Sober Living NIMBY

Day 1207.

I was at a residents meeting. They are opposing the opening of a sober living.

I get it. These residents don’t want to be stuck with people evicted for relapsing living on their suburban streets and all that brings.

I checked in with Trina. She used to live here. Her son is in a sober living right now. She tells me how some sober livings are badly run. Many don’t test properly or enforce curfews and are unscrupulously just making money.

I stand and speak in the meeting. I say that we all want the same thing - safe, well run sober livings. Safe for them and their children and also safe for the residents of the sober living.

I say that if Luke had been in need of a sober living, I’d want it to be safe, well run and to give him the shelter and assistance he needed. As I speak of my story I start to shake and my voice cracks.

We need more sober livings, but who can blame their opposition? If they allow it, and it all goes wrong, they’ll never be able to shut it. How can they know it will be well run? Safe? Apparently there is no regulatory assurance to close it down if it is badly run. There’s no integration with the community that could benefit the neighborhood - lawn mowing, car washing, dog walking. There’s no interaction with these humans who are working so hard to stay sober and so, they remain ‘other’.

We need a way to better regulate and integrate sober living houses, to close bad actors, encourage good ones, for the sake of everyone, so that they can exist along side society, in pleasant family neighborhoods, not just in urban areas, because, sadly, we need sober livings now more than ever.