AREA CITIES NOT PULLING THEIR WEIGHT

Joey Archuleta lived in my North San Jose neighborhood for months and I
didn't know it. He was an addict and alcoholic living in a recovery home
just up the street. I didn't even know the home existed. There's more I
didn't know.

He had spent some time in San Quentin prison. Everybody knows the inmates,
even non-violent offenders like Archuleta, leave the Big House as hardened
criminals, right?

I didn't know Archuleta played with his children in the neighborhood park,
next to the children of neighbors who didn't know it, either.

"Nobody ever said anything and we never bothered anyone," he told me
recently. "We blended in."

But not for long.

When the recovery home applied to build a 125-bed treatment center on the
site, most of my neighbors got worried. Some went berserk. Archuleta and
his kids stopped visiting the park lest the neighbors find out.

It didn't matter. The city council shot down the treatment center last
week, on the phony argument that maybe a park or improved interchange
belonged there instead. The neighborhood rejoiced.

Works better than prison

Too bad they never got to know Joey Archuleta.

They would have learned he was undergoing a 16-week treatment program for
addicts. He was enrolled in classes on how to avoid domestic abuse, child
abuse and how to avoid a relapse into booze and dope. He never got in
trouble the six months he spent there.

They would have learned he did well, found a good construction job and
became a supervisor at another recovery home. He's living proof that
community-based treatment for addicts and alcoholics works better than prison.

California voters knew this two years ago when they approved Proposition
36, which steers most non-violent drug or alcohol offenders into treatment
instead of jail. Right now there are about 36,000 of them on the state's
waiting list. Where are we going to put them?

Well, not in my neighborhood!

I'm serious. I opposed the treatment center in my neighborhood for two
reasons: A small hospital -- which is closer to what was proposed --
belongs in a commercial zone, not a residential neighborhood. More
important, all towns and cities have the moral if not legal obligation to
pull their Proposition 36 weight. That's not the case.

Of the 112 certified recovery homes and treatment centers in the county
today, 77 are in San Jose. Most of those are in South San Jose. There is
only one in my neighborhood, but seven more near us in the central city.

Some cities have none

We can argue endlessly over who's getting dumped on, or we can turn our
attention to some of our municipal neighbors.

How many certified recovery homes does Palo Alto have?

Zero!

How about Mountain View?

Zero.

Saratoga? Zero.

Monte Serena? Zero.

Los Altos Hills? Zero.

Sunnyvale, Cupertino and Los Gatos are barely better. They have one each.

The tired excuse in these towns is that recovery homes can't afford the
high cost of housing there. It's the American free market at play, blah,
blah, blah.

This is true, but any town that wants to host a recovery home can find a
way, just as some of them have provided low-income housing or soup kitchens.

The state can help by subsidizing rents or mortgages for recovery homes in
rich towns, or to force them to open up by any legal means.

Now, my fellow San Joseans, we can go on treating the Joey Archuletas among
us as wanton criminals, or we can help them get well as we push the
do-nothing towns to do their share. What's it going to be?