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Community Corner

Group Homes—Neighbors Just Want Them Gone

Sober-living homes exist in residential areas all over Los Angeles, causing friction between neighbors and the homes' operators and residents.

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In the hills above the Pacific Ocean, recovering addicts and alcoholics bask in a Malibu lifestyle of private rooms, fine dining, massages and even hot-air balloon rides. The cost: $10,000 a month.

In another part of Los Angeles County, $400 a month buys a top bunk in a crowded house in Chatsworth. The only listed amenity is “no drama,” and that’s misleading. Because the house accepts parolees, police can visit anytime. Officers handcuff the residents, check IDs and search their rooms.

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Two luxury sober living homes in Pacific Palisades are owned by a Connecticut man who holds a master’s degree from an Ivy League school. Four homes in the San Fernando Valley are owned by an ex-con who says sober living helped turn around his life and now he wants to help others.

What many of the hundreds of sober living and group homes in Los Angeles County have in common, aside from a stated desire to help people fight addiction, is that they can be like the houseguest who overstays his welcome. Neighbors find them irritating and disruptive to the area, and they just want them gone.

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Hundreds of sober living and care facilities operate in residential neighborhoods across the San Fernando Valley. This series looks at the problems caused by unlicensed homes and challenges the city faces in attempting to regulate them.

Tuesday:
Wednesday: Group Home Operators Battle City Hall
Sidebar: Group Homes—Neighbors Just Want Them Gone

Planning Commission hearing begins 8:30 a.m. Thursday, City Council Chambers, Room 340, City Hall, 200 N. Spring St. The issue is No. 8 on the agenda.
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Sober living advocates see it differently. Sober living homes provide not only a personal service to their residents, but a community service too, they say.

“People who are getting sober are not skid row bums or people off the beach in Venice,” said Jeff Christensen of the The Sober Living Network in Santa Monica. “They are our neighbors and friends. Every neighborhood needs a place where they can go.”

This long-running dispute comes to a head Thursday, when the city Planning Commission is scheduled to consider an ordinance that has been two years in the making to put some controls on group homes, sober living and otherwise, operating in  L.A.'s residential neighborhoods.

The ordinance, proposed by Councilman Greig Smith, initially targeted sober living homes, but has since been broadened to avoid legal challenges based on discrimination. But owners of sober living homes feel they remain very much in the crosshairs.

Most group homes operating in single-family neighborhoods, whether they serve the elderly, physically handicapped or recovering addicts and alcoholics, have some effect on surrounding residents. It may be the coming and going of staff and visitors, more vehicles on the street or obtrusive night lighting. And the ordinance addresses many of those concerns.

But sober living homes occupy a gray area of laws and even definitions. Unlike alcohol and drug treatment centers and other group homes, sober living facilities aren’t licensed by the state. There are no local, state or federal laws dictating how they’re run, where they can locate or even what constitutes such a home.

Sober living homes can be a lucrative business, or a life preserver for a homeowner facing foreclosure or a bank saddled with a foreclosed home. As a result, such homes have proliferated in neighborhoods. It’s the problem homes, the egregious neighborhood nuisances, that city officials say are the real target of their efforts.

“We’re not going against sober living,” said Mitch Englander, Smith’s chief of staff and a City Council candidate. “We’re talking about the ones that have 15, 20, 30 people living in them. There’s no oversight, no programs. They’re literally ruining the comfort of single-family neighborhoods."

Just ask North Hills resident Peggy Burgess. For years, residents there put up with a home that housed dozens of people, many of them parolees. Drug and alcohol use was rampant, Burgess said.

"There were people overdosing in the street," Burgess said. "The paramedics were there all the time.  Police were there all the time."

She said one neighbor was awakened in the middle of the night by a resident of the sober living home banging on the door. Police were called and it turned out the man was a paranoid schizophrenic who was off his medication, Burgess said.

"That's the problem with these places," she said. "There is no supervision, no regulation. If a guy wants to go out and get twisted up there is no curfew."

The home's operator initially agreed to be interviewed by Patch, but didn't return subsequent phone calls. His North Hills house shut down in December, but he has opened two sober living homes in Chatsworth.

