Over the past few years we in Malibu have heard the cry: “It’s for the children,” whether it be ball fields or teen centers. Now there is another more important rallying cry for the citizens of Malibu, “Neighborhoods For the Children.”
Almost unnoticed is a phenomenon, which is stealing neighborhoods from children and their parents. It is protected by misguided and incomplete State legislation. It renders helpless local authority such as our City Council. It undermines property rights. It exempts a narrow “protected” class from zoning and code requirements applicable to everyone else. It creates a protected class of addicts and alcoholics. And outrageously, either by shortsightedness or, more likely, lobbyist money, it permits the exploiters to profit obscenely by undermining lives of families.
It is aided and abetted by greedy homeowners willing to betray friends and neighbors for 10% over market on their house. It is facilitated by avaricious real estate brokers who, hiding behind antidiscrimination provisions, have their own rallying cry. “Anything for a commission”-no matter how damaging it might be to friends and community.
The spreading cancer in Malibu is the unrestricted proliferation of Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation businesses. According to Councilman Kearsley, there are now 42 licensed and unlicensed rehab facilities of various kinds in Malibu. That’s more than one for every 400 residents. The Los Angeles County ratio is one per 59,000 residents. Obviously the law’s “local need” has stretched to include addicts and alcoholics as “local” as New York.
These intrusive businesses are not off in some secluded setting, apart from daily interaction with the community. They are in ordinary neighborhoods where it is impossible to function without disrupting and violating the world of the children of that neighborhood.
Maybe it’s time for all of us to wake up. If our neighborhood streets are not safe “for the children” how can we worry about ball fields? How can addicts and alcoholics be given a privileged place in the neighborhood without any mandated protection for the children? How can we maintain the myth that our children are our most important assets when our representatives have decided addicts trump kids.
Donald Wrye