LYNNWOOD — Along a quiet cul-de-sac off 188th Street Southwest, a tempest has been brewing.
New residents moved in to a rental house late last month.
Some neighbors are upset. They say those new residents — six women recovering from drug and alcohol addiction — aren’t just any neighbors.
For one thing, says Max Fischbach, long-time resident of 41st Place West, they’re working on remodeling the garage to add four bedrooms, an action he believes should not be allowed in the 16-house cul-de-sac.
And, he said, work started on that project without a required city building permit, a fact Fischbach made known to city officials.
Code enforcement officers placed a stop work order on the house shortly thereafter.
When one of the women residents parked her car so that part of it stuck out illegally over the sidewalk, Fischbach let her know it.
“I’m blunt about it,” said Fischbach, a retired government auditor. “I just don’t like them being here.”
His concerns reflect a larger conflict between the rights of homeowners and the rights of groups that courts have said are among those protected against discrimination: addicts in recovery, people being treated for mental disorders, and people with an assortment of other disabilities.
Neighbors worry that having recovering drug and alcohol addicts living so close by, particularly so many of them, poses a potential health and safety risk to others. Residents of the house say they can’t and don’t use drugs or alcohol anymore and pose no risk to neighbors’ safety.
If nine women eventually end up living in the house, as has been proposed, vehicles belonging to the women and their friends could clog the street, some neighbors worry.
The six women who live in the house are part of an international addiction recovery non-profit called Oxford House, Inc.
Formed in 1975, Oxford House leases more than 1,200 single-family houses in cities and towns around the United States, Canada and Australia.
It’s goal: To offer a drug-free environment — a home — where recovering addicts can live in a gender-specific environment supporting each other to stay off drugs and alcohol. The houses, which typically house six to 15 addicts, are self-governed. Each renter pays from $275 to $450 a week in rent. Strict house rules forbid the use of drugs or alcohol.
Washington has more of the houses – 176 – than any other state. And Lynnwood, with five, has more than Mountlake Terrace, Everett or Edmonds, the other Snohomish County cities where Oxford House operates.
According to Lynnwood police records, police and the Lynnwood Fire Department responded to calls at two of the five Oxford Houses from Jan. 1, 2006 through June 1, 2007.
Police responded nine times to a men’s house on 193rd Place Southwest for complaints including assault, a civil dispute, two harassments, two property damage cases, a suspicious circumstance, a suspicious vehicle and a threat.
During the same period, records show, police responded to the cul-de-sac on 41st Street Southwest 10 times, including six times to one residence but not to the Oxford House, which has been open for about a month.
That house, called “Athena,” is the newest women’s house in the city. The plan is for nine women to live in the house.
Neighbor Laurie Crain said she’s concerned about safety, and more.
“I’m concerned about our property values going down,” she said. “I would not knowingly buy a house next door to a drug and alcohol house.”
Crain said she understands the women in recovery need a place to stay, “It just seems there are other places better suited to that than single-family areas.”
Fischbach and Crain say they’ve seen cars drive to the house late at night and are more concerned about the women’s male friends and boyfriends than the women themselves.
Further, they say, Oxford House officials never contacted residents to let them know they were renting the house.
Gino Pugliese, 49, Oxford House of Washington State outreach coordinator in Snohomish County, says he considers himself one of Oxford House’s success stories.
The Boston native came to an Edmonds Oxford House in 1991 after a drug addiction led him to a life of crime.
By the mid-1990s, Pugliese says he’d turned his life around and kicked his addiction. Now, he’s one of four Oxford House Inc. employees in Washington.
“I worked my way into a job working with Oxford House,” he said.
The city of Edmonds, where two Oxford House homes are located, sued Oxford House Inc. in a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Edmonds claimed that Oxford House had violated city laws by housing too many people in a single-family neighborhood and that federal housing protection laws didn’t apply to the situation.
In 1995, the high court ruled in favor of Oxford House. Because of that decision, Oxford House, and other group homes, can move into single family neighborhoods and cities don’t have the legal authority to control where they go.
Pugliese said he was surprised by the negative reaction from some neighbors. Most of the time, he said, Oxford House slips into neighborhoods “and no one knows about it,” which Fischbach said is one of the problems.
“You’d think they’d come to us and say ‘here’s what we’re doing,’” Fischbach said.
Such disclosure, however, is not required under federal law, Pugliese said.
“For the same reason that if we had black people living in the house, we wouldn’t have to disclose that,” he said.
Paul Krauss, the city of Lynnwood’s Community Development Director, said Oxford House officials originally claimed they were exempt from building permit requirements.
He said the organization has since applied for a building permit and that application is under review. Pugliese said he’s trying to find a way to work within the regulations.
“The city is concerned about group residences,” Krauss said. “It appears as if Lynnwood may have more than its fair share, if there is such a thing.”
But the city is caught between wanting to support concerned residences and obeying federal law, Krauss said. Unlike half-way houses for convicted sex offenders, group homes like Oxford House are not state licensed, he said.
Karen Vander Pol, a neighbor and real estate agent, said concerns about property values going down are probably overblown.
“I wouldn’t say I have a concern with that,” she said.
Vander Pol, who said she learned from Fischbach of Oxford House’s plans, said she’s more concerned about the expansion of the house from five to nine bedrooms than about possible crime problems.
“You choose to live in a community but you can’t choose who lives around you,” she said.
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