Public Comment re. Draft Certified Recovery Residences Regulations (12VAC35-260)

Submitted by: Oxford House, Inc.

Prepared by: Paul Stevens

Date: September 25, 2026

1. Summary

Oxford House, Inc. (OHI) appreciates the opportunity to comment on the draft amendments to 12VAC35-260. OHI supports meaningful oversight of recovery residences, transparency for residents and the public, and strong protections for people living in recovery housing. OHI participated in the workgroup convened under the 2025 legislation (SB 838) whose work led to this draft.

OHI’s concerns are serious. The draft applies one set of requirements, written for a staffed, commercial, owner-operated model, to every certified recovery residence. That includes roughly half of Virginia’s certified recovery residences — the Oxford Houses — which are self-governed, non-commercial, and have no staff. Several provisions can be satisfied only by a residence with paid staff or that operates as a business. The draft’s definition of “operator” also leaves unclear who, if anyone, in an Oxford House is responsible for the duties the draft assigns to an operator. And two of the draft’s complaint-reporting deadlines assume a credentialing entity can learn of, confirm, and report a complaint faster than an unstaffed, statewide network of houses realistically can.

OHI asks the Department to (1) revise the draft so that self-governed, non-commercial, unstaffed residences can comply; (2) state plainly whether its definition of “operator” includes the members of an Oxford House; and (3) give a credentialing entity a minimum of 72 hours, rather than the next business day or 24 hours, to notify the Department of the complaints described in Section 5.C below. Specific requests are set out in Sections 5 and 6.

2. “Uniform” was never meant to mean “identical”

The 2025 enactment directed the workgroup to develop “a uniform set of certification criteria for all recovery residences.” From the introduction of the bill through the workgroup’s meetings, OHI raised the concern that commercial, staffed recovery residences and Oxford Houses, which are non-commercial and entirely unstaffed, cannot be regulated in the same way. Either the staffed models will be inadequately regulated, or the regulations will impose requirements the unstaffed model cannot meet. OHI raised this specifically about the word “uniform” with the bill’s sponsor, State Senator VanValkenburg. On multiple occasions, both in person prior to passage and during the workgroup, the sponsor assured OHI that “uniform” did not mean “identical” and there was room for treating different models differently.

OHI therefore understood that the workgroup and the sponsor shared one understanding of the word. At the meeting when the draft was released, OHI asked whether its drafters knew that about half of Virginia’s certified recovery residences are unstaffed and non-commercial. OHI understood the Department’s response to be that it had given the question consideration but felt compelled by the statutory language to make the regulations the same for, and applicable to, every recovery residence. The Department, in other words, read “uniform” to mean “identical.” The sponsor and the workgroup did not.

The ordinary meaning of “uniform” is consistent and even-handed. A uniform standard can be written in terms of outcomes that every residence must achieve: every resident can raise a complaint and be heard; complaints involving safety, injury, or abuse reach the Department promptly; residents know their rights; neighbors have someone to contact. Different models can meet the same outcomes by different means. The Department’s own reading, which requires every residence to meet them through paid staff and a business structure, is not compelled by the word “uniform,” and the 2026 legislation (SB 270 / HB 932), as the Department describes it, directs “minimum” certification standards.

3. Why a single staffed, commercial-model standard does not work

Oxford Houses have operated since 1975 as democratically self-governed, self-supported homes with no paid staff, chartered by OHI and run by their members under the Oxford House Manual. Each house is an unincorporated association that rents its home. OHI is the credentialing entity. It charters, trains, and monitors houses for compliance with the charter and the model, but it is not the operator. Research shows this self-governance is central to why the model outperforms others on measures including long-term abstinence, length of stay, reduced recidivism, and employment and income. Oxford House is widely recognized as the gold standard of evidence-based recovery housing. It is supported by decades of longitudinal research by DePaul University, and it is the only recovery housing model ever accepted to SAMHSA’s National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices. The problems the draft is designed to address, such as overcrowding, financial exploitation, resident brokering, and abuses of authority, have arisen in commercial, staffed models, not in Oxford Houses. The draft would nonetheless fall hardest on the model with the strongest research record.

