News
Athens’ plans to regulate recovery homes are on hold for now
By: David Forster
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ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — The city of Athens has put on hold for now any plans to create special zoning regulations for recovery homes.
Instead, the city is going to treat them like any other rental housing under the existing rental code, said Andy Stone, the city’s service-safety director.
Stone acknowledged city officials were concerned the city could face legal challenges if it were to single out recovery homes with zoning restrictions.
Recovery homes are for people in recovery from alcohol or drug use. Federal regulators and some courts have said these people are protected under antidiscrimination laws, such as the Fair Housing Act.
What this means is they cannot be treated differently than any other renter simply because they are in recovery. For example, the city could not prohibit recovery homes from locating in residential neighborhoods anymore than it could prohibit homes from being rented to students in these locations.
Recovery homes became an issue in Athens when Columbus-based Nex Level Behavioral Health and Addiction Services opened two homes in the city last year. Nex Level leased the homes from their owners and then rented them out to clients in recovery.
Multiple police calls to both homes led to complaints by neighbors and other residents. This led to the discovery that the homes, which had been operating for several months, were not registered with the state, which is required by law.
Some residents showed up to Planning Commission meetings to complain about the homes and call for zoning restrictions on where recovery homes could be located.
The owner of Nex Level showed up to one commission meeting and explained that she had simply forgotten to register the two homes, had taken care of that oversight and planned to get the homes certified.
Under state law, a recovery home must be certified within 18 months of operation. The certification process is intended to ensure recovery homes are meeting certain operating standards.
However, it now appears that Nex Level has pulled out of Athens entirely. It is no longer promoting the recovery homes on its website. It also appears Nex Level has closed the treatment center it operated just outside the city limits on State Route 550. The center is no longer listed on its website.
WOUB reached out to Nex Level to confirm it is no longer operating in Athens but did not receive a response.
The situation with Nex Level revealed some misunderstandings about how recovery homes operate. There are four levels. The lower-level homes provide people in recovery with a place to live but not treatment.
This was the case with the homes Nex Level was operating in Athens. There was a staff member assigned to the homes to provide some oversight, but services to help the tenants progress through their recovery were not provided at the homes but instead at Nex Level’s treatment center.
Recovery homes are not eligible for government funding through programs such as Medicaid and Medicare. Treatment centers are. So it’s often through the treatment centers that operators make their money.
Certification of recovery homes in Ohio is done by Ohio Recovery Housing. The nonprofit organization’s co-director gave a presentation at the May 6 Athens Planning Commission meeting, outlining Ohio Recovery Housing’s process for certifying homes and investigating complaints.
Stone said now that the city is more familiar with how the process works, it makes more sense to work through that established process than for the city to develop new regulations of its own at this point.
“We have a code right now that we use effectively … to enforce housing standards across the board on rentals … and so I think we can just apply it here,” Stone said. “And we know the process of the state now to register complaints with people operating recovery homes. So if we start to see other ones with similar bad behavior, not unlike what we experienced … we’ll just send those complaints right to the state and let them exercise their process.”
Under the city’s rental code, recovery home operators would have to get a permit from the city like any other landlord, and the homes would be subject to an annual inspection.
Recovery homes also will be subject to the city’s rental occupancy limit, which restricts rentals to no more than three unrelated people in most residential neighborhoods. The city traditionally has treated a married couple as one person, so the three-person limit could be six people total.
However, Stone noted that if there are six or more people living in a rental unit, it triggers additional code requirements set by the state, including fire sprinkler systems. Stone said he thinks it’s unlikely the owner of a house leased by a recovery home operator is going to want to make costly upgrades so the operator can add a sixth tenant.