A planned drug detoxification home in a Simi Valley neighborhood is drawing stiff opposition from residents.
About 100 of them packed City Council chambers last week to protest the project on Cisco Court on the city’s east end.
But under state law, as long as the home has actually no a lot more compared to 6 residents, the city essentially has actually no authority to regulate it.
“The state Concerning 10 years ago fairly much exempted 6 or much less people staying in a home from any type of extraordinary land-use controls by local government,” Peter Lyons, Simi Valley’s environmental services director, said Friday.
Under state Healthiness and Safety Code guidelines for alcohol and drug programs, “the city cannot regulate ‘group homes’ of 6 or much less if they’re simply living there and physically not changing the house,” Lyons said.
The house is being bought from Simi Valley businessman Sandy Bass by Shawn Miller, a former heroin addict that spent nearly 24 years in prison for crimes including armed robbery and auto theft prior to being released a few years ago.
Miller, that recently founded the for-profit Set Free Drug and Alcohol Centers of America, said he plans to have actually no a lot more compared to 6 clients at the Simi Valley location at a time. It will certainly be his company’s initial Focus and be fully licensed by the state, he said. Most clients’ stays will certainly be covered by medical insurance, he said. The uninsured can easily pay from pocket.
Simi Valley Higher School teacher Russ Martin is one of the a lot more outspoken critics of the detox home in the city’s Texas tract neighborhood. He, his wife and three kids live next door.
Martin, 56, said Friday that the project will certainly degrade the neighborhood’s quality of life.
“There’s not only going to be drug addicts there wanting to dry up, However my girls’ bedroom is within, I would certainly say, 60 feet of the front porch where these guys will certainly be hanging out, detoxing from heroin,” he said.
“Shawn Miller has actually asked me to trust him or her that he will certainly control 6 heroin addicts at a time,” Martin said. “I said, ‘I don’t understand you. I have actually to determine that you are.’ So I figured out that he was” — an ex-convict.
Miller said he can easily already know the community’s concerns.
“It’s a quiet neighborhood along with good people along with children,” he said. “They have actually some perceptions that drug addicts are going to be operating all of over their streets and points adore that. However I believe most of their fears will certainly go away after we’ve been there a couple of months.
“This is something that Simi Valley needs,” Miller said, even though he conceded that a few of his clients could come from from state, as critics of the project have actually charged.
Like several others communities throughout the country, Simi Valley has actually grappled along with heroin use in recent years, especially among young people, sometimes along with deadly results. A local grass-roots organization, Not One More, was formed in 2012 to tackle the problem.
Its vice president, Krissy McAfee, said Friday that Simi Valley requires the detox home and that the group supports it “as long as they’re good neighbors and not causing any type of complications and adhering to all of laws.”
Bass, meanwhile, said the residents’ outcry is “unfortunate. They (drug abusers) have actually to go somewhere. And everybody says, ‘not in my backyard,’ and I already know that. However they’re entitled to rehabilitation and to attempt to be a functioning section of society.
“Exactly what are you going to do along with them?” he said. “Kick them to the street?”
Simi Valley Councilman Glen Becerra said he has actually contacted the city’s assemblyman, Scott Wilk, R-Santa Clarita, “to check out assisting us address some legislation on the state level, since I have actually grave comes to Concerning this.”
Wilk said Friday that he’s coordinating along with the city to timetable a joint community meeting at which residents can easily voice their concerns. He said he has actually additionally contacted the League of California Cities, which he believes is going to propose legislation to address the issue. The city has actually additionally reached out to its Sacramento lobbyist.
“This particular issue is problematic across the state,” Wilk said.
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