Existing law already recognizes that more than one model exists, and the draft carries this forward:

• Section 37.2-431.1 of the Code of Virginia, and the current, unchanged 12VAC35-260-20(A), already require an operator to hold a credential, accreditation, or charter from “the Virginia Association of Recovery Residences or Oxford House, Inc.” The chapter has presumed two credentialing entities with two sets of standards since before this draft.
• The draft’s definition of “level of support” refers to NARR standards, which themselves describe residences with differing degrees of staffing, including peer-run residences without paid staff.
• The existing regulation, 12VAC35-260-40(C), unchanged by the draft, already requires an Oxford House to disclose to prospective residents that it is “self-governed and unstaffed.” The Department has therefore long known that Oxford Houses are unstaffed and has certified them on that basis. Yet other, newly added provisions, listed in Section 5, can be met only with staff or a business structure.

The variance process in 12VAC35-260-100 is not a solution. A variance is discretionary, is requested residence by residence, and may be limited in duration. A structural feature of an entire certified model cannot depend on a case-by-case exception. If the draft is adopted as written, Oxford Houses would face an impossible choice between noncompliance and abandoning the model. Because certification is now mandatory in Virginia, a residence that cannot be certified cannot operate. In effect, the draft would prevent the Commonwealth’s 186 Oxford Houses, about half of its certified residences, from operating at all. That would reduce recovery housing capacity in the Commonwealth by over 1,500 beds, including in communities where an Oxford House is the only certified recovery housing available, and OHI does not believe the General Assembly intended that result. OHI also notes that regulations which make lawful operation impossible for a housing model used by people in recovery raise concerns under federal fair housing law, and OHI reserves those concerns.

4. The definition of “operator”

The draft defines “operator” as “the owner of a recovery residence or his designated agent who is responsible for operation of the recovery residence under the provisions of this chapter.” The definition does not clearly describe any person in an Oxford House:

• The owner of the property is typically a landlord who leases the home to the house and has no role in its operation.
• The house is run by its members, collectively, through democratic self-governance and elected officers who serve limited terms. Members are not “designated agents” of an owner.
• OHI is the credentialing entity. It is not the owner or the operator, and it does not manage individual houses.

The answer matters because the draft assigns significant duties to the operator, including receiving and investigating complaints, receiving complaints about the operator itself, notifying the Department, protecting residents during investigations, ensuring investigations are conducted by an uninvolved person, appealing decisions, holding SCC documentation, and designating staff. If the operator of an Oxford House is its members acting collectively, many of those duties cannot be carried out as written, and some are circular: members would be asked to investigate complaints about themselves and report every interpersonal conflict to the Department. If the Department does not consider the members to be the operator, then it is unclear who the Department believes is responsible for those duties.

OHI respectfully asks the Department to state, in the regulation: (a) whether the Department intends “operator” to include the members of a self-governed, unstaffed residence; and (b) whether or not each operator duty in the chapter is intended to apply to a residence without an owner-operator or staff.

5. Provisions that cannot be met by a self-governed, unstaffed residence

To the extent the Department intends the following provisions to apply to a residence with no staff, owner-operator, or business structure, OHI requests the changes below. The provisions fall into three groups: those that presume paid staff, those that presume a commercial business entity, and complaint-reporting deadlines that presume on-site staff. Section references are to 12VAC35-260.

5.A. Provisions that require or presume paid staff

5.B. Provisions that require or presume a commercial business entity

5.C. Complaint-reporting deadlines that presume on-site staff

OHI recognizes that 72 hours is still a demanding turnaround for an organization that relies on a small number of field staff to serve residences across the Commonwealth, but it is achievable in a way that the current deadlines are not. If the Department determines that the members of a self-governed residence are themselves the “operator” under Section 4, OHI asks that the same minimum apply to the residence’s parallel duties in 140(D)(2)(ii) and 140(D)(3)(iii).

