DETOX ON $72 A DAY : A Center Opens While One Closes

Officials at Primary Purpose are celebrating the expansion of their drug and alcohol treatment organization. But just a few blocks from a ribbon-cutting scheduled for today, government officials are closing down another Primary Purpose facility for lack of a state license and city permit.

Primary Purpose has six sites in Oxnard where it runs programs under government contract for alcoholics and drug addicts in various stages of recovery.

City and state officials said they have no quarrel with five of the Primary Purpose sites. California Secretary of State March Fong Eu is expected to attend a reception at 12:30 p.m. today to celebrate the organization’s new building at 840 W. 5th St. in Oxnard and the availability of 25 new beds.

But the sixth facility, a 16-bed “grad house” at 161 West C St. for men in their first seven months of recovery from addiction, is expected to close within three weeks.

Primary Purpose officials said they opened the facility in October, 1988, charging most residents $360 monthly, imposing restrictions such as an 11 p.m. weeknight curfew and requiring outside meetings. Director Dale McFadden said he didn’t think it needed a state permit or city special-use permit.

On April 20, however, city zoning officials warned Primary Purpose that it must obtain a special-use permit or revert to residential use. Oxnard code enforcement official Richard McIntosh said the permit would require, among other things, that the site get a state license as a care facility.

Then, on May 9, state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs officials arrived for an inspection. Three weeks later they wrote Primary Purpose officials, warning that the organization was legally required to get a license for residential alcohol and drug rehabilitation.

McFadden said last week that he has applied for a state license but that an intergovernmental Catch-22 may require him to have the city permit before he can get it. He also said the cost of permit fees and site improvements could reach $5,000 and would strain his organization’s finances.

Until those issues are solved, McFadden said, the house will close. On July 12, he said, the program’s recovering alcoholics and addicts were given 30 days to find a new residence. McFadden, who denounced the city’s permit policies as archaic, asserted that “if you had a flophouse with no rules, they wouldn’t bother you.”

He and others said the government actions might never have happened but for complaints by Oxnard attorney Barron Beil.

Earlier this year Beil refused to pay rent for treatment his son received at the grad house, saying he was not satisfied with the program. In May, Primary Purpose filed a civil suit to evict Beil’s 18-year-old son, Bradley, for failure to comply with house rules. On June 1, Presiding Municipal Judge Lee E. Cooper upheld Primary Purpose’s position and ordered the younger Beil out.

The elder Beil denounced Primary Purpose, where he said “the rule is you do whatever we say, when we say.”