Delray Beach’s tough sober home rules pay off

Yep. That’s the headline in a recent edition of the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. The news comes hot on the heels of a new report stating that Delray Beach, “once declared Ground Zero for the opioid epidemic, accounted for just four of Palm Beach County’s 168 drug deaths in the first quarter of 2018.”

In fact, Delray Beach’s tough sober home rules have become so effective that Fort Lauderdale and Pompano Beach are “imposing tougher regulations” of their own.

Really.

“Sober homes, also known as recovery residences,” writes reporter Anne Geggis, “are often the first stop for drug addicts fresh out of treatment. Cities have found that having a high concentration of them in one area leads to havoc. Angry residents complained about too many cars in one place, trashed belongings of relapsed clients thrown into the street and an unsavory element appearing in neighborhoods of single-family homes.”

“The tougher regulations keep sober homes at least one city block from one another.”

“Former Delray Beach Mayor Cary Glickstein oversaw the passage of the tougher rules. He said having former drug addicts concentrated in one place was making the problem worse,” continues Geggis.

“Two years ago, 65 people died of drugs in the city. Last year, there were 57 overdose deaths. But the crisis began easing in July 2017, the same month the city’s new regulations were passed.”

“Delray Beach Police Chief Jeffrey Goldman agrees that having fewer sober homes near each other appears to be working,” writes Geggis. “But he also credits the drop in drug deaths to state attorney’s Sober Home Task Force, the prosecution of those running the homes, and his department’s hiring of an addiction specialist to ensure each overdose survivor gets services.”

“When I used to go to [homeowner association] meetings, the topic every day was sober homes,” he said. “Now the topic doesn’t come up.”

One of the Good Guys

We at Healing Properties and our adjacent Recovery Boot Camp applaud the efforts of former Mayor Glickstein, Chief Goldman and State Attorney Dave Aronberg. And we’re proud Politico, ABC’s WPBF, Delray Beach Code Enforcement Officer Marc Woods and others have singled out founder Tim Schnellenberger as “one of the good guys”. Healing Properties has been doing the right thing since 2002. And we’ll continue to do just that here so long as there are men in need of help.

Bet on it.