Maria Fisk of the Old Granada Hills Residents’ Group said she and her neighbors are wary when a home on their block goes up for sale. Unable to sell their homes in the soft housing market, some owners are renting to anyone with ready cash, and that’s often someone looking to open a sober living or group home.

“I think any area with large, large homes is a little more at risk,” Fisk said. “Neighbors need to look out for a home that goes up for sale and then the sign comes down and a lot of cars show up.”

One home on Donmetz Street in Granada Hills recently shut down by the city had been in foreclosure and was owned by a Colorado bank.

Fisk tracked complaints about one home near her, which reportedly involved 85 calls in 3 1/2 years to the L.A. Fire Department; six complaints to the city Building and Safety Department, which reportedly found 13 people living in "filthy" conditions; a visit by the LAPD bomb squad to check for a suspicious device; the arrest of a resident for assault; and residents of the home passed out drunk on neighbors' lawns and urinating in public.

"Our experience has been that sober living facilities and other group homes are anything but good neighbors," she said.

Police say they know there are good homes and bad, but it’s the latter that burn up the station phone lines. The group homes that are well-run and well-supervised “we typically don’t hear about,” said Lt. Tim Torsney of the LAPD’s Devonshire Division.

Those are usually run by people who truly want to help addicts and alcoholics, Torsney said; others are just in it for the money, he added. The problem, he said, is the lack of regulation.

“You could jam as many folks in a room as you can and charge whatever you can charge and be profitable,” he said.

With no official lists to go on, the Devonshire Division relies on its patrol officers to keep an eye out for new group homes. When one is identified, the address goes on a list and the home may get some extra attention, Torsney said. So far, there are 29 houses on the Devonshire Division's list.

Officers will visit the house to determine who the clients are and whether there are parolees living there. If so, they may return with parole or probation officers to search the home. The purpose is twofold: to gather information and to send a message.

“We’re letting those folks know we know they’re there and not to commit crimes in the area,” Torsney said.

It doesn’t always work. A spike in property crimes can often be traced to a resident in a group home whose recovery may have lapsed. He might need money to buy drugs, and the neighborhood is convenient, Torsney said.

It’s hard to say if the Valley has a greater concentration of group homes than the rest of the city, he said, because there is no way to track them. But, Torsney added, “everyone in the Valley has their fair share right now.”

The Valley isn’t alone. Sober living and group homes exist in just about every Los Angeles-area neighborhood from Malibu to Sun Valley.

Velma Stevens lives in the View Park neighborhood east of Baldwin Hills. There are three sober living homes on her block, one of them next door and two on an adjoining block, she said.

“I’m thoroughly agitated at this point,” Stevens said, adding she knew when she moved in 15 years ago that there was a sober living house next door. “At the time, I didn’t think it was a problem, but as time has gone on there have been constant problems. And this is an upscale neighborhood.”

Having a tony address doesn’t guarantee peace for neighbors.

City Councilman Paul Koretz of the 5th District represents some of the city’s wealthier neighborhoods, and his office has had its share of complaints, said Christopher Koontz, the councilman’s planning deputy.

Late-night fights, frequent visits by police, trash piling up and poor home maintenance are just some of the complaints Koretz's office has received, Koontz said. Some neighbors have complained about drugs and condoms being thrown over fences into backyards and pools where they are found by children.

"It's frustrating because oftentimes we can't do anything to help these people," he said.

In the Hollywood Hills, parking is a major complaint, as well as problems with paparazzi when celebrity clients are in residence, Koontz said.

Greenfield Lodge is a fairly recent addition to a Pacific Palisades neighborhood and already has residents there up in arms. There are two luxury homes, one for women, located on a hill somewhat isolated from neighbors, and a men’s house that isn’t. Not surprisingly, it’s the men’s home that has drawn the neighbors’ wrath.

Neighbors have complained about late-night parties, speeding cars, too much trash, barking dogs and secondhand smoke from the home’s backyard.

“We chose to live in this neighborhood for a clean, happy, healthy environment to raise our children,” said Catherine Landsberg. “Our neighborhood is not the place to open up a hotel, boardinghouse or bed and breakfast for the rehabilitation of behavioral disorders.”

But the frustration cuts both ways. Owners and managers of sober living homes interviewed by Patch.com said no matter what they do to placate neighbors, someone will complain.

