The Orange County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will consider the first draft of an ordinance to regulate sober-living facilities in the county.
State law requires facilities that offer alcohol or drug abuse programs to register with counties, but Orange County officials are unaware of any county in California that has a registry.
Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, who has assembled a task force to crack down on the industry, is pushing for the county to adopt an ordinance regulating the sober-living industry.
"There's no way for us to track them or inspect them to make sure they can only provide the services they are authorized to provide," Board of Supervisors Chairman Andrew Do said. "These halfway houses can't have treatment or testing programs, but many of them do anyway because nobody regulates them."
The proposed ordinance would require operators to register, making them available for random and periodic inspections by the Orange County Health Care Agency.
"Can you even open up a lemonade stand without getting an inspection and an OK from the health department, and yet you have these halfway houses dealing with people, especially from out of state, and basically providing a medical service that is completely unregulated and unknowable in terms of locations and operations," Do said.
According to the state Department of Health Care Services, there were 140 licensed outpatient drug and alcohol addiction treatment and recovery centers, and 323 halfway houses in Orange County as of Aug. 8.
"This does not include unlicensed facilities or numbers of sober living homes, many of which are operating as treatment centers," according to a county staff report.
Rackauckas recently filed criminal charges against 11 people he said were involved in a multi-million-dollar insurance fraud scheme at a sober- living facility.
