Sober living home owner Claude Ike Eichar at his Winnetka home Tuesday, April 19, 2011. (Hans Gutknecht/L.A. Daily News)
When Shawn Williams graduated last year from Cal State Northridge, few fellow cap-and-gowns knew him as a former crackhead and four-strikes prison loser.
And few fellow graduate students now know how he's turned his life around with help from former drunks and dope fiends at a sober-living home.
"I never thought in my wildest dreams I'd be graduating," recalled Williams, 50, a resident of the Recovery Zone in North Hills. Clean off drugs for nearly a decade, he's now studying for a masters in public administration.
"I did it with the help of this sober-living home."
He may not be living there much longer, advocates for such homes warn. In response to complaints about crime and next-door nuisances, Los Angeles is poised to banish many sober-living and other group homes from single-family neighborhoods.
Nearly three years in the making, the proposed Community Care Facility Ordinance would heavily regulate such homes and is expected to go next month before the City Council.
If approved, proponents say it would provide clear guidelines for state-licensed homes and a proliferation of unlicensed boarding houses, in which property owners rent beds to cover costs.
And that includes the Recovery Zone, where 14 clean-and-sober men pay $600 a month to stay clear of their
old stomping grounds."They're not trying to regulate us. They're trying to shut us out," said Zone owner-operator Claude "Ike" Eichar, 63, a recovering addict who has two other sober-living homes in Van Nuys and in Winnetka.
"You've got thousands of people living in them - and where would they go?"
As such, city officials say the sober-living ordinance would define the difference between a family residence and an illicit boarding house - including L.A.'s estimated 850 sober-living homes, plus hundreds of group homes that cater to disabled seniors, parolees, sex offenders and more.
It would place density, parking, noise and other restrictions on group homes with seven or more residents. Homes with six or fewer tenants would be exempt.
"It's critical: We've got to pass this ordinance to give us the tools to go after the bad operators," said Councilman-elect Mitchell Englander, chief of staff for Councilman Greig Smith, who pushed for regulation three years ago after a barrage of community complaints in his northwest Valley district.
"It's not the reputable operators. It's the bad apples."
One such wormy fruit is a sober-living home in Reseda that once burned to the ground. Its owner rebuilt it into a seven-bedroom behemoth - then bought the house next door and connected them to form a mega home stretching the entire block across the street from a school.
Residents expressed concerns about smoking, noise, parking and loud cussing within earshot of kids.
"Most are convicts. I have children. I'm very worried," said a resident who asked to remain anonymous because of past threats from sober-living home owners. "When you have three or four guys, it's manageable.
"But when you pack in a dozen, you've got problems."
Such problems were legion at another sober-living home in Van Nuys, 20 residents were stuffed into three bedrooms. Neighbors reported seeing drug deals, loud parties and loitering, not to mention the regular cars blocking people's driveways.
"It was terrible," said Tesa Becica, of Van Nuys. "Very intimidating. I got harassed when I walked my dog."
But as the city clamps down on property owners who rent beds with up to 50 residents per house, city officials say, some fear the collateral damage.
Critics of the ordinance say sober-living homes provide the vital buffer between drug-and-alcohol treatment and recovery.
And that the sobriety waystations - where former addicts like Williams can support one another at the dinner table or at 12-step meetings such as Narcotics Anonymous - could be lost.
Better to beef up nuisance laws, they say, than to enact a new one.
"It's a discriminating ordinance directed at persons with disabilities," said Jeff Christensen, a board member and project director for the Sober Living Network in Santa Monica, which ensures quality control for 600 Southern California sober-living homes. "The persons who need the housing the most won't get it."
While the network claims that sober-living homes function as a family and cannot be zoned out of single-family neighborhoods, the city maintains its ordinance is legal according to state and federal laws.
A court challenge is expected.
"We sit down as a family, go to (12-step) meetings, as a group," said Eichar, gazing at the sage and forest green dining room at his 3,500 square-foot Comfort Zone house in Winnetka, where he lives with his wife, mother-in-law and 5-year-old daughter, and five clean-and-sober tenants who pay $840 a month plus food.