5.D. Complaint-process duties that depend on who is the “operator”

6. Additional clarifications requested

1. Cross-reference errors. 50(B)(2) cites “12VAC355-260-40 (B) (1)”; the application requirements it means to reference are in 50(B)(1), not 40(B)(1) — and “12VAC355” should read “12VAC35.” Because 50(B)(2) is the provision that lets a charter stand in for the application, this error puts that protection in doubt. 12VAC35-260-60 similarly begins “Notwithstanding the provisions of 12VAC3-260-40,” and 12VAC35-260-120(F) refers to disciplinary action “enumerated within 12VAC3-260-100,” although disciplinary actions are in 130 and variances are in 100. These should be corrected so that the charter-based and disciplinary provisions operate as intended.
2. Duplicate text in 12VAC35-260-40. Subsection C and a second, separately lettered subsection B both require disclosure that an Oxford House is “self-governed and unstaffed.” OHI assumes this duplication is a drafting artifact of the redline. Whichever version is retained must keep that disclosure, which reflects the existing, unchanged regulation.
3. Property documentation, 50(B)(1)(k). Please confirm that a lease with the specific Oxford House named as the lessee, or written permission from the property owner, satisfies the requirement to document “a legal agreement that the applicant has permission to operate a recovery residence on the premises.”
4. Square footage, 220(B), conflicts with existing law. The existing, unchanged 12VAC35-260-20(B)(3) requires a recovery residence to meet the credentialing entity’s own square-footage standard or the standard in § 36-105.4 of the Code of Virginia, “whichever is greater.” Section 36-105.4 requires at least 70 square feet of floor area in any bedroom, and at least 50 square feet per occupant in a bedroom occupied by more than one person. The draft’s new 220(B) instead sets a flat floor of “no less than 50 square feet of floor space per resident,” with no reference to 20(B)(3) or § 36-105.4. A single-occupancy bedroom of, for example, 55 square feet would satisfy 220(B) as written while violating the 70-square-foot floor that § 36-105.4 and 20(B)(3) already require. OHI asks the Department to either delete 220(B) as redundant, or revise it to cross-reference 20(B)(3) and § 36-105.4 directly, so the chapter does not state two different, conflicting minimums.
5. “Complaint to” versus “complaint regarding” the recovery residence. 140(B)(1) gives a resident the right to make a complaint “regarding the recovery residence or the operator,” and 140(D)(1) refers to complaints “regarding the recovery residence’s operator.” 140(C), by contrast, applies “when a resident makes a complaint to the recovery residence.” Please clarify whether subsection C is meant to reach only a complaint submitted directly to the residence itself, as distinct from a complaint made to the Department, a credentialing entity, or another agency under 140(B)(3).
6. No stated channel for complaining directly to a credentialing entity. The chapter assumes, in 140(D)(2)(iii) and (D)(3)(iv), that a credentialing entity already has a complaint in hand, but nowhere states that a resident, family member, or member of the public may bring a complaint to a credentialing entity in the first place, or what the credentialing entity must then do. This gap applies equally to both credentialing entities named in the chapter, not only to OHI. OHI asks the Department to add a provision recognizing that a complaint about a recovery residence or its operator may be made directly to the residence’s credentialing entity, with the entity subject to review and response obligations comparable to those 140(C) places on a residence.
7. Provisions OHI supports. OHI supports retaining the provisions in 50(B)(2) and 70(B)(b) that allow evidence of a charter from, or membership in, a credentialing entity to stand in for a separate application or renewal application. OHI asks that they be corrected and clarified as described above rather than removed.

7. Requests

OHI respectfully requests that the Department:

• revise the draft so that self-governed, unstaffed, non-commercial residences can comply with the provisions identified in Section 5;
• state its understanding of “operator” and how each operator duty applies to an Oxford House;
• give a credentialing entity a minimum of 72 hours, rather than the next business day or 24 hours, to notify the Department of the complaints described in Section 5.C;
• release a revised draft and reconvene the workgroup, or otherwise provide stakeholders a further opportunity to review the changes, before the draft advances to the formal three-stage regulatory process; and
• provide a written response to the questions raised in this comment.

OHI shares the Department’s goals of resident safety, transparency, and accountability, and has worked with the Department on recovery housing in Virginia for more than three decades. OHI is glad to meet with Department staff to discuss any of these points and to help draft workable language.

Respectfully submitted,

Paul Stevens

Senior Advisor for State Policy & Public Affairs

Oxford House, Inc.

paul.stevens@oxfordhouse.org  |  804.475.5130