LOGAN – City officials have issued a controversial conditional use permit (CUP) for a residential treatment facility in the fashionable Cliffside neighborhood in Logan and the neighbors are quietly up in arms.
The neighbors’ objection isn’t so much with the facility itself, according to J. Brett Chambers, a local attorney with Harris, Preston & Chambers, LLC. Rather, they object to the way that their voices were unilaterally excluded from the decision-making process by Michael DeSimone, the city’s community development director.
According to court documents, DeSimone authored an Aug. 4 city memo in which he justified waiving Logan’s maximum occupancy limit of three unrelated individuals in a residential dwelling and its requirements for a public hearing prior to issuing a conditional use permit.
Citing the U.S. Fair Housing Act, the Utah Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act, DeSimone wrote that those laws make it “… discriminatory to take public comment and involve the public in a decision that is generally technical and inherently administrative, especially where public clamor may be motivated by ill-conceived stereotypes of the disabled or based on ignorance or prejudices.”
Chambers’ clients have responded both administratively – by petitioning an appeal before the city’s Land Use Board – and legally, with an ex parte request for a temporary restraining order filed with First District Court on Aug. 6.
A hearing on the City Land Use appeal is slated for 3 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 15.
The property in question is located at 1257 Eastridge Drive, an existing three-level home with seven bedrooms and 3.5 baths occupying approximately 4,000 square feet.
Finding Hope, LLC proposes to house up to 12 individuals suffering from a disability associated with debilitating substance use disorders, post traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression there.
City documents indicate that the residential facility will house women ranging in age from 18 to 70 who suffer from an aforementioned disability (generally substance abuse) and are seeking treatment on a voluntary basis.
In its application for a CUP, Finding Hope indicated that it would not accept individuals residing at 1257 Eastridge Drive in lieu of confinement or as part of a court-ordered treatment program.
The facility’s residents would be supervised by up to three staff members during normal business hours and one or two staff members outside of normal business hours.
While he supports the right of people in recovery to access housing, Tarrin Rasmussen finds the lack of transparency and absence of community notification on the part of city officials to be troubling.
“As a parent raising a young child directly next door to this facility,” says Rasmussen, one of Chambers’ clients, “I feel strongly that residents should be informed when such high-occupancy, commercially operated facilities are approved in residential areas, so that we can address safety, parking and neighborhood impact concerns before final decisions are made.”
“They key issue here isn’t that the neighbors oppose any treatment facility,” Chambers explains. “It’s the significant nature of what was approved without any public process.
“Something like six residents might have been more reasonable,” he notes, “but 12 in a residential home with 24-hour operations and a rotating staff is a completely different animal.”
The local attorney also adds that city officials essentially admitted in DeSimone’s memo of Aug. 4 that they eliminated the public process to silence the community and avoid a potential lawsuit from the commercial facility.
Calls to DeSimone’s office on Aug. 20 were not returned.
The Logan City Land Use Appeal Board will meet at 3 p.m. on Sept. 15 at Logan City Hall, located at 290 North 100 West in Logan.