Prosperity Counseling LLC is one step closer to building a bridge between intensive addiction treatment and sober homes, now that the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) has approved the company’s proposal for transitional housing at 190 Winthrop Ave. The process of getting that approval, meanwhile, revealed a mismatch between regulatory language and the reality of what those services will entail, according to the counseling center’s leadership. BZA members voted 5 to 1 at their latest monthly meeting on Jan. 13 to grant Prosperity Counseling a special exception, allowing a transitional housing program with integrated mental health services where a sober home currently operates. BZA member Chris Peralta cast the sole vote against the special exception, though he refused to explain why when asked after the meeting. Now, Prosperity Founder Karen Tyson and Practice Manager Imani Knight are in the process of receiving a license from the state Department of Public Health. They currently anticipate opening the new program — which will house 12 people — sometime in the summer. According to Tyson, the program will fill an existing gap within New Haven’s network of addiction counseling services. In the current sober home, Tyson said, residents typically come straight from a residential rehab center. They currently live in the Winthrop Avenue house and receive therapy and case management off-site in a separate Prosperity Counseling building — while racing to find employment and housing before their time runs out. But according to Tyson, who built a career in addiction treatment after finding her own pathway to sobriety, clients often struggle with the transition between rehab and sober homes. Intensive treatment centers provide full-time therapeutic support and typically don’t allow clients to leave the premises. Sober homes, meanwhile, are designed as a temporary place to live as clients rebuild their lives, going out into the world to apply to jobs, look for apartments, and attend outpatient treatment. The state funds a portion of Prosperity House’s sober home beds, typically allowing clients to stay for a maximum of 90 days. (Prosperity House is a nonprofit affiliate of Prosperity Counseling.) The risk of relapse is highest in the early, vulnerable days and weeks of recovery, Tyson noted. “Coming back into the community, with all the stressors — it’s hard,” she said. “A lot of times, 90 days isn’t enough.” “Most of the time, they’re not ready” after that period, echoed Prosperity’s program director, Imani Knight. Tyson believes that many people benefit from a more extended off-ramp between a highly supervised rehab setting and a sober home with far less structure. So she and the Prosperity Counseling team are planning to create the city’s first-ever “Level 3.1” recovery program — a “clinically managed, low-intensity residential services” program, as classified by the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (DMHAS). In other words, Prosperity will integrate counseling services and extended supervision into the existing Winthrop Avenue sober house, providing onsite mental health support and allowing residents to leave the premises for approved purposes such as job interviews. As a 3.1 program, the Winthrop Avenue residence will accept people transitioning out of residential rehab for a 60- to 90-day stay covered by their insurance. Then, those individuals can move onto a sober home — potentially into a state-funded bed for another 90 days. Altogether, the program will extend the amount of time for which many clients will be able to receive counseling and housing support through a combination of insurance coverage and state funding. No Easy Zoning Fit Zoning board members at their January meeting. Over the course of the zoning approval process, the city had to figure out how to classify a kind of recovery program that hasn’t yet been founded in New Haven. According to Deputy Director of Zoning Abdul-Razak Zachariah, the city’s zoning code “didn’t have a unique line-item that made it easy for us” to identify how the proposed program fit into an RM-1 residential zone. In some ways, the program proposed for 190 Winthrop Ave. will be an enhancement of the sober home that Prosperity House already operates there. “It’s the exact same population” currently living in the 190 Winthrop Ave. house, said Tyson — but that population will receive a heightened level of structure and support under the new program. Still, zoning relief was necessary, according to Zachariah. The program is “different from a sober house, because a sober house does not inherently include these programmatic features,” Zachariah said. Typically, proposals that substantially deviate from the explicit permitted uses outlined in the zoning ordinance would require a “use variance” — a high-standard finding from the BZA that “zoning regulations allow no reasonable use to be made of the property in question” due to specific quirks of the property. In this case, however City Plan staff advised Prosperity to apply for a special exception, rather than a use variance. A special exception requires the BZA to evaluate whether the proposal is “in accord with the public convenience and welfare,” a substantially lower standard than the use variance. According to Zachariah, the integration of mental health services into a current sober home serving the same patient population “didn’t seem to warrant elevating it to a wholly different use.” In public hearings, City Plan staff compared the proposal to a few existing uses outlined in the zoning ordinance. They compared it to “custodial care facility,” which in the city’s zoning code is defined as a home with supportive services for people transitioning out of incarceration, even though the Prosperity clients do not necessarily have prior involvement with the criminal justice system. Custodial care facilities are allowed in RM-1 zones if they have a maximum of six residents, while Prosperity’s program intends to house 12 people. They also compared the program to a “sanitarium” or a “home for the aged and disabled,” which are permitted in the RM-1 zone by special exception. Staff advisory reports also cite Connecticut General Statutes §8-3e, which states: “No zoning regulation shall treat the following in a manner different from any single family residence: … any community residence that houses eight or fewer persons receiving mental health or addiction services and necessary staff persons paid for or provided by the Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services and that has been issued a license by the Department of Public Health under the provisions of section 19a-491, if a license is required.” The Prosperity program will house more than eight people, so it wasn’t automatically covered by this law. Zachariah noted that, due to the unusual nature of this zoning question, City Plan staff referred the matter to the City Plan Commission for an additional layer of review and public input. New Language Needed The sign outside Prosperity Counseling’s home base at 1435 Chapel St. Reflecting on the process of obtaining the zoning approval, Tyson and Knight said that there’s a need for new terminology in both the city’s zoning code and certain state regulatory processes — terminology that’s both more respectful of people in recovery and more accurate in describing the services they receive. For instance, she pointed to a term “mental health care facility,” which was used to describe the Prosperity Counseling home in zoning agendas and meeting notices. Tyson said she envisions 190 Winthrop Ave. as a homey, residential environment. Knight pointed out that the program would serve people who “are ready to reintegrate back into the community,” as written in DMHAS’ definition of a 3.1 program. She said that Prosperity screens applicants before admitting them to the program to ensure that they are a good fit. Zachariah said that as the city embarks on a thorough review and overhaul of the zoning ordinance, staff will examine “alignment with state definitions and regulations” and assess terms that have been “updated or phased out.” “While ‘sanitariums’ and ‘homes for the disabled’ as terms may be outdated,” Zachariah said, the staff currently looks at “the core of the intent” behind those words. Tyson hopes that the city will work together with the state to use terminology that inspires respect for people struggling with mental health or addiction challenges. “It’s a stigma,” said Tyson. “It’s not fair to people to make them seem like something’s wrong with them.” The post Transitional Housing Program Perseveres Thru Zoning Ambiguity appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less