You managed to save enough money to buy a home in the community of your dreams.  You sweated and saved and you are proud to have accomplished the opportunity to provide a beautiful environment for you and your family to live in.  You achieved the American dream.

            Not so fast.  Whether it’s political correctness, stupidity or something else….. your dream has just been stolen from you because there is a “Sober Home” moving in next door.  What is a “sober home?  It’s like a half way house where recovering alcoholics or drug addicts go to basically get reacquainted with the community.

            You are reading this correctly.

Florida uses the term “Community Residential Home.”  Here is the Florida Statute:  “Community residential home” means a dwelling unit licensed to serve residents who are clients of the Department of Elderly Affairs, the Agency for Persons with Disabilities, the Department of Juvenile Justice, or the Department of Children and Families or licensed by the Agency for Health Care Administration which provides a living environment for 7 to 14 unrelated residents who operate as the functional equivalent of a family, including such supervision and care by supportive staff as may be necessary to meet the physical, emotional, and social needs of the residents. 

Despite the fact that your governing documents prohibit homes from being used as businesses and despite the fact that your governing documents mandate that the home be used by families, there is now legislation that throws your docs in the garbage and allows these sober homes or community residential homes to open next door to you, your children and your family.  Let’s see how this is working out.  

            Last month, in Jupiter, a 12-step recovery center was operating in an in an HOA in a  three-story townhouse.   Two persons who were staying at the recovery center were stabbed. One guy  is a recovering heroin addict. The other guy is recovering from alcohol addiction. Both men were paying $250 a week in the four-bedroom, three-bathroom townhouse.  The operator of the Christian Recovery Center said he signed a lease to open in the HOA because “I wanted my people to rub elbows with good people.”

The website Craigslist posts the address as the Christian Recovery Center. The ad in part reads: “Learn how to live life on life’s terms without the use of drugs or alcohol and pay less than living in a crack Motel.”  Sounds like Shangri-La right?  Except for the fact that one owner who lives there is quoted as saying:   “There were people out on the deck late at night, as many as six at a time. They were smoking and drinking and carrying on.”

I’ll take the risk here of being politically incorrect.  How the hell did this happen?  Somebody actually thought it was a good idea to mix recovering addicts in with our kids.  And by the way…..if the half way house opens next door to you, good luck trying to find a buyer.