EDITORIAL:

It’s peculiar, even paradoxical: Newport Beach, with its idyllic coastline, thriving business community and stellar schools, as close to paradise as a city gets, is also a magnet for sober living homes that some say make for a nightmare on the peninsula.

The very qualities that draw the rich and the famous also draw those who have plunged to the depths due to their addictions.

Because, after all, what better place to make peace with one’s inner demons?

So goes the thinking of those who run such homes.

Dozens have proliferated in recent years. On a recent tour, Councilwoman Leslie Daigle reported that one, to the dismay of its neighbors, had no less than 49 residents.

Most of those residents, as any realist knows, will not rehabilitate. Most, in fact, will backslide, and their troubles — from simple annoyances to out-and-out crimes — that attend alcohol and drug abuse will play out in our own back yard.

This is not a NIMBY issue.

We acknowledge that sober living homes are commendable and necessary. Many, in fact, are doing the good work of helping those in need, and success stories and tales of redemption abound.

But that service must be balanced against the welfare of the community as a whole.

That is, the extraordinary citizens of Newport Beach should not be overburdened by the spillover, in plain and brutal terms, of drunkards and drug addicts.

So the recent move by the city to seek injunctive relief against two of the operators of such homes is a step in the right direction.

The city claims that the homes — Pacific Shores Recovery and Morningside Recovery — have violated the moratorium the city set on sober living homes several months ago.

Oddly, those who have criticized City Council members for allowing the proliferation of the homes are now criticizing them for taking legal action to stop that proliferation.

The critics, it seems, will not be satisfied until their conspiratorial instincts, which inform them that former City Attorney Bob Burnham and current Mayor Steve Rosansky colluded to increase the sober living homes for their own benefit, are satisfied.

Never mind that these critics have brought forth not one shred of evidence in support of their claims.

They continue to criticize.

But a more reasonable perspective is in order.

Unless and until evidence is presented that shows a sinister plot on the part of Burnham and Rosansky, we should applaud the city’s latest effort to limit the number of sober living homes in our community.