"I know lots of success stories here - ex-cons like me. Unfortunately, we see more failures than success. Sometimes, it takes people four, five or six times. It took me 60 (or) 70 times."
Eichar, an abused child from Westchester, has been around the block - in the wrong direction. He once got kicked out of school for boosting Blue Chip stamps from peoples' homes. He started using downers at 18, drifted into a life of drugs and crime, and spent 17 years in and out of jail, state hospitals or prison.
Then after countless attempts to detox, a miracle occurred: he got clean on July 17, 1992, at a sober-living home. He was 45.
"I didn't have any place else to go," he said. "Couldn't go to Mom's house. Addicts don't have friends; couldn't go to their houses. There was no place else to go."
He ended up managing the home. Getting an associates degree in psychology. Landing a job as a courier. Then saving enough to buy his first sober-living home.
Before long he had three, each one financed by mortgaging the previous one. He said he pulled out of a fourth house in Northridge before moving in after stringent objections from neighbors - and a bullet fired through the window.
Outside his current residence and home is a koi pond and high wall topped with bougainvillea.
Eichar said he's not profited from his homes.
He's in hock up to his neck, he said, with $12,000 a month mortgage payments. If his homes are full to capacity, he can make up to $20,000 a month. But that must cover the mortgage, $3,000 in utilities, plus insurance, repairs and TV cable bills, plus $1,500 in food.
"In the end, I'm losing money," said Eichar. "I'm not much of a business. There's no profit in this.
"My heart's in it ... I got into this to give back."
On a recent day, Eichar wore a crisp porkpie hat and Hawaiian shirt, as he played with his daughter, Jasmine.
Across town, the mostly ex-cons living at his North Hills home recalled how they found their sober-living haven. Neighbors who had signed a petition to support the home praised the decorum of its residents.
And only complained of occasional cigarette smoke.
"I don't have any problems with them, in all these years," said Armando Haro, who has lived next door since it was founded 12 years ago. "For me, they're good neighbors."
Englander said that, if the ordinance passes, he's confident the home can still operate - with allowances. "There are reasonable conditions," he said. "There are discretionary approvals to allow them, if they meet certain conditions."
Outside the beige stucco home are rows of cypresses in need of a trim. Inside, men gather in a sky blue community room lined with inspirational messages.
Randall Raphael was once a drug addict and petty thief who served two prison terms for his crimes. Now he's clean 1 1/2 years, attends college, has set up an art studio and fashions blank canvasses to sell to art school painters.
"Without this place," said Raphael, 52, a native of Northridge, "I'd be strung out on coke, or in prison."
"I'd be dead," pipes in Jonathan Ochoa, 21, a native of Panorama City.
Ochoa, clean for 1 1/2 months, said he came from a good family and had a good job until he started mixing heroin with methamphetamine. Before long, he was homeless, living in parks or parked cars, and stealing to support his habit.
After four years in prison for carjacking, his parole officer recommended Eichar's Recovery Zone. "I couldn't ask for more," said Ochoa, now training to be a journeyman plumber. "I've got a car. I've got a job ... This is great. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
Williams, a native of Compton who'd lived at the home after it first opened, had started using again, then served 5 1/2 years in a desert state prison for trying to shoplift five bottles of gin and tequila from Vons, which he had hoped to peddle for drugs.
But in prison, he found recovery, and earned two associates degrees. Having lived at the Recovery Zone four years and picking up CSUN degrees in sociology and counseling, he lost the use of his right arm two years ago after a bicycle run-in with a city bus.
Now he's studying for a masters, and aims to help ex-felons find ways to adjust in society. To him, the sober-living home has been a godsend.
Said Williams: "This place is a constant reminder of what could happen if I don't focus on staying clean."
Ivanka Trump Veronika Vaeková Tricia Vessey Summer Glau Katherine Heigl
No comments:
Post a Comment