TREATMENT CENTERS

A Neighborhood Improvement Many Fear

Drug treatment providers hear this story over and over.

A treatment center wants to open a new residential program. Neighbors start
screaming. Heeding their cries, politicians try to kill the project. Often,
they succeed, and an invaluable opportunity to get addicts off the streets
is lost.

Once in a while, though, a project is grudgingly approved, and an amazing
transformation takes place. People who vehemently opposed it become
supporters. That's because treatment programs don't harm neighborhoods.
They help them.

"None of the fears of neighbors has ever been realized. Not one," said
Father Richard Perozich, pastor of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart Church in
City Heights. A treatment program run by CRASH moved into that neighborhood
a decade ago, over the loud objections of neighbors. Today, those same
neighbors are glad CRASH is part of the community. The reason is that CRASH
clients and employees work to improve the neighborhood, from cleaning up
trash to doing maintenance at the parish school. And, contrary to community
fears, active drug users don't hang around recovering drug addicts. "It's
the last place they want to be," Father Perozich said. "Treatment centers
repel drug users from a neighborhood."

In Chula Vista, Nosotros, a drug-recovery home targeted for Latino men,
opened after a contentious battle with neighbors, under the condition that
city officials conduct an annual review of neighborhood complaints. But
there were no complaints.

Still, elected officials and other opponents continually try to block these
facilities. Opponents in Imperial Beach have apparently succeeded in
fending off an impressive, multimillion-dollar project by Delancey Street,
the cream of treatment programs. In 1995, Escondido and Chula Vista both
killed needed treatment projects for nonviolent female offenders and their
children. San Diego killed a similar program in 1997.

Proposition 36, the statewide initiative requiring treatment of nonviolent
drug offenders rather than imprisonment, passed overwhelmingly last fall.
Among its requirements: None of the $120 million it provides each year can
be spent on treatment inside jails or prisons. It must be spent on
treatment in the community. Sixty-one percent of California voters
supported treatment in their back yards.

At the Feb. 27 county Board of Supervisors meeting, where the initial
proposal for implementing Proposition 36 was approved, at least two
supervisors intimated that because the board unanimously opposed the
initiative, it needn't feel compelled to support increased treatment in
their districts.

The reality is that supervisors must honor it. What's more, San Diego
County has supported increased drug treatment for criminal offenders for
years. It was the drug decriminalization in Proposition 36 that county
officials opposed, not the increased treatment.

For the good of our communities, elected officials should lead the way in
advocating community-based drug treatment. County supervisors know
addiction is the main cause of crime. If criminal addicts don't get the
treatment they need, they'll be back committing worse crimes -- right in
our back yards.