Rehab clinics pit wealthy vs. wealthy in Malibu

MALIBU, Calif. – Ah, Malibu. Sun, sand, rehab.

For years, “Malibu” and “rehabilitation clinic” have been codependent, you might say, in many a celebrity news snippet. Ben Affleck, Charlie Sheen, Robert Downey Jr., Diana Ross, Paula Poundstone – the list reels on of stars clearing up “some personal issues” at chic spots charging $30,000 or so per month.

Enough with the detox already, a few Malibu residents are pleading.

With the city’s blessing, a committee is lobbying the state to change a law that residents say has encouraged such centers, most of them licensed for six beds, to proliferate in their coastal town’s wealthy neighborhoods.

The panel’s name? Residential Integrity and Peace, or RIP.

“Rehabs are high-traffic businesses,” said Beth Dorn, who heads the group. “These places should be in commercial areas.”

Malibu residents aren’t imagining things when they say that rehab is a growth industry. In the past three years alone, 12 new rehab facilities have opened in the community. And, although three others have closed in that time, the city’s total number of rehab centers stands at 16. Three applications are pending.

Home to 13,000 people, Malibu thus has one licensed residential program for every 810 or so residents. For Los Angeles County overall, the ratio is one center for every 58,100 people.

So what’s bringing rehab centers to Malibu? Although the number of such facilities statewide has grown consistently for many years, the industry got a boost in 2000 with the passage of Proposition 36, which allows nonviolent drug offenders to choose treatment rather than jail. And don’t forget the seaside charms and rustic affluence that soothe the battered soul.

Indeed, many of the rehab centers in Malibu could pass for lavish resort hotels, with massage and workout rooms. Passages, a facility with marble floors and crystal chandeliers, opened in 2001 with a fancy reception – after a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge denied neighbors’ request for a temporary restraining order against the facility.

Rehab can be a lucrative business, said Richard A. Rawson, associate director of the University of California, Los Angeles Integrated Substance Abuse Programs. Some high-end centers in Malibu, he said, “are virtually all cash,” with clients paying $30,000 to $50,000 for a standard 28-day stay.

The facilities appeal not just to movie stars but also to lawyers, surgeons and other wealthy professionals who count on rehab administrators’ legendary professional discretion.

The patients participate in individual and group counseling and educational sessions. “Social detox” – a method of getting drugs or alcohol out of the system without using medication – is also a part of the regimen at many centers.

All of this transpires in a setting designed to feel like home – or even better than home – with gourmet chefs, kayak rides and private therapy sessions in the sand, as the Passages Web site advertises.

For Dorn and her husband, Ryan, the proliferation of these centers has started to disrupt the tranquillity they have cherished in their gated community of Trancas Highlands, dotted with 30 or so houses. From her hillside perch, Dorn peers down on Zuma Beach and neighbors’ $2-million homes, most of which sit on at least two sage-covered acres.

But not far down winding Trancas Canyon Road, and outside the gated community, are three houses that have been converted into rehab clinics, all operating under the name Creative Care and each approved for six beds.

A fourth facility, next door to the other three, is on the verge of receiving its state license, according to Mary Rauso, a Creative Care consultant. Many days, dozens of vehicles – belonging to Creative Care’s 40 or so therapists, social workers, cooks and other employees – sit in the compound’s two parking lots.

A few hairpin turns uphill from Dorn, within Trancas Highlands, sits another such facility, and an application has been filed for yet another nearby. Just below Dorn’s residence, another house recently changed hands, and the California Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs said that in late January it received an application for a rehab facility there.

Malibu rehab centers such as Passages and Promises, whose clients also make the tabloids now and then, contrast with the far-from-plush clinics typically found in downtown Los Angeles and other parts of the county. As of Jan. 1, Los Angeles County had 172 licensed residential programs, more than one-fifth of the state’s total of 811.

Although many rehab centers accept public funds, “the Malibu programs have been set up to serve a privately funded, affluent part of society,” said David Feinberg, who supervises licensing for the state Department of Alcohol and Drug Programs.

As more rehab facilities crop up, neighbors worry that the extra people will overtax septic systems or overwhelm narrow, treacherous hillside roads. Dorn, who has a son and two stepdaughters, said she and her husband had been “run off the road” several times by drivers they did not recognize.

One recent morning, they were startled to come upon a man wearing headphones lying on Trancas Canyon Road.

Dorn can’t definitively tie those incidents to rehab centers. In addition, rumors about used condoms in the streets and restless rehabbers wandering the hills are tough to verify with more than one source. But that hasn’t kept the centers from becoming the talk of the town.

Also driving some of the opposition, Dorn acknowledged, is the fear that home prices will plummet if would-be buyers get turned off by the prospect of living amid so many 12-step adherents.

Eric Myer, a photographer in Trancas Highlands, said he doubted that the state law encouraging such facilities ever intended for them to be clustered so closely.

“You’re basically creating a medical subdivision,” Myer said.

Myer acknowledged that it could be tough to elicit sympathy among state lawmakers for the residents of “Beverly Hills by the sea” – and that Malibu dwellers are opening themselves to charges of NIMBYism.

Many residents say they understand and embrace the philosophy behind residential rehab, which aims to provide patients a serene place to recover and to help them ease back into society.

“I actually am for the program,” said Malibu Mayor Ken Kearsley. “But they wear out the neighborhood when they have four or five in the same immediate geographic vicinity.”

And although rehab centers are in demand everywhere, one rehab specialist suggested that Malibu has a particular need.

“The local Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are so full and so rich and there are so many of them,” said Jerry Schoenkopf, who went through rehab 20 years ago and now is program administrator for Malibu Ranch Residential Treatment Center. “For a little town … there’s a burgeoning community of recovery.”