Alcohol and Drug Treatment Program Closes Temporarily : Disrepair: Straight Ahead, the county’s oldest such residential facility, relinquishes its license to state authorities until repairs are made and additional staff are hired.

Under pressure from state authorities, the founder of the oldest residential alcohol and drug treatment program of its type in Orange County has promised to relinquish his license and has closed his doors temporarily.

Officials with the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs said they asked Straight Ahead Inc. Director John Bowler to give up his license until extensive repairs are made to the Dana Point home, a former motel built in 1936, and extra treatment staff are hired. If those conditions are not met, state officials said Monday, they will move to revoke Bowler’s license.

Bowler said he agreed, and that he will repair the 15-room building on Pacific Coast Highway where recovering addicts have lived since the program began almost 20 years ago. “We’re trying to get some help from the community and fix this thing up,” Bowler said.

During several visits to Straight Ahead starting in December, state officials found holes in the roof and walls, leaky plumbing, broken windows, soaked carpeting and rotting wood floors, said Pete DuFour, a spokesman for the Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs.

“The place was basically in a serious state of disrepair,” he said.

Staffing was also inadequate for the 50-bed facility, DuFour said. For example, some residents often acted as staff members, no one had training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and a medicine cabinet wasn’t supervised, DuFour said.

State officials also alleged that management had violated state licensing requirements by sometimes allowing residents to return to the home under the influence of alcohol, according to agency spokesman Kurt Klemencic.

Dana Point Code Enforcement Officer Angela Duzich said she also has inspected the home several times since November, and at one point counted 124 code violations. Duzich said the owner, who leases the building to Bowler, has been notified three times about the violations and has promised to meet with city officials.

The city has no control over licensing of the facility, she added.

“All we can do is ask the property owner to bring the substandard conditions up to code,” Duzich said.

Bowler said he considered the repairs his responsibility, and he blamed much of the problem on the winter storms, which hit when Straight Ahead was struggling financially.

Donations from the public have dropped, and a longtime contract with California Youth Authority to provide services to parolees had been cut significantly in recent years and recently ended, Bowler said.

“We were the only facility that was taking people in for free. The majority of the people didn’t pay anything to be there,” he said. “In the last year, it’s really hurt our finances a lot.”

Once the repairs are made to the building, Bowler said he hopes to reopen Straight Ahead as a “sober living” boardinghouse with self-help and job-training programs, but without the medical and psychological therapy programs that require a state license.

“It’s always been more of a training program and an education program rather than the psychological stuff,” Bowler said.

Steve Craig, the program manager and a former client of Straight Ahead, said it is one of the few programs left in the county that accepts penniless people off the street.

“It got them off the street. It got them off drugs, hopefully. It gave them a place to start over,” he said. Without it, he added, “I would probably be dead.”

At most, those with money or jobs pay $750 per month for lodgings and meals, Craig said.

Mark Braithwaite, a former cocaine addict who has been sober for two years, said he arrived at Straight Ahead with nothing but a skateboard, a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.

“I got clean here,” Braithwaite said. “This place saved my life. . . . This place should have never been closed down.”

Jerome Carmichael, also a former client, said: “This place is still needed. People are still calling.”