Director talks about recovery home concerns

• EDITOR’S NOTE: Newport Beach has 21 state-licensed drug and alcohol recovery facilities and an unknown number of nonlicensed sober living homes. Some people worry the growth of the homes is changing the character of their residential neighborhoods, so they’ve been pressuring the city and legislators to tighten regulations on the facilities.

The licensed homes are under the jurisdiction of the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs. The Daily Pilot spoke with Rebecca Lira, the department’s deputy director of licensing and certification, who answered questions about her agency’s role in regulating drug recovery facilities.

Question: Explain what your department does and how drug and alcohol recovery homes get licensed.

Answer: We are the single state agency who is charged with licensing alcohol and drug nonmedical treatment facilities, and also we certify outpatient alcohol and drug programs, but I’m going to stick to the residential because I think that’s the issue here. A residential nonmedical treatment facility is [where] they provide detox services, one-on-one counseling, individual counseling, group counseling, education, and they provide treatment plans — that is considered treatment and therefore they need to be licensed by our department.

If a program wants to provide any of those services there is an application process, an application they have to complete, and within the application they have to submit program protocols, staffing, the services that they’ll provide — is it a 30-day program, a 90-day program — admission criteria, admission form agreements, how much space each individual receives.

It’s very cumbersome, very thorough paperwork. . . .  They have to submit meal plans, samples of the food they’ll be providing, staff training, a list of referrals. If there’s going to be children residing with their parents at the facility, then the staff have to be fingerprinted, so it entails a lot of paperwork. In addition to that, they have to have a fire clearance by the local fire marshal, also if there’s any use permits or business licenses, whatever the local government requires, they have to abide by that. . . .  If there’s nothing required by the local government, then we need a letter from that local government saying that nothing is required.