Residential Recovery - How the Federal Government Regulates It
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, while primarily addressing the employment rights of the disabled, has been amended and interpreted to define which characteristics of a person qualify as a disability, including disabilities of "concentrating, thinking, communicating." Recovering Addicts are thus considered disabled under Federal Law, though a person who is actively abusing substances is NOT considered disabled because of their addiction (they might have other disabilities). Left ambiguous is WHEN an addict becomes disabled during recovery or when/if they might ever be no longer considered disabled after recovery.
The Fair Housing Act, in turn, mandates that the disabled have equal rights to housing, given "reasonable accommodations." It extends the right to claim housing discrimination to a landlord providing housing for the disabled. This would, for example, prevent condo management from pressuring a landlord to refuse to provide service to a particular disabled tenant in their condo.
However, in California, this concept has been turned on its head. No one asks whether Recovering Addicts have equal access to living in any neighborhood because they actually HAVE equal access. In residential neighborhoods where everyone lives long term, a Recovering Addict may buy or rent a house long term, just as anyone else might. NOTHING prevents them from doing so. Indeed, they have equal access to live in residential neighborhoods where people live more transiently, week-to-week or month-to-month. Nothing prevents them from doing so. As well, as many as six Recovering Addicts may live together in a home, supporting each other, in the same neighborhood. Nothing prevents them from doing so.
What has not been addressed is whether giving businesses the unencumbered right to house six adults who do not know each other, transiently, in a single house in a neighborhood is a "reasonable" accommodation or actually an overly generous entitlement by the government at the expense of the equal rights of all other long term residents, including the disabled, in the same neighborhood. To even raise the issue of whether this entitlement--to businesses--is reasonable, as Advocates for Responsible Treatment does, is to be declared to be discriminating against the disabled... as if the landlords are not running an institution, providing medical services on site and charging exorbitant fees for them.
Supreme Court decisions and other case law affects what is happening as well. In Olmsted v. LC: "Clinical assessments by the state determined that the plaintiffs could be appropriately treated in a community setting rather than the state institution. The plaintiffs sued the state of Georgia and the institution for being inappropriately treated and housed in the institutional setting rather than being treated in one of the state's community based treatment facilities.The Supreme Court decided under Title II of the ADA that mental illness is a form of disability and therefore covered under the ADA, and that unjustified institutional isolation of a person with a disability is a form of discrimination because it "...perpetuates unwarranted assumptions that persons so isolated are incapable or unworthy of participating in community life." The court added, "Confinement in an institution severely diminishes the everyday life activities of individuals, including family relations, social contacts, work options, economic independence, educational advancement, and cultural enrichment." -- Wikipedia. The irony? That Recovering Addicts ARE confined in most forms of Residential Recovery, that they do not have social contacts outside of their treatment groups, they do not work... essentially, they are institutionalized in neighborhoods.
The Fair Housing Act, in turn, mandates that the disabled have equal rights to housing, given "reasonable accommodations." It extends the right to claim housing discrimination to a landlord providing housing for the disabled. This would, for example, prevent condo management from pressuring a landlord to refuse to provide service to a particular disabled tenant in their condo.
However, in California, this concept has been turned on its head. No one asks whether Recovering Addicts have equal access to living in any neighborhood because they actually HAVE equal access. In residential neighborhoods where everyone lives long term, a Recovering Addict may buy or rent a house long term, just as anyone else might. NOTHING prevents them from doing so. Indeed, they have equal access to live in residential neighborhoods where people live more transiently, week-to-week or month-to-month. Nothing prevents them from doing so. As well, as many as six Recovering Addicts may live together in a home, supporting each other, in the same neighborhood. Nothing prevents them from doing so.
What has not been addressed is whether giving businesses the unencumbered right to house six adults who do not know each other, transiently, in a single house in a neighborhood is a "reasonable" accommodation or actually an overly generous entitlement by the government at the expense of the equal rights of all other long term residents, including the disabled, in the same neighborhood. To even raise the issue of whether this entitlement--to businesses--is reasonable, as Advocates for Responsible Treatment does, is to be declared to be discriminating against the disabled... as if the landlords are not running an institution, providing medical services on site and charging exorbitant fees for them.
Supreme Court decisions and other case law affects what is happening as well. In Olmsted v. LC: "Clinical assessments by the state determined that the plaintiffs could be appropriately treated in a community setting rather than the state institution. The plaintiffs sued the state of Georgia and the institution for being inappropriately treated and housed in the institutional setting rather than being treated in one of the state's community based treatment facilities.The Supreme Court decided under Title II of the ADA that mental illness is a form of disability and therefore covered under the ADA, and that unjustified institutional isolation of a person with a disability is a form of discrimination because it "...perpetuates unwarranted assumptions that persons so isolated are incapable or unworthy of participating in community life." The court added, "Confinement in an institution severely diminishes the everyday life activities of individuals, including family relations, social contacts, work options, economic independence, educational advancement, and cultural enrichment." -- Wikipedia. The irony? That Recovering Addicts ARE confined in most forms of Residential Recovery, that they do not have social contacts outside of their treatment groups, they do not work... essentially, they are institutionalized in neighborhoods.