Recovery Homes Crisis: ‘Every One Of These People Deserve This Chance’

Editor’s Note: This is a part of LevittownNow.com’s ongoing coverage on the recovery home crisis throughout Levittown. The series started in 2013 and will continue to look at the impacts of recovery homes, focus on success stories and follow work to create regulations on the homes that fill the Levittown area.

Paul is not his real name. But addiction is his real problem. Inside the sterile hallways that make up a Lower Bucks County rehabilitation center, Paul is fumbling with the phone and trying desperately to call the one person he believes can rescue him from his own personal demons. With that one phone call, he dials Amber Longhitano, the vice president of Bristol Township’s Council, and the one leading the fight for recovery regulations.

Finally reaching her, Paul has reached someone he has known for years, someone he was sure would come get him. During the phone call, Paul implores Longhitano to come get him, to save him from his personal prison. He claims a dual diagnosis, begs Longhitano to take him out of rehab and bring him down the road to the Lower Bucks Hospital. But Longhitano is wise to the tricks of the addicted. She calmly explains that unless a counselor gets on the phone to confirm this diagnosis, she will not come and get him. That counselor never comes to the phone.

The next visiting period that Longhitano can make is on Sunday, three days later. When she arrives for check-in, a counselor pulls her out of the visitation line, which is populated mostly by tired middle-age people visiting their teens or early 20-somethings, and grandparents with children hoping to spend an hour or two with mommy. That’s when she learns Paul has been missing since Friday night.

“Our faith teaches us that we need to be compassionate, we need to show God’s love to people,” says Joe Fleming, who lives on Gooseneck Road in the Bristol Township’s Goldenridge neighborhood. Within one quarter mile of his two-storied home, sit five recovery homes, one on the same street and another across the street at the very end of the block.

The density of recovery homes to single family homes isn’t just a concern of the Flemings. In the past year, the recovery homes issue has drawn the attention of many Levittown-area residents, recovery homeowners and township officials.Within the Bristol Township’s 17 square miles, many of which are undeveloped or industrial focused, 93 recovery homes lay within its borders. That statistic does not including rogue homes that can’t be regulated.

While those within the township, both officials and not, are passionate about relieving residents of the issues that come with more than six recovery homes per square mile; not many can agree on how best to combat the issue.

“What I don’t like is people badmouthing these young men and women. I’ve never had a problem with these guys. They’ve never disrespected me. They’ve never stolen anything from me. They’ve never stared me down. They’ve never been ignorant,” said Fleming.

A short walk up the street brings anyone on a stroll to one of the recovery homes in the Flemings’ immediate vicinity. Three plastic lawn chairs litter the area around the door to the house, while a third faded blue and white lawn chair takes up the fourth space in the circle. Behind the chairs a neglected rake barely stands against the pale yellow siding.

“I don’t know, man. I don’t really got time for that kind of s**t. Dylan’s been here longer, anyway, maybe he will talk to you,” a baseball cap wearing man named Collin, who wished only his first name be used, told a LevittownNow.com reporter in search of an interview with a recovery home resident.

The entrance hallway to the recovery house where Collin and Dylan reside isn’t as dirty as one might expect. A spotless wall, organized living spaces, and a large entertainment system greet any who walk through the front door. Dylan is sitting on an old beaten up couch, enveloped in a cloud of blueberry scented vapor. He has been clean for 45 days.

Dylan nonchalantly confirms a number of stereotypes that the local residents share about the houses. He noted that in each and every house he has been in in the past six months, due to a number of relapses, has had occupancy numbers between 14 and 16 people, above the appropriate number of people in houses that usually have a maximum of four bedrooms.

Not all recovery homes are created equal. Several years back a recovery home in Middletown’s Levittown section caught fire and 14 men were found to be living in a cramped home that was unsafe. More recently, a summer fire at a recovery home in Bristol Township revealed an orderly operation with only nine residents.

Officials say the conditions and amount of clients in a recovery home depends on many factors, including whether the homeowner or manager really wants to help their clients.

Some recovery homes are operated by owners that appear to have little regard for surrounding residents while some are operated by people and groups who go above and beyond to help their clients achieve recovery without burdening the neighborhood.

Dylan isn’t ashamed to mention that he knows all about the recovery conversation within the community, and brazenly explains that, “no, I never have gone to any of the meetings.”

Back in their quaint home on Gooseneck Road, the Flemings continue to assure me that they are not against the recovery community but that the neighborhood needs time to absorb houses. Goldenridge and the rest of Levittown, specifically Bristol Township, has reached its limit. The Flemings became intimate with the issue a number of years ago, when their daughter’s friend stole money and wedding rings from an upstairs stash.

The Flemings forgave her and brought her in, where she lived for 14 months.

“When we invited her to move in, we confronted her about that, we said ‘Look, we get it, we forgive you for that. You can’t steal from me,’” he recalled. “We want these people to have a chance. We want them to be successful, but there needs to be a reasonable situation where it is reasonable for the community to absorb.”

Fleming of course speaks of an absorbency issue that Longhitano has long discussed in front of her peers and council. Bristol Township, unlike neighboring townships with comparable home prices and William Levitt-built suburban cookie-cutters, has battled recovery home issues for more than two decades. The number of recovery homes have more than doubled in just the last several years; leaving Bristol Township with not only the pressure of declining home values but assimilating the recovery homes into a tight knit groups of families.

Fleming notes his daughter’s friend was eventually kicked out of their home after slipping up one too many times. She was on a plane to Florida the next day, where she was finally able to get on the right track. She’s been clean for 19 months. To get there, she says she had to escape from Levittown to get a fresh start somewhere new. Going through four recovery homes and eventually ending up on the street before being taken in by the Flemings made her realize what she really needed was a change of scenery.

“I was a scumbag,” she sighs, reflecting on her thefts and behavior when she lived in Bucks County.

Even though she couldn’t get clean in Bristol Township, she argues that it wasn’t the density or the bleak situation of money grubbing recovery homeowners and managers that kept her from getting clean.

“No matter how great the house was, I wouldn’t have gotten clean,” she admits, saying the argument of density is another matter entirely.

In the three years that Longhitano, the vice president of the Bristol Township Council, has been fighting for density regulations, she has been threatened by her own council and solicitor with the idea of litigation, fines, and regulations, which Longhitano, a realtor, was already aware of.

One of the biggest hurtles facing local towns looking to make regulations again recovery homes are federal fair housing regulations such as The Fair Housing Act and The American with Disabilities Act, which supersede local laws on a constitutional level.

Despite adversity, Longhitano declares that she will never give up on her dreams of balance in the recovery community.

A sprawling map with every recovery home marked down lays upon Longhitano’s kitchen countertop in Croydon.

“I’m going to take a stand, and I don’t care how hard I have to stand, how many doors I need to rattle, how many people I need to knock. I don’t care until I get balance in this community, which the residents deserve, and a better system for the recovery community.”

After struggling to find balance with a majority of the members that sit on council and the township’s administration, Longhitano is continuing her efforts with Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick and state representatives Tina Davis, Frank Farry and John Galloway. Longhitano says she hopes to deliver a progress report on her nominated but failed moratorium in the next month.

“I am all about this, especially after losing a sister, a friend, having a brother in the recovery system for 20 years, and Paul. I will never get over that. I hold that on myself,” she says while recalling the year it took before Paul’s lifeless body was found gently swaying from a tree. “When I see this breakdown in the system, I’m not just trying to save Bristol Township, but the recovery community. Every one of these people deserve this chance.”

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