The sober living home where Christopher Lee Kearns allegedly tried to kill his 8-year-old son with a screwdriver bills itself as a calm, quiet, “working man’s” place.

Rent is $175 a week or $700 a month. Folks must have a job or be looking for one. They must attend mandatory house meetings and are encouraged to attend 12 step meetings as well. “A very good group of guys that are all straight and sober,” a recent Craigslist ad said. “Including weed!”

Kearns, 28, has been charged with attempted murder and child abuse and endangerment. He has pleaded not guilty.

“The incident with Chris was not at all typical of what we expect to see at a sober living home,” said the home’s owner by text. If he had instead rented the house to a family, and a parent attacked a child, things could have turned out much worse.

Instead, the house manager heard an odd whimpering, the owner said. He followed the sound, and interrupted the attack. The house manager “believes he was used by God to save the boy’s life,” the owner said.

In a delirium in 2021, Henry Lehr bolted from detox in Gratitude Lodge in Newport Beach and forced his way into a neighbor’s home. The neighbor had a gun. Lehr was 23 when he died. (Photo by RICHARD KOEHLER,CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER)

Look. Teatotalers snap. Terrible things happen every day, everywhere. But this tragic episode came just as the oft-nettlesome issues posed by using neighborhood housing as a place for sober homes and state-licensed addiction treatment centers — a practice that’s particularly common in Orange County, America’s addiction fraud capital and nexus of the “Rehab Riviera” — are high on official radar.

Emergency call data shows these facilities can introduce spasms of chaos into once-quiet communities.

A gaggle of bills is moving through the legislative sausage grinder in Sacramento, aiming to raise the professionalism of private operators in this highly lucrative space. The bills would also empower local governments to do more to ensure those inside these homes are safe.

“I live next door to a sober living home,” said Sherman Fowler of San Clemente, in videotaped testimony for state auditors. At the sober home near Fowler, turnover is so high it’s hard to know who lives there and who doesn’t. People come and go at all hours of the night. There’s noise and — one of the most ubiquitous complaints — incessant smoke from the one addiction recovering users may still indulge: cigarettes.

“Data points need to be collected,” Fowler said. “We should know how many people are being curbed. We should know how many people are dying in these facilities. We should know if there are certified, qualified people running these facilities.”

‘Enforcement’

“Here’s the deal: one of my concerns is enforcement,” said Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Santa Ana. Because current law restricts enforcement power to state officials, Umberg’s bill would simply extend that power to local officials — people such as city attorneys and district attorneys who, currently, hear a constant barrage of complaints but can’t do much to address them.

Members of the California State Assembly meet at the Capitol in Sacramento. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)

“Since it’s limited in terms of the ‘who’ part, we’re expanding the ‘who’ part,” Umberg said. “Orange County, for whatever reason, has become a magnet for these things.”

Also:

In what would be a victory for consumers and transparency, a bill by Assemblymember Laurie Davies, R-Laguna Niguel, would require licensed rehabs to publicly own up to their shortcomings by disclosing, on their web sites, “if a legal, disciplinary or other enforcement action has been brought” by state regulators, and the program was found to be in violation.
Another bill, by Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, would clarify exactly what sober living homes/recovery residences are (“primary housing for individuals seeking cooperative living arrangements that support personal recovery from substance use disorders”) and allow local governments to require permits if they house seven or more people. It would also allow local governments to require a 1,000 feet separation between sober living homes and state-licensed addiction treatment facilities. That would help prevent the “institutionalization” of neighborhoods.
A bill by Assemblymember Avelino Valencia, D-Anaheim, would acknowledge the reality that many sober homes aren’t organic collections of like-minded folks just trying to stay sober, but affiliates of lucrative treatment businesses. Folks often go to these sober homes after finishing a provider’s intensive (and expensive) residential in-patient treatment, then report to the provider’s central location for (less-expensive but still insurance-billable) outpatient treatment. Such homes would not be considered “residential use of property” when evidence demonstrates that they’re “an integral part of a licensed drug treatment facility located elsewhere.”
Another, by Assemblymember Diane Dixon, R-Newport Beach, would make some technical changes to the laws governing licensing and regulation.

Spasms of chaos

Of course people with substance use issues need quality care and places to live. But are residential neighborhoods the ideal place for them? Would you run a cardiac clinic out of the house next door — especially an explicitly non-medical one, where no doctor was allowed on staff?

That’s how private addiction treatment works in California. These facilities — fueled by floods of insurance money and folks with deep pockets — can introduce spasms of chaos into neighborhoods.

