Letter to Senators and Congressmen Concerned About Residential Recovery
Dear _______________,
As a concerned citizen from California, I want you to know that I fully support the GAO investigating supposed “Sober" Home abuses. I hope that you can clarify that the homes with which you are concerned are not, in fact, Sober Living Homes, but pose as such and are instead “Treatment” Houses in which businesses house residents who are actively in recovery on a daily basis.
While you are mostly concerned with fraud, lack of virtually any inspection ensures that recovering addicts are subjected to all manner of abuses, including
• more than 6 recovering addicts in a home intended for no more than 4 adults,
• clients with softer drug addictions housed with those with addictions to injectable opiates,
• clients who have mostly used housed with clients who have been convicted of or are fighting charges of distribution,
• untreated underlying co-occurring disorders,
• sexual assault,
• false advertising, and
• usurious and unregulated fees.
Owners, managers and employees of these businesses can have criminal backgrounds which are never investigated or reviewed.
Beyond this, protections of the Fair Housing Act and Americans with Disabilities Act have given these businesses access to funds, like SBA loans, for the purchases of residential property, as well as other entitlements that often do not extend to other homes in the same neighborhood: short-term rental of rooms or even beds, parking of commercial transportation vehicles, and operation of boarding houses without conditional use permits. Multiple homes are purchased on the same street, crowding recovering addicts into ghettos.
It is critical the Congress act to regulate these businesses which concentrate and operate in our communities with virtually no oversight.
Thank you very much.
As a concerned citizen from California, I want you to know that I fully support the GAO investigating supposed “Sober" Home abuses. I hope that you can clarify that the homes with which you are concerned are not, in fact, Sober Living Homes, but pose as such and are instead “Treatment” Houses in which businesses house residents who are actively in recovery on a daily basis.
While you are mostly concerned with fraud, lack of virtually any inspection ensures that recovering addicts are subjected to all manner of abuses, including
• more than 6 recovering addicts in a home intended for no more than 4 adults,
• clients with softer drug addictions housed with those with addictions to injectable opiates,
• clients who have mostly used housed with clients who have been convicted of or are fighting charges of distribution,
• untreated underlying co-occurring disorders,
• sexual assault,
• false advertising, and
• usurious and unregulated fees.
Owners, managers and employees of these businesses can have criminal backgrounds which are never investigated or reviewed.
Beyond this, protections of the Fair Housing Act and Americans with Disabilities Act have given these businesses access to funds, like SBA loans, for the purchases of residential property, as well as other entitlements that often do not extend to other homes in the same neighborhood: short-term rental of rooms or even beds, parking of commercial transportation vehicles, and operation of boarding houses without conditional use permits. Multiple homes are purchased on the same street, crowding recovering addicts into ghettos.
It is critical the Congress act to regulate these businesses which concentrate and operate in our communities with virtually no oversight.
Thank you very much.