The complaint, filed with the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development last week, alleges a city-imposed moratorium on new rehabilitation homes in the city, which began in April 2007, is discriminatory.
Pacific Shores is one of two local rehabilitation homes the city sued in November for allegedly violating the moratorium. The suit claims Pacific Shores opened new residential facilities for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts while the moratorium was in effect. The rehabilitation home houses its clients at 492 and 494 Orange Ave., Newport Beach. Residents share cooking, shopping and cleaning duties, much like a family or a group of roommates, Polin said. Recovering addicts have the same legal rights as disabled people in the eyes of the law under the federal Fair Housing Act, he said.
Pacific Shores claims its two facilities in Newport Beach don’t offer treatment, counseling, or therapy, just a place for sober addicts to live. The homes aren’t licensed by the state, so the law treats them the same as it would a group of roommates living together in a private home, Polin said.
Newport’s moratorium hasn’t discriminated against Pacific Shores or any other rehabilitation home because the city offered people with federally protected disabilities, like addiction, the opportunity to apply for reasonable accommodation through its zoning codes, said Jim Markman, an attorney who represents Newport Beach on the rehabilitation home issue. Pacific Shores never applied, he said.
