An administrative hearing on a house in Catonsville for people recovering from alcohol and drug addictions that Baltimore County has cited multiple times for being an illegal rooming and boarding house, originally scheduled for Monday, Nov. 7, has been postponed.
County lawyers agreed instead to discuss a potential resolution with the homeowner's lawyer first, said the lawyer, Stanley Alpert, whose son, Scott Alpert, owns the residence on Mellor Avenue.
That meeting will likely occur early next week, Stanley Alpert said. No hearing date has been set.
Scott Alpert had promised to argue at the hearing that the county housing code under which he was cited, which limits the number of unrelated tenants in a single-family home to two, violates the federal Fair Housing Act when applied uniformly to tenants — like his — who are recovering from addictions.
Alpert, a licensed clinical counselor who runs Central Maryland Addiction Counseling in Ellicott City, said the county must provide the three unrelated adult tenants of his Mellor home with "reasonable accommodations" under the code that help them meet their need to cohabitate with others in recovery.
"They can't have any other requirements than a normal family has," he said.
Judges have come to similar conclusions in cases in other states, and the U.S. Department of Justice has said that jurisdictions with codes like Baltimore County's must provide "reasonable accommodations" for people with disabilities, including alcohol or drug addictions.
Stanley Alpert said the county's lawyers requested the parties meet to "resolve this matter" in private instead of at a hearing.
"I believe that they know that they are incorrect in their position," he said.
Arnold Jablon, director of permits, approval and inspections for the county, said that county lawyers agreed to "try to reach some sort of agreement on bringing the property into compliance," but that it was not a matter of the county being in the wrong.
"There are times when the county says, 'We know we're right, but we're still willing to talk to you to resolve the issue,' " he said.
He added, "If we can arrive at a solution that complies with both county and federal law, I'm all for it."
Scott Alpert said he had planned to have Michael Gimbel, the county's former drug czar, as an expert witness at the hearing.
Gimbel, who was fired in 2002 when his position as head of the county's Bureau of Substance Abuse was consolidated into the health department, said he was surprised by the county's stance regarding Alpert's home.
"My position in my 22 years (with the county) was that we should be looking to increase the availability of not just drug treatment, but what we call aftercare, which is the most critical part because so many people relapse," he said.
Gimble said there are likely thousands of sober homes throughout the Baltimore area like Alpert's, but that there is still a tremendous need.
During his tenure, Gimbel said he was well aware of those houses, knew they were protected by federal law, and worked to cooperate with their owners so the county could negotiate where they were created without breaking federal law, he said.
That the county is now citing the owner of a sober home may be an indication that, by "lumping" the substance abuse bureau into the larger "bureaucracy" of the health department, the county has lost sight of basic substance abuse issues, he said.
"It might be the reality that they don't know what's going on," he said.
Jablon said Gimbel is wrong, and that the issue is one he is very familiar with.
"The county has always worked with these group homes," he said. "This particular situation, which is not new, has come up various times."
Others in the county did seem unfamiliar with how the federal law may apply to the local code, however.
Monique Lyle, a spokeswoman with the county's health department, said Gregory Branch, chair of the Baltimore County Drug and Alcohol Abuse Council, could not speak about Alpert's case.
But Lyle did say, in an email, that Branch said the council "has not dealt" with the issue of the FHA restricting how the county can apply its tenant code to people with addictions before.
According to its website, the 23-member council's mission is "to develop strategies and priorities that aim to meet the substance abuse prevention and treatment needs of the County, while expanding, strengthening, and sustaining an integrated prevention, intervention, and treatment system that will result in reductions in the incidence and consequence of substance abuse and related problems in Baltimore County."
Jablon said it is not uncommon for administrative hearings to be postponed.