In Mission Viejo, just 10 state-licensed addiction treatment homes generated 84 emergency service calls, including 35 disturbances, 15 assists from county paramedics (largely for overdoses) and reports of attempted suicide, battery, vandalism, fraud, mental health crises and gunshots, according to three years of data from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

The Southern California Sober Living Task Force, chaired by Davies and Mission Viejo Councilmember Wendy Bucknam, is a bi-partisan coalition of local and state officials, law enforcement and residents working to raise the bar on the industry. It requested the emergency data and is awaiting more. It underscores the point officials are trying to drive home: That these facilities aren’t run-of-the-mill neighbors, but crucibles for people in various stages of crisis, people who need more protection and support.

“The data demonstrates the immediate need for reform from multiple perspectives,” Bucknum said. “On one hand, it further validates residents’ concerns related to safety and quality of life. On the other, it’s clear individuals in these homes who are suffering from addiction or other mental health issues need and deserve proper care in an appropriate setting — but that’s not what they are getting. Without meaningful oversight or regulation of sober living homes, everyone loses.”

It’s easy enough to track emergency calls to state-licensed centers — everyone knows where those are. But tracking calls to sober living homes is another thing entirely. That’s because sober homes don’t provide treatment, so don’t need to be licensed. As a matter of law, they’re simply groups of recovering addicts living together in supportive environments and must be treated as any other family.

File photo: Traffic, deliveries and police calls have become facts of life in Orange Park Acres, where there are a dozen treatment homes for yongsters, residents said. Sherry Hart-Panttaja rode her horse, Heidi, past one of those homes in 2020. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

You might live next to one and not know it — but you’d be very lucky. Mission Viejo does know where nine of the sober homes in its boundaries are. Sheriff’s data shows that those homes generated 67 emergency calls over the same period, for overdoses, disturbances, mental health crises, burglary, theft, vandalism, assault, “person down” and one dead body.

In Dana Point, 18 state-licensed facilities generated 42 emergency calls for service over a single year. There were disturbances, overdoses, mental health crises, evictions, welfare checks.

“We have kids escaping and running up to people in private residences, asking to use phone,” said Laura Thomas of Orange Park Acres, who lives near a dozen treatment centers for youngsters clustered within roughly one mile, and is accustomed to hearing screams after dark.

“The kids are all with no shoes,” she said. That’s apparently to keep them from getting far if they run away.

‘Human trafficking’

Since mental health coverage was mandated by the Affordable Care Act, billions have gushed into the addiction treatment industry —and overdose deaths have only skyrocketed.

In 2015, there were 52,404 overdose deaths in the U.S.

In 2021, there were 106,699 overdose deaths, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Addiction is a life-or-death medical issue, but it has been cleaved from the greater health care system. You need an actual doctor to treat your heart condition, but a former house painter or contractor can open a private-pay addiction treatment center in California to treat your addiction. No doctor on staff, but still able to charge thousands of dollars per person, per day.

That makes each user a dollar sign on legs.

“From the insurance fraud angle, there are so many different violations of the law that occur and it’s so lucrative and the dollar amounts are so high,” David Stark, health care fraud investigator with the Orange County District Attorney’s office, told Sober Living Task Force members recently.

“Unfortunately — and this does really impact the local communities — the resources we have for investigating, the length of time of these investigations, the lengthy court process and then, in the end, the short jail sentences that they receive — it encourages recidivism.”

Josh Page holds a picture of his friend Timmy Solomon, who died of an apparent drug overdose at age 31. Solomon’s struggle was depicted in SCNG’s Rehab Riviera coverage. (Photo by Mindy Schauer, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Sobriety doesn’t generate dollars for rehabs. Addiction does. Folks are not worth anything if they finish their 90 days of treatment and go home sober to Ohio, so they’re often paid to party and start the whole treatment cycle over again.

Stark’s last assignment was as a human trafficking detective. Patients here on the Rehab Riviera strike him as victims caught in a similar web.

“We’ve had conversations with people who have been convicted and have been in state and federal prison,” Stark said. “We ask, ‘What are you going to do when you get out?’ They say, ‘I’m going to go right back to it.’ Why wouldn’t they? If you’re making that much money with that little penalty –

“That’s my plea. Put ’em away….  The more resources we can get — legislative, investigative —  we’ll take everything we can get.”

The gaggle of bills aims to do that.

“We’re trying to get some protections to safeguard vulnerable residents and not allow bad actors to control the industry in Southern California,” said Orange County Supervisor Katrina Foley, who was instrumental putting together Costa Mesa’s ordinances governing sober living homes, apparently the toughest in the state. Those ordinances have survived some court challenges, are pending in others, and are being copied by cities and counties with similar struggles.

“The message that I’m sending is that we in Orange County care about helping people recover in professional, healthy, safe environments,” Foley said. “But it cannot be a free-for-all. There has to be regulatory oversight so we can protect people at their most vulnerable time from getting turned onto street and made homeless, overdosing on site, wandering off and getting killed, from bad operators who have no business trying to help counsel or manage people in recovery.”