The city must be feeling pretty feisty coming off a legal victory against the groups that wanted to block the lights at Malibu High School. The city was defending that one, so they didn’t have much choice but to answer once the other side sued and served them. The fact that cities get sued is a fact of life in today’s political world. The courtroom is fast becoming another political arena, kind of an extension of the ballot box.
But now, the city took the offensive and sued the state and a slew of defendants who are the legal entities that supposedly own all or different parts of Passages Malibu. The city charges that they are running an integrated rehab facility — in effect, a large rehab campus — in violation of the law (for fuller details, read Emily Sawicki’s story in this week’s newspaper). To understand what the battle is about, you need a little historical background. Some years ago, the legislature wanted to permit various kinds of medical and rehabilitation facilities to operate in single family residences — R1 zoned neighborhoods. I suspect what the legislature had in mind were small, residential, nonmedical facilities for Alzheimer patients, physically challenged, emotionally challenged, halfway housing for recently released prisoners, senior citizens with disabilities, and drug and alcohol rehab facilities. Most neighborhoods in most cities, were totally opposed to placing these facilities in their residential neighborhoods, and usually were able — before the legislature acted — to keep these rehab/residential facilities out using zoning restrictions and health rules. The legislature acted, but compromised, pushing ahead with the law, but only allowing six patients in a facility at any given time. The new law blocked the cities from taking any action against these facilitates as long as they stayed at no more than six patients each.
I doubt the legislature ever thought that drug and alcohol rehab facilities could cost patients $50,000 to $70,000 per month. In Malibu alone, there are about 40 of them — which means this is a $100 million industry that the city has little power to regulate. The problem is, as many of you know, they create a campus — as in the case of Passages — where they have eight structures, each capable of housing six patients, or a total of 48. They are also clustered in neighborhoods with no state requirements that there be spacing between them, which creates all sorts of traffic and septic problems in some places. The state, of course, has a very limited enforcement staff, so there is very little supervision. As far as I can tell, it’s kind of on the honor system and you know how well that works.
This problem of rehab facilities overloading the area is not unique to Malibu. Many other high-end beach communities have the same problem because the rehab business is very lucrative. It’s also spread inland into the San Fernando Valley and many areas are also faced with the same neighborhood problems.
One of the things the lawsuit will allow is discovery into the books of all these facilities. The cities are complaining there is wholesale abuse of the statute, more patients than are legally allowed, violations of the six patient rule, licenses that were obtained illegally, and a total lack of inspection and enforcement by the state. The California Department of Health Service and their Director Jennifer Kent want to take a pass on the entire mess and recently gave Passages a clean bill of health. My guess is that with all of the cities that are upset with this and the amounts of money involved (probably running into the hundreds of millions), you can look for this to go all the way — perhaps to the California Supreme Court — unless the legislature steps and amends the statute.
P.S. We want to dig into this a bit, so if any of our readers are former patients of any of the Malibu rehab facilities, former rehab staffers who want to talk to us, or neighbors who have experiences with the rehabs, please let us know. We can be contacted via email at editorial@malibutimes.com. We will keep your names and other information confidential if you request it.