GROUP HOME REGULATIONS WOULD GIVE CITY LITTLE CONTROL

Richmond council is debating new group home regulations, but they may do
little to satisfy those who raised the issue in the first place.

"You're really not effectively doing very much," Mayor Malcolm Brodie said
about recommendations made in a staff report presented to a council
committee Tuesday.

Under the proposed plan, the recommendations of the Group Home Task Force,
with some staff revisions, would be approved. This calls on the city to
notify residents within a five-home radius of a proposed facility and
solicit their comments. The new facility would be subject to a one-year
probation period, and a second notification would be made before the permit
is renewed.

But these are contingent upon a group home being licensed and, under new
provincial statutes, only facilities providing medical care are required to
apply for a license.

As a result, most group homes could be established without the city's
knowledge, and the city could exert little control-something that would not
please the outspoken group that has been calling for a bylaw governing drug
and alcohol recovery homes.

Staff has recommended a small location limitation, that all group homes
with seven to 10 people be at least 200 metres from any other residential
care home or facility.

Because of the changes at the provincial level, Brodie says the only
choices available to the city that have any relevance are to either stick
with the status quo, or create a special bylaw requiring public input
before a recovery home can open its doors.

Otherwise, the efforts are futile.

"I felt the Group Home Task Force came up with a very viable plan," Brodie
said. "But it depended upon almost all premises being licensed."

Brodie rejects a bylaw for recovery homes, saying it would be struck down
in court as a violation under the Charter of Rights.

But task force member John Wong said the city should take that risk.

"The city always worries about human rights issues for the alcohol and drug
rehab occupants," Wong said in a prepared statement. "Then where is the
human rights of those people who come out...to express their wish for a bylaw?"

Task force member Everett Mackenzie believes the city has done all that it
can to exercise what power it has.

"This is as close as we can get to any kind of control," he said. "I don't
know what you'd say in a bylaw: 'you can't have a group home in Richmond if
100 people don't want it?'"

City staff have stated that in the past 10 years, other than the uproar
surrounding Turning Point recovery home, there has been only one
group-home-related complaint.

The report goes to council Monday.