Councilmember Johnson.

Seeing five present, two absent.

Councilmember Johnson is excused.

Great.

Morning, everyone.

We have one item on our agenda today, which is the sober housing moratorium study.

I will open up Mr.

Bill Dermady to present this item.

Welcome, Mr.

Dermady.

Thank you, Council President, Council members.

What was being called the sober living study is now been christened with an umbrella term, congregate living zoning study to encompass everything in that section of code.

It's the same thing though.

And I've got some items I'll run through in the presentation today, but maybe first I'll just refresh you on the timeline.

You instituted the moratorium back in August, gave us one year to get a study back.

There was a planning commission public hearing in October.

Planning Commission then made the recommendation just last week.

So we're heading towards a uh March 4th first reading, March 11th public hearing at City Council.

So coming to you soon.

Um there are a number of categories of congregate living in our code to be aware of here that are addressed or at least considered in this study, including a sober house, just for definition terms, so we understand these.

Sober house is for people recovering from chemical dependency.

It is financially self-supporting, so it does not get outside funding.

It has no services, and it's intended to be like a family.

So that's a sober house as we call it in St.

Paul.

A it is sometimes confused with a supportive housing facility.

Supportive housing facility also can be for people recovering from chemical dependency.

And there are some other categories as well.

But these usually recur receive government funding and they have services.

Those are the two main categories to be aware of.

Uh there are some others that are addressed shelter for battery persons, license correctional community residential facility, overnight shelter, emergency housing.

And then rooming house is sort of its own category.

Um, but important to keep in mind anything that we do, you might want to think about would this push people to try to reclassify themselves as rooming houses.

Rooming houses are not allowed in as many places, and they usually have a conditional use permit attached to them.

That's like individually rented bedrooms with community living space, is basically what a rooming house is.

Mr.

Germany, before you keep going, just just to sort of hammer home the point.

Um, because I remember when I was on the planning commission and we were discussing the distance requirement between sober homes, and I remember at the time, um, much like you've described it here, but just to be super clear, a sober home at the time was described as it could just be you know, four or five unrelated adults who decide who are recovering from chemical dependency or from alcoholism, whatever the case might be, who say, you know, we're going to um live together so as to sort of support one another in staying clean and almost um much more informal than some of these other types that you're describing.

Is that still also true?

And therefore, I know we we talked about this as you know, this is this is a home like any other home, and in fact, it's probably like the least disruptive home you'll have on your block in some ways if folks are committing to that by living together.

Um so is that still also true?

That is the intent, but I will talk about an issue of how that intent has been stretched.

Okay.

Um, sometimes beyond recognition.

But that is still the intent of what a zoning a sober house sober house should be.

Okay.

Yes, correct.

Anyone else have any questions?

Because there's a this is a really important, I think, first slide, and I just want to make sure we stop there.

Case okay.

Thank you.

So I would put all of those into kind of three categories.

Sober houses, um, and they have a minimum separation distance, so they have to be certain distance from each other of 330 feet.

That's the sober house.

Then all these other kinds of congregate living that have services and usually outside funding, um, have to be generally a quarter mile from each other, 1,320 feet.

Downtown, it's less, it's only 600 feet of downtown.

And then rooming houses do not have separation distance requirements.

Uh those do not provide services of any kind, it's just where people live.

And to give you an idea of what those distances mean, these are typical blocks in St.

Paul.

About half our city has blocks of these size.

These are 600 feet from east to west.

So uh and then from north to north to south, 280 feet.

So if you had to be a quarter mile apart, that's essentially two blocks.

That's about two blocks apart.

Um, if you were 600 feet apart, you know, one block.

These are dated numbers, but just to give you an idea of orders of magnitude, in 2021, when we had a better handle on how many of each of these we had, we had about 60 sober houses, about 60 supportive housing facilities, and very few of the other categories.

So those are really the two that we hear about the most that we have the most of.

Thank you.

Just a quick question.

So given the kind of broad definition of sober house, we are they are required to register as a sober house, but presumably that doesn't account for kind of what the council president was describing of miscellaneous houses full of people who have paid sober.

Is that yes, if they have more than six people?

So if they are less than that, they qualify as a family or a household under our code.

And if they're anything above that, they need to register.

Um I'll get into how we've been registering, that's proposed to change to a different form of registration.

Thank you.

This is a very dated map, 10 years old or so.

Is it old?

Sorry.

I want to make sure nobody grabs this at home and thinks this is an actual representation of what's going on today.

Um make yourself very clear, Mr.

Dermtey.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Um, and even these terms are outdated, but uh just to help us here, congregate living under the current definition is the light blue, the royal blue, and the purple dots on this map.

Gives you an idea of how those were distributed in 2016 or so.

Um there's there are some patterns to it, but not as strong as the sober house patterns from uh 2015.

You can see there are definite clusters along Marshall Avenue, along I-94 on East Side, and especially in Fort Road.

Um quite a few sober houses at that time.

It's important to think about this because if people are moving from sober houses to supportive housing, you can see where there'd be pressure on uh potential over concentration in our city.

This is where the sober houses were, maybe where a lot of them maybe are thinking about realigning categories.

And along those lines, this is a map of variances we saw in 2025 for supportive housing facilities.

There are 10 blue marks on this slide.

Um there's a definite pattern of these.

Seven of them are either near West 7th or University Avenue.

That's where we have been seeing a lot of demand for supportive houses.

They were all sober houses that converted or wanted to convert.

