Rehab agrees to leave

Narconon, the single largest rehabilitation home in the city, has agreed to leave Newport Beach in 2010, city officials announced Friday.

“It’s a triumph of our neighborhood,” said Newport Beach resident Barbara Roy, who lives next door to Narconon. Roy has lived in the area since 1990 and said the recovery home creates a constant stream of noisy trash pickups and delivery trucks through the narrow alley next to the three-story West Oceanfront facility. Narconon clients would often loiter and chain smoke in the area, she said.

“It’s been a long time coming, and we’ve all fought to preserve the character of our neighborhood,” Roy said.

Neighbors of the Narconon drug and alcohol recovery home at 1810 West Oceanfront have complained to city officials for years about noise, trash and second-hand smoke around the facility. Narconon has inhabited the West Oceanfront triplex for the past 13 years and the building was occupied by a different rehabilitation home before that since the mid 1980s, Newport Beach Assistant City Manager Dave Kiff said.

The facility is cleared to have a daytime occupancy of 49 people and 27 at night, Kiff said.

The recovery home penned a deal this week with Newport Beach officials to vacate its beachfront building by the end of February 2010 when its state alcohol and drug treatment facility permit expires. In exchange, the city will drop its countersuit against Narconon, filed in response to a lawsuit the rehabilitation home Sober Living by the Sea filed against the city, said Jim Markman, the city’s independent attorney on the rehabilitation home issue.

Narconon also agreed to never legally challenge the validity of a city ordinance passed earlier this year that requires most rehabilitation homes in Newport Beach to obtain use permits, Markman said.

Under the terms of the agreement, Narconon also has to abide a number of rules laid out by the city to minimize resident complaints until it moves. The terms include keeping Narconon residents from smoking on the beach, alleyways and boardwalk around the building, and minimizing traffic in the neighborhood by limiting the number of staff members at the facility at any one time, Markman said. Narconon clients also must abide a curfew between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m., he said.

Narconon officials could not be immediately reached for comment Friday.

The recovery home was motivated in part to leave the city because it has outgrown its current location, Kiff said.

Councilman Steve Rosansky said he also believed Narconon may have felt it was easier to relocate than to go through the city’s permitting and public hearing process under the new city ordinance to regulate rehabilitation homes.

“They needed to apply for a use permit like everyone else did, and they figured because of the new ordinance, the process was more than what they wanted to do. Certainly they have been the object of significant neighborhood opposition,” Rosansky said. “Maybe they felt they could accomplish their mission elsewhere of helping addicts to recover. Certainly there’s an incentive for these operators to come in conformance with our ordinance and if not, to exit in an orderly fashion from the city.”

A United States District Court ruled earlier this week that the city’s ordinance passed earlier this year to regulate rehabilitation homes does not discriminate against people with disabilities.

Judge James Selna dismissed several parts of a lawsuit against the city filed by the rehabilitation home operator Pacific Shores Recovery. Selna rejected Pacific Shores’ claims that the city’s ordinance violates the federal Fair Housing Act, Americans with Disabilities Act and parts of the state and federal constitutions. Selna also tossed out a claim that the city violated the state Fair Employment and Housing Act.

The remaining claims allege Newport Beach applied its nondiscriminatory laws in a discriminatory way against Pacific Shores.

Washington D.C.-based attorney Steven Polin, who represents Pacific Shores, said Friday that he would see the suit through to the end on the remaining claims.

“Group homes have to fill out a 20-page application. For any other use by a non-disabled group of people, they have to fill out a three-page application,” Polin said. “It’s as if a white applicant had a three-page application and a black applicant had a 20-page application. What’s wrong with that picture?”

BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at brianna.bailey@latimes.com.