Rehabs dangerous to health of neighbors
This past Sunday, residents of the Trancas Highlands (above Broad Beach) were put on alert for several hours following another serious incident involving one of the many drug rehabilitation facilities in our area. This time, a patient started a small fire at the “Malibu Ranch” rehab and then ran down into the nearby canyon, but not before threatening to set fire to the entire neighborhood.
After local sheriff’s deputies were called in to conduct a search, neighbors were advised to keep an eye out for anyone behaving strangely. Needless to say, we were also on very high alert for the possibility of arson. The good news is that the incident finally ended safely almost five hours later, just before dusk. The missing patient was heard calling for help and was taken away by ambulance after being rescued from the canyon.
This is not the only incident we have had to endure since these enormously profitable enterprises started buying up so many of the homes in our neighborhood. This goes way beyond the everyday inconveniences we have had to endure, such as the exponential increase in traffic (on our narrow, winding one-lane mountain road), the people who get lost while looking for the rehab (and have no qualms about simply walking into our homes as if we were commercial establishments) or the vehicles traveling to or from the rehabs and driving so recklessly around blind curves that they’ve caused several minor accidents. Many of us feel that it’s no longer safe to walk in our own neighborhood.
This also goes way beyond the more significant intrusions, such as the time a rehab developer purchased a neighboring property and promptly had his work crews cause more than $100,000 in damage to the trees bordering our property. That same developer later hired a property caretaker who thought it was a good idea one day to grab his rifle so that he could hunt down some rabbits for dinner. There’s really nothing quite like having your entire neighborhood closed by the sheriff’s department for more than two hours after responding to reports of a “man with a gun.”
Ours is a neighborhood where yet another rehab operator has circumvented the intent of the “six-bed limitation” by purchasing several adjacent homes and operating them as a single facility. Just visit their Web site (www.creativecareinc.com) and you’ll see professional staff listings for more than two dozen clinicians and counselors, and that doesn’t even begin to count the kitchen, housekeeping, janitorial, or maintenance staff. That’s an extraordinary number of workers for what is supposed to be a facility with no more than six patients, and it’s right in the middle of what is supposed to be a rural residential neighborhood. I can’t even begin to imagine what the effluent from their septic system is doing to the groundwater which so many of our homes rely on.
This one operation is so large that it has to be catered by commercial food service delivery trucks. In fact, it was one of those trucks which resulted in yet another hours-long closure of our entire neighborhood. Unfamiliar with how to drive a large vehicle on a road this narrow, he managed to get his truck suspended bumper to bumper across the entire roadway (with all four wheels lifted off the ground). Again, we were very fortunate that there was no need for any emergency response since there would have been no way for a squad car, fire truck or ambulance to get through. We know of at least two other occasions when something like this happened, with large, broken-down commercial vehicles completely blocking traffic in and out of the neighborhood for several hours at a time.
Personally, I am extremely sensitive to the problems of drug addiction. My youngest stepbrother died of a heroin overdose, and one of my best friends (a groomsman at our wedding) hasn’t been seen or heard from after he became addicted to crack cocaine. Therefore I definitely appreciate and applaud the struggle that people like them face in their efforts to overcome addiction.
At the same time, I cannot believe it was the State’s intention to have some neighborhoods turned into little more than “medical subdivisions,” especially when the continuing operation of these facilities poses an ongoing threat to public health and safety. I therefore call on our elected representatives to take immediate action on this issue. This problem has gone on far too long. It is time for these facilities to be much more tightly regulated, as they are obviously the worst of neighbors with absolutely no regard for the health or safety of those who live nearby.
-Scott Tallal