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Plans for Dorchester sober house outrage not just neighbors but head of ISD
By adamg on Thu, 03/28/2019 - 9:58am
The Dorchester Reporter reports on the planned sober home for 15 women on Percival Street, after a meeting at which ISD Commissioner William Christopher accused the operators of betraying him and the residents. "I am pretty upset at the dealings that you’re going to have with the city, because your word no longer means anything to me," he told them.
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Comments
These two are low-life scum.
These two are low-life scum.
Thanks again Quincy
These guys are from Quincy so it's just [chef's kiss] perfect that they profit off of the closure of Long Island.
I hope they get E coli swimming in their own sewage at Wollaston this summer.
Out of control in Dorchester
There is another sober house that just popped up some months ago on Melville Ave in Dorchester. There was and is no communication from the owner . We, the neighbors, had to discover it with some awareness and research. It's been a subject at neighborhood meetings but the politicians and the police are saying nothing can be done. One staffer of a city councilor said we will just have to live with it. This is not acceptable. If regulations don't exist then they need to be created. There needs to be transparency. And lets be clear, for the owners, these sober houses are simply a way to make money. As long as there are monetary incentives to run these houses, and no regulations, this situation will get worse.
So called 'Sober' houses should be banned
Insidious scam. The operators are all the worse type of scumbags.
Follow the money
These are very profitable businesses. They are exempt from many zoning regulations. But these exemptions exist to protect disabled people, not print free money. They might call themselves a nonprofit but you need to look at the salaries for the managers and executives.
Love the comments here.
Love the comments here. Opioid crisis anyone?
WTF are you talking about?
The opioid crisis has hit many, many communities- why should we be excited that some sleazos from Quincy are concentrating all of these sober houses in Dorchester instead of distributing them around through the various communities impacted (i.e. all of them).
I don't see any comments here slagging the idea of a sober home, just the fact that suburban businessmen are making money warehousing recovering addicts in our neighborhoods in Boston.
Quincy has the detox centers.
Quincy has the detox centers.
It works for people who want
It works for people who want to get sober, regardless of who owns the property. Sober houses are needed to help recovering addicts and alcoholics back into society. No body wants them in their neighborhood though. They just post on the internet how badly they feel for people struggling to get and stay clean and\or sober.
Crisis sure, but are they helping or exploiting the recovering?
If, as the reported behaviour implies, they're just stuffing beds and taking money from state/municipal programs, without providing adequate supports and safety to the residents and the neighborhood, then aren't they just as much a part of the crisis - ie drug war profiteers?
programs or housing
Not all sober housing has a programing component. The individual rents a sober housing slot and participates in out patient treatment. Service providers may visit but no one is on duty managing the house. Sobriety is a condition of the lease, but that's about it.
The thing is that substance abuse treatment as a business is exploding, and not all of these programs are high quality. For instance, they reported that 30 mattresses were moved into the house. A non sober house would never be allowed to have that many people living together. It is basically a shelter that isn't free. We need shelter's too, but no one is trying to put one of these in Beacon Hill.
vulnerable people
I have two sober houses on my street, and I am grateful that they exist. A lot of these people are court ordered to live in sober housing. If they couldn't live there, they might be detained in jail. So they pay a high rent for shared bathroom and shared kitchen. In some places, shared room as well.
Everyone knows the bad stories about unsober sober homes, but recovery is generally more successful when it feels voluntary. The sober houses near me are quiet. I didn't even know until I saw the owner, a friend and she told me she was checking on something.
I do think that we need this housing, but I don't trust these owners.
I'm a homeowner, how can I
I'm a homeowner, how can I tell if my house is sober? Starting to be suspicious...
Interesting corollary
Story about neighbors complaining about noise = "Everyone complaining should go live somewhere else"
Story about neighbors who are fighting to give up alcohol = "The people who rent to them are scum"
Kind of a slap in the face to a recovering alcoholic to turn them right back into victims who can't be responsible for themselves, isn't it? Of course they're all in Dorchester. Once more for the people in the back: Markets (clap) work (clap). They're not on Beacon Hill because somebody who didn't spend all their money on getting drunk outbid for the artificially finite space.
Zoning laws consolidated all these people (whom I haven't seen accused once in 13 comments of being noisy) into a single neighborhood. Don't forget to spit on your neighborhood boomer NIMBYist today.