"The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members" Mahatma Ghandi
The American Medical Association classified alcoholism as a disease in 1956. In 1987 the AMA classified addiction as a disease.
In spite of those classifications, alcoholics and addicts have always been the target of those who scorn the idea that addiction or alcoholism are diseases. The idea that someone has an illness to which he or she contributes somehow doesn't fit into certain people's ideas of how the world works – or should work. As a result of the public's attitude our operation has always been at odds with somebody over some legal issue that involves their view of us as second-class citizens.
Back in the 90s, TLC had programs in a certain municipality that I won't mention here because we now have a good relationship with that city. But the city government and city fathers decided they didn't like programs like ours and the others that were situated in the downtown area. In 1998 the city council was pressured into changing laws involving the licensing of recovery homes and halfway houses. They did this, in spite of the fact that their own city attorney advised them that their decision would violate Fair Housing laws and the Americans With Disabilities Act.
In the face of this legal challenge that would've put us out of business we hired one of the best fair housing attorneys in the country, who was situated in Washington DC, and filed a federal injunction against the city to prevent them from taking further action until our case worked its way through the courts – which took until 2003. Some five years later we reached a settlement with the city where they changed two laws and paid a large portion of our legal fees.
But in spite of that settlement, our organization has always been the target of some type of legal action. In fact, I can't remember a year out of the last 25 where we haven't had some kind of a lawsuit that we were spending money on.
Several of them were quite frivolous, one of the most noteworthy being a client who wanted two million dollars because she claimed she suffered two bedbug bites while residing at one of our facilities. And of course we won that one because of its nature – but it still cost us legal fees to defend ourselves. In fact she knew enough about the law to file the case on her own because of the 10 years she'd spent in prison filing endless lawsuits over trivial issues – never prevailing in one case.
Probably one of the things that irritates me most is when we have a run in with code enforcement in whatever city we're in. City zoning and planning ordinances are difficult enough for trained architects to understand, let alone us uneducated addicts.
We spend a lot of time and money keeping our properties in a livable condition. But every so often an unhappy addict will be mad because we discharged him from the program because he refused to seek employment or pay service fees.
In retaliation he'll go to the city and complain about the living conditions. And of course, code enforcement is obligated to reply and we usually reach some accommodation with them that satisfies everyone. And at the moment we have a matter where a client was discharged for not following the rules and went to the city and told them that he was forced to bathe outside the house and get his drinking water from a garden hose, which was a flat out lie. Of course the city was forced to respond and we're spending a lot of money bringing the house into compliance with the international residential codes.
Rather than looking at the matter as it really was – an angry addict seeking retaliation for a perceived wrong – code enforcement is wasting time and money to make us change residential housing that has been grandfathered in at that location for over 22 years.
I have a long list of cases where we've had to defend ourselves against frivolous matters. What no one seems to take into consideration is that we provide a wonderful service to the community. We feed over 2500 meals a day. We teach addicts construction skills so they can go out on their own and work independently and in many cases even start their own companies. We bring homeless addicts and alcoholics into our program without any upfront money, something no one else does.
Yet every once in a while someone from the city will show up and express a lot of concern about how addicts and alcoholics are treated by our organization. Yet, for some reason, none of them ever provide any kind of funds, food, supplies or anything else that will help people become responsible for themselves and keep them off of the streets.
What they don't realize is that we're addicts helping addicts save their own lives, yet many people across the spectrum – from the government to the legal profession – can't find the compassion to appreciate what we do for the community and society at large by helping addicts and alcoholics rebuild their lives.
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