Director talks about recovery home concerns

• EDITOR’S NOTE: Newport Beach has 21 state-licensed drug and alcohol recovery facilities and an unknown number of nonlicensed sober living homes. Some people worry the growth of the homes is changing the character of their residential neighborhoods, so they’ve been pressuring the city and legislators to tighten regulations on the facilities.

The licensed homes are under the jurisdiction of the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs. The Daily Pilot spoke with Rebecca Lira, the department’s deputy director of licensing and certification, who answered questions about her agency’s role in regulating drug recovery facilities.

Question: Explain what your department does and how drug and alcohol recovery homes get licensed.

Answer: We are the single state agency who is charged with licensing alcohol and drug nonmedical treatment facilities, and also we certify outpatient alcohol and drug programs, but I’m going to stick to the residential because I think that’s the issue here. A residential nonmedical treatment facility is [where] they provide detox services, one-on-one counseling, individual counseling, group counseling, education, and they provide treatment plans — that is considered treatment and therefore they need to be licensed by our department.

If a program wants to provide any of those services there is an application process, an application they have to complete, and within the application they have to submit program protocols, staffing, the services that they’ll provide — is it a 30-day program, a 90-day program — admission criteria, admission form agreements, how much space each individual receives.

It’s very cumbersome, very thorough paperwork. . . . They have to submit meal plans, samples of the food they’ll be providing, staff training, a list of referrals. If there’s going to be children residing with their parents at the facility, then the staff have to be fingerprinted, so it entails a lot of paperwork. In addition to that, they have to have a fire clearance by the local fire marshal, also if there’s any use permits or business licenses, whatever the local government requires, they have to abide by that. . . . If there’s nothing required by the local government, then we need a letter from that local government saying that nothing is required.

After all that’s done, then we will conduct an on-site visit, making sure there’s no exposed electrical wires, there’s no broken windows, the carpet’s clean. After they’re licensed, by statute we have to visit them at least once every two years. . . . Our visits are surprise visits, they’re unannounced, and we can go out anytime between those two visits, and if there’s a complaint we will also do an unannounced visit.

Q: What’s required of homes to get a license, and under what circumstances do you revoke a license?

A: Every time we go into a facility we always have citations and we look at those, it might be that ¼ they’re following a procedure that wasn’t written up in their protocol — those aren’t imminent dangers, those aren’t going to kill anybody, in other words — but the class A, B and C [violations], those are the ones we consider more serious. A class A represents an imminent danger to a resident of the facility. [As an example of] class A, we require all staff to have CPR and first aid [training]. They could be over capacity, there could be an outbreak of scabies or something like that. That would be a class A and they’d have to correct it immediately.

A class B is related to the operation or the maintenance of the facility, which has a direct relationship to the physical health, the mental health or the safety of the residents and we give them 30 days to correct it. Class B, it would be maybe the TB test for a staff member has expired, so then we give them some time to schedule that person for a TB test within seven days.

For class C, let’s say that the carpet is frail in an area, we’ll have them maybe tape it up so that no one trips but they have 30 days to maybe replace it or repair it.

Q: Residents seem particularly worried about recovering drug users who are ordered into treatment as an alternative to jail under Proposition 36. Who is eligible for Prop 36, and what kind of crimes make someone ineligible? Would a sex offender or someone committing violent crimes ever be ordered into residential drug treatment?

A: One of the things is that the facilities that we’re talking about in Newport Beach, the residential facilities there are high end. They charge a lot of money. That’s not Prop. 36 [clients], I’m going to tell you right now.

I license and certify programs. My division, we don’t place the patients, that’s up to the programs who admit them, ¼ but the sex offenders, ¼ we have no jurisdiction over that. I can’t answer those questions. [But] it’s not going to be a sex offender [coming to Newport Beach].

Addiction is a chronic disease, so our folks are seeking treatment, and that’s what we’re providing. By the statutes of California, we need to make sure that there’s enough treatment that there’s enough access so the folks that are seeking treatment have somewhere to go. That’s our main purpose. Otherwise we’re taxed on the other side. . . . The data shows that for every dollar that’s pumped into treatment it saves the taxpayer $4 in the long run.

Q: Residents say they think the clients of drug recovery homes may be selling drugs, using drugs, or stealing.

A: Those are not our folks, they’re the college kids that are renting the homes, and sometimes I think the community mixes those folks up.

To be in a residential treatment, if you relapse, the program refers them out. They will not tolerate someone that relapses. Everyone in treatment has to be sober or not using drugs, period.

Q: Why do you think Newport Beach residents are so concerned, and how can your department respond?

A: I think that the only way I can answer that is what the complaints are from Newport Beach, that there’s many residential treatment programs and there’s many sober living programs in their areas, and those are the complaints that we get. It’s the over-concentration, I guess — my statutes say when we receive an application and once it’s complete, then we license that provider.