As an owner and operator of both a licensed behavioral health treatment provider offering ASAM services and VARR-accredited recovery residences, I strongly support meaningful standards that protect individuals in recovery from unsafe housing, exploitation, fraud, resident brokering, and unethical practices.
I also believe it is critically important that Virginia preserve the distinction between clinical treatment and recovery housing.
Because I operate on both sides of that distinction every day, I understand firsthand the regulatory, documentation, staffing, training, compliance, and administrative infrastructure appropriately required of licensed clinical programs. Recovery residences are different, and intentionally so.
Recovery residences are not treatment programs. They are community-based environments built around the Social Model of Recovery, peer relationships, personal responsibility, mutual accountability, lived experience, and connection to the broader recovery community.
My concern is that the proposed regulations introduce a level of documentation, reporting, inspection, corrective action, complaint investigation, policy, and administrative infrastructure that increasingly resembles the regulatory framework applied to licensed treatment providers. While individual requirements may appear reasonable in isolation, their cumulative administrative and financial burden could fundamentally change the nature and accessibility of recovery housing.
The proposed requirements create substantial administrative responsibilities for recovery residences.
Many of the people who make recovery residences successful are individuals with lived experience whose greatest qualifications are their recovery, leadership, judgment, and ability to connect with and mentor others. I do not believe Virginia should create a system in which increasingly complex administrative requirements become a barrier to employing the very people who embody the Social Model of Recovery.
I am also concerned about duplicative oversight. VARR-accredited residences already operate under established accreditation standards based upon NARR standards. Before imposing additional state requirements in areas already addressed through accreditation, I encourage DBHDS to identify the specific resident protection gained by each additional requirement and determine whether that objective can instead be accomplished through the existing credentialing structure.
I particularly encourage DBHDS to carefully consider the proposed complaint and enforcement process.
Residents, families, employees, and community members absolutely should have a meaningful mechanism for reporting legitimate health, safety, ethical, and operational concerns. At the same time, any regulatory complaint system should recognize that the filing of a complaint is not itself evidence that a violation occurred.
Recovery residences operate in an environment in which conflicts can arise among residents, former residents, employees, former employees, neighbors, and even competing providers. An effective regulatory system should therefore be capable of distinguishing credible allegations requiring immediate intervention from complaints that are unsubstantiated, duplicative, retaliatory, or unrelated to resident health and safety.
This becomes especially important when the potential consequences include restrictions on admissions or the suspension or revocation of a residence's certification. Those actions do not affect only the operator. They can immediately affect every individual living in that residence, potentially disrupting housing, employment, treatment, recovery-support relationships, transportation, and established recovery communities.
For that reason, I encourage DBHDS to incorporate clear due-process and proportionality safeguards into the complaint process. Except where credible information indicates an imminent threat to resident health or safety, enforcement should follow investigation and substantiation rather than the mere filing of an allegation. Operators should receive adequate notice of the allegations, a meaningful opportunity to respond and provide documentation, and an appropriate corrective-action process before sanctions that could displace residents are imposed.
The regulations should also establish a reasonable mechanism for identifying patterns of demonstrably frivolous, duplicative, or bad-faith complaints without discouraging legitimate reporting or creating barriers for residents who need to raise concerns.
A strong complaint system should protect both objectives: making it easy to report genuine concerns while ensuring that serious regulatory consequences are based upon substantiated findings and proportionate to the actual risk presented.
I also encourage the Commonwealth to carefully consider the potential effect on recovery-housing capacity and affordability.
Compliance has a cost. Larger organizations may be able to absorb additional administrative infrastructure; smaller community-based recovery residences may not. If responsible operators close, decline to expand, or increase resident fees because of regulatory costs, the unintended result could be fewer—not more—safe recovery housing options for Virginians who need them.
I respectfully encourage DBHDS to revise the proposed framework to:
Maintain a clear regulatory distinction between recovery residences and ASAM 3.1 clinical treatment;
Establish a complaint process with appropriate due process, evidentiary thresholds, proportionality, and protections against misuse, while preserving accessible reporting of legitimate concerns;
Reserve emergency restrictions or closures for circumstances involving a substantiated or credibly demonstrated immediate threat to resident health or safety;
Consider the consequences to residents before taking enforcement action that could result in their displacement;
Eliminate unnecessary duplication of VARR/NARR accreditation requirements;
Evaluate the cumulative administrative and financial burden imposed on operators;
Protect the role of lived experience and the recovery workforce;
Prioritize risk-based oversight focused on health and safety, exploitation, fraud, resident brokering, serious misconduct, and demonstrated compliance concerns; and
Evaluate whether proposed requirements could unintentionally increase costs, reduce capacity, or force responsible recovery residences out of operation.
I believe strongly in accountability. As an operator of licensed treatment programs, I understand why rigorous clinical regulation is necessary. But recovery housing is not treatment, and regulating it as though it were risks eroding the characteristics that make recovery residences effective.
Likewise, a meaningful complaint process is essential to resident protection. But the integrity of that process depends on both accessibility for legitimate complainants and fundamental procedural fairness for providers. Regulatory authority that can interrupt or terminate the operation of a residence should include safeguards proportionate to the consequences, not only for the provider, but for the people who call that residence home.
Virginia can establish strong protections for residents without transforming recovery homes into clinical programs or creating unintended instability in the recovery-housing system. I urge DBHDS to preserve that balance and create a framework that protects residents, due process, the Social Model of Recovery, the recovery workforce, and access to safe and affordable recovery housing.