Zoning and Licensing Your Drug Rehab – NIMBY
Zoning and licensing your drug rehab is a big deal. You will find most communities will not readily accept a new rehab in their community.
We have been working in the addiction treatment space for the past decade, since 2008. There is a lot of activity both in the demand for drugs and the demand for more addiction treatment centers. At the same time, we are seeing a surge in private equity and investors who want to enter the drug rehab space. It is easier for investors to purchase existing drug rehabs. If they are building de novo startups there are many complications including:
- Zoning
- Licensing
- Staffing
- Branding and Marketing
- Insurance Contracts
- EMR, HIPAA and Operations
- Clinical Care
Zoning is a huge deal because if you can’t get the zoning you don’t have the footprint to practice healthcare. Going through the zoning process can be an odyssey for many rehabs. You are best off hiring drug rehab consultants like ourselves to help you with the process. YOU WILL GET A LOT OF PUSHBACK FROM ZONING BOARDS.
We even heard today that a head of a zoning board lost their child to an overdose and they would not allow a rehab in their backyard which happened to be in an isolated rural location in the USA. This person what the most vocal AGAINST the rehab. Go figure? WTF!!!??? We think what goes around comes around. We bet they will be surprised in the end.
Their argument was there are criminals in drug rehabs that don’t belong in their neighborhoods.
- Murderers
- Rapists
- Robbers
- Burglars / Thieves
- Drug Addicts
OK, this sounds like a great argument. Most are just disheveled drug addicts. We have not experienced ANY neighborhood problems anywhere in the USA with addiction treatment centers. We know this business because we live it since 2008. Please send us articles where rehabs have brought criminals to your neighborhoods and we will publish the articles on our website for you.
What we have seen and what is true is you might face “cigarette smokers” standing outside waiting on a ride to their next meeting. OK, this does not look good and I don’t want this in my own back yard. If the rehabs can fence them in behind closed doors then it makes it a lot more palatable. We have not seen addicts in rehabs rob neighbors, assault neighbors or worse. So there seems to be a lot of FUD (fear uncertainty and doubt) about drug addicts and much of it is totally unwarranted.
Where there have been problems in the rehab industry have been in the sober living industry with addicts being introduced to human trafficking which is basically patient brokering. Also, many sober living residents have fallen victim to relapse and have overdosed and died. At the end of the day all of the problems have been self-inflicted on the addicts themselves and not the local communities at large.
We welcome comments and links to where rehabs in communities have has addicts creating quality of life problems and we will publish them here on this article and prove us wrong.
