Transitional Housing for Recovery in Viable Environments Demonstration Program Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROHRABACHER. Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer a simple but crucial amendment to the THRIVE Act to ensure that local governments have a say in which sober living homes are able to participate in this demonstration program.

My amendment would require the nonprofits who apply for funding under this bill to prove that the Federal dollars they receive are distributed only to facilities that have permission from the relevant local government to operate in that location.

The proliferation of unlicensed sober living homes in residential communities in my district and throughout our country has had a deleterious impact on local residents and has not well-served the drug and alcohol addicts the program is supposed to help.

Many--not all, but many--of these facilities are owned and operated by unscrupulous actors. These bad actors totally disregard the impact on local residents of the neighborhoods as well as those who reside in the sober living homes themselves. The Federal Government must not subsidize this.

It is not only the surrounding neighborhood that suffers in these circumstances, but also recovering addicts whose treatment facility has no oversight and sometimes no actual personal program for recovery. This bill with my amendment produces a balanced first step toward helping the victims of the opioid epidemic while safeguarding the rights of families, homeowners, and local communities.

I am grateful for the support of my friend and colleague Congressman Barr, and I am grateful for his support through this amendment. I urge the rest of my colleagues to join with us and vote in favor of this amendment.

I would also note that it is the Federal Fair Housing Act that shields the bad actors and prevents local governments from doing anything meaningful about the problems associated with sober living homes. Municipalities face costly litigation for trying to address their transient nature, and local residents often experience an increase in crime in their neighborhoods, not to mention other threats to their quality of life.

The THRIVE Act does not address the Fair Housing Act, but I have authored a bill that would do this. I encourage a serious consideration of H.R. 5724, the Restoring Community Oversight of Sober Living Homes Act.

My bill would narrowly amend the Fair Housing Act to return to local governments their proper zoning authority to manage sober living homes in a manner acceptable to the local people and something that will help those drug addicts as well as the local community. So I gladly offer this amendment and ask my colleagues to consider both this amendment as well as the bill that I will submit on this issue.

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