Among the licensing requirements are that managers cannot have been arrested in the last five years, that the residents of the group homes be drug tested on a regular basis, that they are required to go to 12 step meetings, and that they adhere to community standards of behavior.
The only problem with all of this, and the Arizona Republic brought it up in a news article a few months ago, is that much of what the city is proposing violates Federal Fair Housing regulations. And the short definition of the regulations is that you cannot treat a group of addicts living together differently than you can treat any other family in the community. And the basis for this is, primarily, that addicts and alcoholics are protected as a handicapped group. And the Fair Housing Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act protects handicapped people from discrimination of any kind.
TLC faced a similar situation in 1997. That's when the City of Mesa, Arizona attempted to run our program out of the city's downtown area by passing some restrictive laws. Among these laws were a requirement that halfway houses could not be in the "downtown overlay," must have a public hearing to obtain a license, and must not be located within 1500 feet of any other halfway house. TLC filed a federal lawsuit against the city in 1997, which was ultimately resolved in 2003.
The outcome was that the city had to change two of the laws, and also pay us a third of the legal fees we paid for the lawsuit. The five years that we spent on the lawsuit were financially and emotionally draining. But we believed that we were right and the court agreed with us.
I believe that if the Phoenix City Council passes the version of the law that I read online it's quite likely that they will be facing federal lawsuits from several different parties.
It will be a waste of everyone's money if this thing ends up in federal court. But it's necessary when the community looks upon its alcoholic and addict citizens as being different to the point that they can make laws especially for them.
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