Lawmakers Hear Testimony On Recovery Homes

State Rep. Tina Davis hosted a House Democratic Policy Committee meeting on Monday to bring her recently introduced bill into public view.

A number of democratic representatives from all over Pennsylvania were present at the Benjamin Franklin School in Bristol Township to hear testimony about the state of the recovery home industry throughout the state and specifically in Bristol Township, which has around 100 recovery homes packed in its borders.

The committee listened to testimony from parents who have lost children in the recovery home system, advocates of reform of the industry and local legislators from municipalities hit hardest by the opioid epidemic and rogue recovery homes.

“The issue of how we handled recovery homes throughout Pennsylvania is an extremely important one,” Davis began the hearing by saying.

“I don’t know what to say, except that these recovery homes need to be regulated, or a lot more people will be losing their lives,” said Jessica Scheiber Blackburn, who lost her daughter in a recovery home a couple years ago.

The other testifying parents were just as sincere and stated their concerns in their testimony. The main message of the hearing was that some form of oversight is needed for recovery homes which continue to flourish in the lower end of the county and throughout the state.

While there are self-regulated recovery homes and many that follow standards, there are also ones that don’t follow any standards and offer little to no assistance to their residents who can easily find themselves back into drugs or crime.

“It is a disease, having lived and witched it, and we need to treat it the way we would treat other diseases,” said Leonard Spearing, who lost a son in a Bristol Township recovery home in 2015.

Davis’ bill at its core is a bill to put in place a system of certifying recovery homes in Pennsylvania. As it stands now, there is no mandatory regulations on recovery homes in the state unless they are guidelines the houses follow voluntarily from private governing bodies.

The bill states that recovery homes which register with the state should report incidents, be regularly inspected for safety, have a refund policy, fee schedule, code of ethics, insurance, safety and health policies, rules for residents, intake policies and a system to deal with sexual offenders and sexual predators. In addition, the recovery home owners, director and chief financial officer would have to undergo background screening.

The bill from the Bristol Township-based Democrat would establish the State Board of Recovery Residences within the Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs. The new oversight body would develop and administer the voluntary certification program and code of ethics for recovery residences.

Diane Rosati, the executive director of the Bucks County Drug and Alcohol Commission Inc., testified, explaining her organization’s support for the bill.

Rosati laid out the main reasons for the organization’s support of the legislation. They include that any house not certified cannot receive funds from any state agency. The organization also supports Narcan training and opioid anti-dote to be available at certified recover homes and asking that county authorities be notified when a new home is certified.

One of the biggest problems local and state legislators have with closing the door on recovery homes are the protections put in place by the Federal Fair Housing Act. That is the act which makes Davis’ bill use language such as “voluntary” to describe the process for recovery homes going through the certification process.

Bristol Township Councilman Howard Allen testified that the majority of complaints he hears are about poorly managed recovery homes.

Some local officials aren’t satisfied with the bill, and say it would not go far enough.

Craig Bowen, the president of the Bristol Township Council attended the Monday meeting and took umbrage with the phrasing of parts of the bill.

“Frustration sums it up,” Bowen said. According to Bowen, who has been the president of a council at the center of the recovery home community, the word “voluntary” in the bill makes it totally worthless.

“This isn’t a Republican or a Democratic thing,” Bowen said. He added, “And in the meantime, people are losing their lives.”

Davis was happy with the turnout of the hearing though.

“I feel like it is a success that there were so many representatives from around the state who aren’t dealing with this problem in their own districts,” Davis explained.

“I just want people to be aware of the homes they are sending their kids to,” Davis concluded.