Rehab homes up again at council

The Newport Beach City Council on Tuesday will decide whether to allow two drug and alcohol rehabilitation homes to keep their doors open in the city.

A city-commissioned hearing officer ordered Newport Coast Recovery, 1216 W. Balboa Blvd., and Pacific Shores Recovery, at 492 and 492½ Orange Ave. and 3309 Clay St., to close earlier this year after hearing complaints from residents about second-hand smoke, noise and crime.

Newport Beach resident Denys Oberman, leader of the rehabilitation home activist group Concerned Citizens of Newport Beach, says she would like to see both homes leave town for good.

Newport Coast Recovery, a 29-bed men’s treatment center that operates out of a seven-unit apartment complex is just down the street from Newport Elementary School, as well as several other drug and alcohol recovery homes.

“That operator demonstrated [it was] incapable to manage a facility in a way that is safe for neighbors and safe for people seeking recovery,” Oberman said.

Newport Coast came under fire after the mothers of two underage boys, who went in for treatment at the center, testified at a public hearing in July to determine the home’s fate that the boys were not supervised and not given adequate care.

The home is not licensed to treat minors.

Pacific Shores Recovery, a 50-bed treatment center, is too close to a day care center and a children’s playground and should be forced to close, Oberman said.

Newport Coast and Pacific Shores are both suing Newport Beach in federal court, claiming a city ordinance that the council passed in 2008 discriminates against recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. Aimed at curbing a growing number of sober-living homes that were opening their doors to recovering addicts in the city, the ordinance requires most of the homes to go through a public hearing process and obtain use permits to remain open.

Washington D.C.-based attorney Steve Polin, who represents both Newport Coast and Pacific Shores, claims Newport’s ordinance flies in the face of the federal Fair Housing Act, which protects people with physical and mental disabilities, including addiction, from being discriminated against when it comes to housing.

Polin also claims the hearing officer based his decision to force both homes to close on undocumented evidence.

“The Concerned Citizens have come forward and accused both programs of creating problems in the neighborhoods, but none of these allegations were ever documented or reported to police,” Polin said.