My brother is alive because an Oxford House took him in when he had nowhere else to go. I'm his sister, and I watched the whole thing happen — the fear before he moved in, and the person he slowly became once he did.

I'm not against the state setting standards. I want these homes held accountable too. But reading through this proposal, a lot of it seems written for a house with paid staff and a company running things, and that's just not what an Oxford House is. There's no boss, no employees, no business behind it. It's residents who vote each other in, split the rent and bills, and check on each other in a way I don't think a hired staff member ever could. That's the whole reason it worked for my brother. So I'm asking for three things to be fixed.

One of the biggest problems is that the rules keep referring to a "staff member" — someone to handle complaints, someone to talk to neighbors on the house's behalf, someone to walk residents through the handbook. Oxford Houses don't have staff. The proposal even says so itself, calling them "self-governed and unstaffed." If that's true, the rules can't also require a staff member to do these things. Let the members or their elected officers do this work instead.

The proposal also never says who counts as the "operator" of the house — a word that shows up constantly and carries a lot of responsibility. By the definition given, that's the property owner or someone the owner appoints. But nobody in an Oxford House owns the house. They rent it from a landlord. If the state doesn't spell out who the operator actually is in that situation, residents could end up on the hook for obligations that were never theirs to carry.

Last, the proposal asks these homes to carry business insurance and register as a legal entity with the State Corporation Commission, as if they were companies. They aren't. They're roommates sharing a lease and splitting costs. Please don't make them jump through business hoops that have nothing to do with what they actually are.

My brother got his life back in a house like this. I'm asking you to write rules that make these homes safer without turning them into something they were never meant to be.

Sincerely,

Elise Lindquist