Daily News Editorial: Council was dead-on with sober-living homes

BOTH sides in the sober-living ordinance debate argued their cases passionately and compellingly before the Los Angeles City Council Wednesday.

On one side are homeowners in the city's neighborhoods, most in the San Fernando Valley, who are experiencing an explosion of "sober-living homes" in their neighborhoods. Single-family houses are retrofitted to become unregulated boarding houses that crowd in dozens of people in spaces meant for one family. To make matters worse, they are former addicts, some of whom are also former inmates, and bring unwanted behavior to neighborhoods full of children.

On the other side are the operators and residents of those homes - people who might well be homeless and living on the streets were it not for the supportive and relatively low-cost sober-living homes. They are correct that there are few living options available for their tenants, and that the supportive care of group homes in safe neighborhoods helps them achieve sobriety and self-improvement.

In the end, the City Council did the right thing for both sides on Wednesday by adopting a proposed set of rules for sober-living homes that is, well, sober.

It sets rules for homes that have more than seven tenants but doesn't abolish group homes altogether. The opponents of the ordinance can argue all

they want about property rights, but any single-family house with more than seven residents who are not related to each other is clearly a boarding house and ought to be regulated as such. Homeowners have a right not to have a de facto business operating right next door.

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A Los Angeles Daily News editorial. To read more editorials from the Daily News, go to www.dailynews.com/opinions.

Source: http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_18196355?source=rss

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