By Patricia A. Scheyer
NKyTribune reporter
Independence residents filled the seats at the regular council meeting Monday night, intent on finding out why the city is allowing a Sober Living home on Williamswood Drive.
Mayor Christopher Reinersman preempted all comments with a summary of what the city has found out about sober living homes.
“As of last Friday we received a letter from Pinnacle, as most of you know that’s the company who bought that house, and what they have told us is they intend to operate this as a sober living house,” Reinersman said. “A sober living house is protected by the American Disabilities Act, it is protected by KRS 100.982 through 100.984. It is very clearly protected.The sober living house is not a treatment center, it is a home for recovering addicts to live communally. They live there while they are recovering. They are not permitted to live there if they start using again.”
He told the residents they have strict rules, they have to share housekeeping duties.
“It sounds like a scary prospect,” Reinersman said. “I can tell you we have other sober living homes in the city, and there are a multitude of them across Northern Kentucky. I am not aware of any problems with any of them.
“The bottom line is a sober living facility, as I said, is protected. They don’t need a conditional use permit, they don’t need permission, they don’t have to notify the city at all. There is nothing they need to do. They have the right to live there. Basically the way the law reads and the way it pertains to the Americans with Disabilities act, is that they make a reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities, and that includes recovering addicts.”
He said the reasonable assumption is that the people in the home support each other, and that is how it is supposed to work.
Reinersman said a few years ago this was a huge issue in Lakeside Park, a small city that supports three sober living homes. It was such a big issue that Mayor David Jansing resigned as mayor because he was so disappointed that residents did not want that third sober living home in the city.
“Why were we told for two weeks by this planning and zoning that it would have to go before the board,” said Dan Courtney, the first resident to speak.
Mayor Reinersman repeated that the code enforcement officer, Josh Wusterfeld, made the wrong call, he thought it was a rehabilitation home, and as such would have to go the Board of Adjustments to obtain a permit, and he was mistaken.
“What about our property values?” Courtney asked. “That’s the thing right there, try to sell your house with a drug house across the street, a recovery center. These people are not disabled, they made choices in life.”
Attorney Jack Gatlin responded, saying the courts have made the decision that recovering from drugs is a disability. He said in 1995 the Supreme Court stated that local governments could not prevent people who were recovering from substance abuse from living in a single family home in a community.
“This is an absolute certainty that we would be breaking the law if we tried to do anything to stop this,” said Reinersman.
“This is not a rehab,” said Councilmember Carol Franzen. “This is a place where people go after rehab.”
Logan Wendling will live next door to the sober living house, and she was near tears. She explained that she has a 16-year-old son and a 9-year-old daughter. Her son has already had problems with drugs and alcohol since he was 12, and she had to pay a lot of money to send him away to a residential therapy treatment program out west.
“I wear hearing aids, I have a disability,” she said. “I do not take drugs, I do not drink alcohol. It was not self-induced, that I have a disability. So that’s wrong. And for these people to come into a subdivision full of children is inappropriate. How will they know that there is no drinking if there is no one not paid to watch them?”
She explained to council about the problems with her son.
“I am scared to death that I am going to find my child wasted with these people that moved in next to me,” she stated. “Scared to death! This is not an ADA. They are not disabled. They are self induced.”
Councilmember Franzen acknowledged that she has three sons and understands her fear.
“If there was anything that this legislative body could do for you, we would do it,” she said. “A hundred and ten percent, we would do it. But the federal government tells us these people have disabilities, whether we agree with it or not. I completely understand everyone’s situation here, and fears and concerns, everyone up here does. And again, if we could stop it we would have done it already. We have been aware of the situation for about a month now. Nobody supercedes the federal government. We just can’t stop it. And I am sorry that we can’t.”
“This federal law has been in place now for nearly 30 years,” Mayor Reinersman interjected.
“You can’t tell me that my home value is not going to go down,” said Wendling. “You can’t!”
Another citizen, Randall Hamilton, spoke up and asked how the city got around the issue of the county wanting to locate the jail in Independence. Councilmember Tom Brinker said citizen involvement helped with that issue. But this issue is different, and Brinker said again there is nothing they can do.
“Our hands are completely tied on this one,” said Reinersman. “The only consolation I can try to give you is experience has been there hasn’t been problems that I am aware of, and I have looked.”
Connie Ehlen spoke up, saying these drug addicts will be totally unsupervised, and asked how the city is going to protect her. She said 16 years ago she was robbed, and they were drug addicts. Now that she is a grandma, she lets her grandchildren play in the yard.
“I don’t feel safe,” she said. “It only takes one occurrence — one occurrence! And then what?”
Mayor Reinersman said that history has taught them that these problems don’t happen, but he agreed that he can’t see into the future.
He did say that the city can cite the owner of the property for code violations, but the city can’t make the sober living house go away.
One by one the residents left, shaking their heads in disgust and defeat.
“It has been very frustrating for us, honestly, walking in here tonight and seeing all the people, knowing you are upset,” said Franzen. “There is nothing we can do. We have been talking about it for a month, going back and forth, trying to figure out what to do. Anything we could do to try and stop it. We run into the same wall every time — the federal government. They can go in and not tell us a thing.”
Mayor Reinersman said he was going to try and be optimistic and believe that they will not have any problems.