Tustin Wants More Control Over Homes for Recovering Addicts

The City Council this week decided to push for changes in licensing requirements for community drug- and alcohol-recovery facilities.

The council, acting in response to a petition from residents, voted to ask state legislators and officials from surrounding cities to join in their effort.

City officials said they want more local control, including the ability to issue permits and establish requirements for homes classified by the state as residential. For example, officials said, they would like such facilities to be separated by at least 3,000 feet.

Under state law, the homes can open in residential neighborhoods without city permission because the state classifies them as residential. There are no state restrictions on the distance between the facilities.

The issue arose after Recovery Homes of America Inc. opened a home on Rosalind Drive near two existing recovery facilities. Each of the homes is licensed for six residents and offers a place for recovering addicts to live together. Clients move into the homes only after completing a detoxification procedure at a hospital, according to administrator Anne Barcus.

Neither of the other two homes has had any substantiated complaints against it, according to a representative of the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Abuse, which licenses them.

But residents in the neighborhood, including Councilman Richard B. Edgar, have claimed that the homes bring increased traffic and noise and may decrease property values in the area.

With a residential classification, the facilities are subject to the same code requirements as any home in the neighborhood, said Rita Westfield, assistant director of Community Development Services.

Nonetheless, council members voted Monday to begin a code enforcement action against the recovery homes because they sometimes have more than six residents meeting for therapy sessions.

“Assembly is not a typical use in an R-1 (residential) home,” Westfield said.