaceful and quiet enjoyment,” Keith Randle said Thursday.
Randle is seeking permission to house up to 11 occupants, including a live-in manager, in two condominium units on the Wilson Street property and as many as 13 occupants, including a manager, in three units on Tustin Avenue.
He said most of his neighbors didn’t even know the properties were sober-living homes before he applied for permits from the city.
“I want to go back to doing what I was doing before the city of Costa Mesa and all my neighbors knew what I was doing,” Randle said. “I’m helping people.”
Though city staff is recommending that his applications be approved, Randle said he has problems with some of the conditions for doing so and plans to take those issues before the commission.
Staff is recommending the commission deny three other sober-living permit requests in single-family neighborhoods because the residences are deemed too close to other drug and alcohol recovery or treatment facilities.
Two of the properties are next to each other at 647 and 653 Joann St. The other is at 1180 Augusta St.
“According to state law, I believe that I am within my rights to have this house with six clients,” Ryan Hampton of Hampton House LLC wrote in his appeal to the commission regarding the Augusta Street property.
The two Joann Street properties originally went before the commission for review last month, but the owner of both, Richard Perlin, asked for a delay so he could have legal representation present.
“I have a great deal of affection for Costa Mesa and its residents,” Perlin said in an earlier interview. “I’m not out here to cause any trouble. But on the other hand, I’m certainly not going to be kicked around, and that’s what’s happening here.”
As of last month, Costa Mesa had 83 state-licensed drug and alcohol facilities and 95 other facilities that are considered sober-living homes, according to city spokesman Tony Dodero.
Monday’s Planning Commission meeting will begin at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 77 Fair Drive.
Twitter: @LukeMMoney