“There’s this whole not-in-my-backyard philosophy,” said Greenfield Lodge owner Michael Harmann, who holds a master’s degree in social work from Columbia University and divides his time between Connecticut and Los Angeles.

Harmann said there is close supervision of the 10 residents at each of his homes, and that rules are in place to curb secondhand smoke and limit street parking. Still, the complaints persist.

“I feel like whatever we did they wouldn’t want us here,” he said.

Claude "Ike" Eichar owns four sober living homes in North Hills, Van Nuys and Winnetka. A recovering addict who said drugs landed him in prison for 17 years, Eichar is a member of The Sober Living Network and its local offshoot, the San Fernando Valley Sober Living Coalition.

When his North Hills house opened, Eichar was met with half a dozen “really angry neighbors.” He said he’s made peace with most of them, although there are still visits from police spurred by neighbors’ complaints or the presence of a parolee in the home. There is on-site parking at all the homes, curfews for new clients and random drug testing, he said.

Eichar feels the service he is rendering to the community outweighs what he sees as often minor complaints.

“What’s more important, parking or saving people’s lives?” he said. “I’ve done this for hundreds of people. If that makes me a bad guy then I guess I am a bad guy.”

Steven Diltz, the manager of Independence House at 10000 Independence Ave. in Chatsworth, said he tries to keep a low profile in the neighborhood. The house is drug- and alcohol-free and tenants are "monitored extensively" to ensure they aren't using, he said. The house is across the street from Lawrence Middle School.

According to property records, the home originally had three bedrooms and three baths, but now has five bedrooms and 4 1/2 baths. One large room has six bunk beds, acoording to the home's Web site. With so many tenants, parking is a complaint of neighbors, but Diltz said he is trying to work with them.

"The neighbors are very strict, but we get along," he said.

Eichar’s and Diltz’s homes are among many in L.A. that accept and, in some cases, seek parolees as clients. City officials have no evidence that homes with parolees are more of a problem than other group homes, but their presence in a neighborhood can be unsettling to residents.

North Hills resident Burgess said she was intimidated when the owner of a group home came to a Neighborhood Council meeting with clients “wearing doo rags, gang tattoos and baggy pants.”

Councilman Smith’s ordinance would have barred such homes from single-family neighborhoods, but the provision was dropped after city staff learned it could affect federal funding for other types of correctional housing.

Just as there is no official record of sober living homes in Los Angeles, residents have no way of knowing whether a nearby group home has parolees as clients. The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation maintains a list of 75 sober living homes in L.A. County with state contracts to take parolees who participate in a prison substance abuse program, but not all parolees are in the program, explained corrections spokeswoman Peggy Bengs.

Stevens said she knows sober living homes in her View Park neighborhood accept parolees, and she has some experience in that field. She’s a retired parole officer.

Many parolees rely on Social Security or welfare checks after leaving prison, and sober living homes offer an inexpensive place to live, Stevens said.

“They come out homeless and they’re seeking housing on their own,” she said. “Then they’re contacted by other people who get them into these sober living homes.”

Many sober living homes post fliers at the state parole office seeking tenants. The rent is cheap and homes offer such services as legal help and transportation to court appearances.

Diltz said he advertises his homes at the parole office but said the clients he gets aren’t dangerous. Most of them are people who did time for drunk driving, he said. Housing parolees draws regular, unannounced visits by police and parole and probation officers. Diltz said he can live with that.

"They're always welcome to walk into my house, night, day, early morning. They come in, handcuff everybody and check IDs. They've got a job to do," he said.

If there’s a common complaint among owners, managers and advocates, it’s that crowded, poorly run homes are giving everyone a bad name.

But rather than impose new laws that will almost certainly face legal challenges, said The Sober Living Network’s Christensen, the city should consider delegating enforcement to a group such as the network or the California Association of Addiction Recovery Resources.

Requiring sober living homes to join the network, which has been around since 1995, would ensure that homes aren’t “flophouses,” he said.

“We would be happy to give the city reports on whether a place is not a sober living home by our standards,” Christensen said. “Working with us is a really good first step.”

Harmann, whose Greenfield Lodge is a network member, agrees. Weeding out the bad homes would be good for legitimate sober living homes and for the neighbors.

“Look, part of me understands. If I had a family I wouldn’t necessarily want to live next to a sober living home, especially how some of them are managed.”

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