Written by That’s the name of the article that showed up in the local “Encino Patch” today, which
It is my experience that by and large we have a wonderful system where the RIGHT side of the equation usually wins. Sorry, Los Angeles -- not this time.
article goes to something my site’s sales group has been trying to help Los Angeles sober living homes see for some time now. As early as June of this year, 2011, I have been approaching houses in Los Angeles telling them our site is the busiest in the country in terms of home searches, with over 20,000 home searches a month going on.
Some houses, to their own detriment, have been afraid to join our marketing and advertising site, Sober Living Halfway House Search at soberlivingsearch.com, which hugely amplifies one’s visibility so that we can fill houses that join us with referrals in need of housing. “No, I want to wait for the law to pass to see which way it goes”. Lately I even heard that one of the larger organizations in Southern California is advising their Los Angeles houses to “keep a low profile” until this gets resolved.
To those types of reactions I say, simply, follow such frightened and fearful advice at your own peril. What are you going to do, allow your house to go with open beds until this is resolved? Forget it, for two reasons. First, there is no saying how long this Los Angeles effort could drag out. As the politicians are explaining to their constituents who are getting restless because they want to see their discriminatory needs fulfilled, “this is a very complicated matter”. People, learn to speak politics. What that line means is “it may never be resolved”. Second, the reason for that is the city officials know they are trying to squeeze a watermelon through a keyhole and you know what? That ain’t easy!
Realize that these officials are trying to find loopholes in Federal Laws that have been well-established by case law. The Fair Housing Rights Act and the Rights for Americans with Disabilities Acts were written ‘in a certain spirit of the law”, as judges call it. And Los Angeles, by and large, is simply trying to violate that spirit of the law. In my experience, that never works, unless you get a Supreme Court Ruling which reverses a “spirit”, and folks, this matter is NOT going to the Supreme Court.
In fact, my assessment is you have seen plenty of Feds now go out on a limb to basically telegraph to LA that there is no way this anti-multiple lease law is going to fly in a way that will spoil the ability of good Sober Livings to operate. You have seen HUD weigh in, and now you have seen them joined by the Justice Department in this case where Newport Beach was trying to follow suit and pass their own sober living bans.
Look to where the real problems are, and have faith that our system will boil this whole effort on LA’s part down to helping rid the city of the real scourge, and that is a bunch of greedy, rent hungry people who MAY be taking advantage of the loophole sober livings open up for them to run illegal transitional housing. I talk to 20-30 people a day looking for housing and help place many of them, and I have had to learn to spot the ones who have no drug or alcohol problem, but are really looking for a cheap place to stay.
I will suggest to you that the term “transitional housing” actually covers a narrow band of housing in this country which has been established to help people who do not have the money for monthly deposits, nor do they likely have the credit to get their own legitimate apartment, so they ask me or look on the internet or to whatever other sources they can to find places where they might stay. I have begun to flush out those that are homeless and looking to spend only a portion of their $800 a month check or whatever government assistance they are making to find what really is not sober living or halfway housing, but what is strictly “transitional housing”– which should NOT be an alternative term for sober livings. Semantics have been alot of the reason houses are in trouble today and we need to be more specific as do the authorities with which types of housing poses a problem and which type does not. But where there is a demand someone is usually filling the need. So if there are these boarding houses for transients and they are not indeed sober livings, these would be cause for neighbors to be justifiably upset, because nobody wants that element in their neighborhood. But if they are the problem, don’t try to write a law that is going to threaten the federally sanctioned sober livings, too. Because that is what they are trying to do, and that is what will fail.
And that is where this Los Angeles problem has run off the tracks. Look at this woman’s comment where she can not even spell the word “sober” correctly and you begin to understand how little the residents who influence the politicians actually know. And while it is never easy to “relax” when you are on the side of the group that may get shafted if the wrong thing happens in court, I have come to have a lot of experience in and with our system where by and large be it on a corporate or government level, the right thing ends up happening, even if there is a period of time where it looked like it was all going wrong. My solid prediction: well run or managed sober livings will have nothing to worry about in the long run due to any laws or decisions made in Los Angeles. Certainly they are not threatened enough to put their own business on hold and not list with us or anybody else — a great way to become visible to all the people who need you.
Last of all, before displaying the exchange of comments, I know this opinion of mine looks self-serving, but I put my reputation on the line behind the prediction. I will be right, and the naysayers who are frightened of DBAU (Doing Business As Usual) and who are not pulling in all the money they could be to stay solvent and healthy will ultimately look in the rear view mirror and say, “Yeah, how could I not have seen that? I should have been actively marketing and advertising my sober living”.
COMMENT EXCHANGE AFTER THE ARTICLE: Click below
Estelle Goldman
1:07pm on Thursday, October 27, 2011
The U.S. Justice Department needs to keep out of our neighborhoods and stop telling us what rights we have and do not have. We the people have civil rights and so do our families and so do our children and grandchildren. These Sobor Living homes DO NOT belong in our single family neighborhoods!!
Tom Rees
5:09pm on Thursday, October 27, 2011
Sorry, neighbor, but you could not be more on the wrong side of the fence. Number 1, your fears of sober livings are misguided. Fear of the Department of Corrections halfway house program is where you read the horrific stories about prisoners escaping, etc. Regular, well run sober livings are full of harmless people who are as normal as you and me except they have decided to take their lives back from the awful disease of addiction or alcoholism. For having the courage to be an EX-addict or an EX-alcoholic, you want to banish them to where? Industrial neighborhoods? Nope, sorry. They are Americans with rights to live wherever they please. You would be very hard-pressed to cite to me any damage or harm that has come to a single neighbor of a well run sober living. My fellow Americans who are afraid of these houses are mixing them up with DOC houses and the prisoner programs. Do a little reading and stop acting and speaking out with ignorance. This is ONE time when the Feds have it exactly right, and they are helping put their foot down when a bunch of idiotic city officials who are taking their cues from misguided neighborhood fears need to be told where their line of power stops dead in the water.
My advice is that you spend some time better understanding that when it comes to addiction and alcoholism, the people you have LEAST to fear are those that have chosen to fight their disease rather than succumb to it — just like a cancer patient fighting for his or her life.
Tom Rees
7:09pm on Thursday, October 27, 2011
P.S. I for one, feel especially embarrassed to see a neighbor who can’t even spell the word “sober” correctly talking as if they know better where the people in these houses belong — or moreover don’t belong. It is as ignorant towards the sober living residents to take your stance now as it was in the deep South towards blacks not too long ago. And I’m a white guy from New York City who remembers those days and values neighborhood safety as much or more than anybody reading this.
