County supervisors tighten rules on sober living homes, addiction treatment facilities

All sober living homes, and licensed addiction treatment facilities with seven or more residents, must be separated by at least 1,000 feet in unincorporated Orange County, the Board of Supervisors decided on Tuesday, Jan. 28.

For a sense of scale, the distance is about the same as the height of the Eiffel Tower, or a bit longer than three football fields.

Supervisors also laid out what operators must do when residents are evicted from such homes after relapsing — i.e., using drugs or alcohol again — or some other emergency, as those people often wind up homeless.

The new requirements stiffen the raft of new rules the county embraced in September to protect residential neighborhoods from the disruptive or illegal behavior that often accompanies the industry. Before, the minimum separation between facilities was 650 feet, to limit concentration.

“What we’re trying to do is address the proliferation of these facilities in county lands,” said Supervisor Don Wagner, who proposed the original rules and Tuesday’s changes.

“The thousand-foot buffer allows us to make sure, in communities with larger lots, that there isn’t a congregation of these homes in a particular area. That’s good for the residents who are trying to get their lives back in order, good for the neighbors who don’t want the characteristics of their neighborhoods to change.”

The county’s rules are patterned after Costa Mesa’s, and include mandatory “good neighbor” policies and a formal application process that provides much more detail about where and how these entities operate.

Group homes with more than six residents, including sober living homes, must get county permits, and those permits aren’t granted to owners or managers with less than one year of sobriety.

The tweaks adopted Tuesday change the zoning code to respond to requests from residents in many neighborhoods and from Costa Mesa Mayor Katrina Foley.

In September, Foley thanked the county for moving on the issue, but urged supervisors to extend the rules to multi-family neighborhoods, not just the single-family neighborhoods originally targeted.

She also urged the county to spell out exactly what’s expected of operators when their customers are evicted for being high, or are “kicked to the curb” when their insurance benefits run out, as those people often wind up homeless.

The changes supervisors embraced Tuesday do much of that, though not everything Foley was hoping for.

The county’s new rules say operators must notify a patient’s emergency contact at least 48 hours before any scheduled eviction. Operators also must contact the Orange County Health Care Agency OC Links Referral Line, or another county-approved entity, to see what services might be available to the evicted person, including outpatient or inpatient addiction treatment programs. Operators must then provide that information to the evicted person.

If the person’s behavior results in “immediate termination of residency,” the facility operator must do those things as soon as possible.

Operators must also provide free transportation to the evicted resident’s permanent address. If the person declines, the operator must arrange transportation to another facility that has agreed to accept them. Operators must keep records for one year.

Orange, Los Angeles and surrounding counties continue to be ground zero of the Rehab Riviera, as Southern California has come to be known in the addiction treatment industry.

Costa Mesa, a city of about 114,000, has 86 state-licensed or certified addiction treatment facilities and many more sober living homes, according to recent data from the state.

Orange County has nearly as many licensed addiction treatment centers as Los Angeles County, despite being just one-third L.A.’s size.

Orange County Board of Supervisors Chair Michelle Steel said she hoped that cities will embrace their own version of the county’s rules. A uniform approach to the issue across municipalities would help raise the bar, officials have said.

Costa Mesa was pleased with many of the revisions, but hoped for more.

For example, the city hoped the county would include penalties for the buying and selling of patients — a practice that’s common in the addiction industry — but it wasn’t mentioned.

Foley said her city worries that the county has created a loophole that will allow a state-licensed treatment center for seven or more people to to be located within 1,000 feet of a state-licensed treatment center for 6 or fewer.

“While we appreciate the extra review to improve the county ordinance, we still don’t think it goes far enough,” she said by email. “We encourage some tighter controls.”

Supervisor Wagner said the county’s changes are helping blaze a path forward.

“This does our duty to help our residents and help and encourage the men and women who are genuinely trying to get their lives back in order and do deserve our support.”