And then there are three others one along Marshall, one near Grand, one near Jackson.

None on the east side.

It's a definite pattern to where people want to do these.

So as I've alluded to, one of the recent issues we've had, and and perhaps the primary reason that you enacted the moratorium is we had sober houses wanting to convert to supportive housing.

And that meant their minimum separation went from 330 feet from a sober house to 1320 from a whole range of different facilities, and many of them could not meet that.

Uh they said they didn't change much about what they were doing, uh just the funding source and a little bit about their services, um, and that's why we saw so many various requests.

The funding stream had changed in at least some of those cases, but if they were receiving outside funding before, they technically already were not sober houses under our code.

They may not have known that.

Um at least some of these were receiving funding from a third party and not directly from the state, which may have caused some of that confusion.

But if they were not financially self-supporting, they were not sober houses.

And just to that point, Mr.

Germany, if we if we learn because of an application, say to convert a sober house to supportive housing, um, I guess first of all, is that conversion that doesn't come through us, right?

That is that's a change that they're making on their own, and then they are seeking the variance from the separation requirements, but we don't have a say in whether or not they're converting, is that right?

Well, in a way we do.

It's not a council decision though on whether they convert or not.

If they wish to convert, they have to meet the zoning code regulations.

And if they can't, then they apply for a variance through the normal process.

And then if we find out because they're applying for a variance that, for example, they were accepting other funding, so they weren't actually a sober house under our code.

Is there any enforcement action that's taken in the current state, right?

You not only, I mean, you can't become supportive housing if we turn down that separation requirement variance, but also you're not allowed to operate this way currently.

Well, yes.

So the way DSI has been approaching this, they can receive their funding, but only up to what's considered a family.

So these ones that have wanted to convert, they can't go back to being a sober house because they're getting outside funding, and we know this for sure now.

Um so they are limited to six adults at their facilities.

And there are several facilities that are in limbo like this, waiting for this study to happen to see if they can ever go above six people.

So in the meantime, any sober house that applied for the variance that was not granted the variance but was figured out to not actually be a sober house, is just captain six people, is what you're saying.

That's right, yes.

Okay.

Thanks.

And to give you an idea of the distances from those variances last year, um, one was asking to be only 43 feet from another one.

That was kind of a special case, but most of the requests were to be between 500 and a thousand feet.

And again, this is a map of those variance requests.

Another issue that has come up in the last couple of years is large sober houses.

So I I alluded to this, kind of stressing the intent and stretching the intent of what a sober house is.

We had one potential operator who was seeking 30 plus residents in the sober house.

And again, this is a place with no staffing and no services, just uh people living together informally.

And our current zoning regulations and our reasonable accommodation practices may have allowed it.

They they went away, I um and have not been pursuing sites in St.

Paul lately, but our code may have allowed this.

And that's because we have language in our code that says a root request for reasonable accommodation shall automatically be granted, uh, if certain very easy to meet requirements are met.

And it also says in our code today, the maximum total number of residents permitted in the sober house is specified by the fire certificate of occupancy.

So in practice, DSI has been approving all or almost all of these reasonable accommodation requests to whatever amount is allowed by the fire certificate of occupancy, which goes above and beyond what the city has to do, except for if not for it being in our zoning code.

So that's another issue.

Um there's a legal context to understand here.

Um Americans with Disabilities Act and Fair Housing Amendments Act both give protections to people with disabilities.

And if you are recovering from substance abuse, you have a disability and you have these rights to housing.

Um the zoning code cannot discriminate against these protected classes.

Another legal context, there was a federal appeals court case that involved the city of St.

Paul back in 1990, family style versus city of St.

Paul, and it established that our minimum separation requirements were legal because they protected uh the patients from living in a reinstitutionalized environment, kept them in a normal community environment.

So that reasoning for our minimum separation distances was upheld.

Reasonable accommodations is another legal concept to understand.

We have to offer this under the federal law.

But at least two elements in our code today seem to go beyond the legal requirement.

Um is that we require all sober houses to request reasonable accommodations, even if they don't need any exceptions from code.

That's not really the point.

Um, so you'll see it's it's proposed that there's a different type of registration system.

And then these shall automatically be granted code language, goes beyond federal law.

There are uh criteria that are set up by federal law or case law, such as reasonableness, need for the accommodation to avoid discrimination, and whether it consists of a fundamental alteration of the zoning regulations.

That's different than shell automatically be granted.

State law has been changing over time too.

That is another thing to be aware of.

For one thing, sober house or sober home was not defined by the state at all when we created our definition.

In 2023, they created a sober home definition, and then last year they changed it.

It will take effect in 2027.

Those will be called recovery residencies.

So you can tell just by the flurry of activity at the state that they're very interested in this sober living situation and concerned about it.

Recovery residences will have two levels of optional certification.

Level one aligns more or less with our sober house definition.

No staffing, no funding.

Level two certification would be staff run facilities that are eligible for funding.

So that would push them more into our supportive housing category.

Also, just be aware of there are a number of funding programs at the state, and one of them is a freestanding room and board program.

That is being phased out.

It was always intended for rural areas.

It started to get used in the metro area at one point.

The intent behind that was different than how people were using it, so they're phasing it out.

Also, um this gets to what some things we heard quite a bit during the variance discussions last year.

Last April, at least two major service providers, New Way and Evergreen, stopped redistributing state funds to third parties to fund sober residences.

So they were providing the services, but not the housing.

They gave money to other people to provide the housing.

Due to some legal concerns about kickbacks and such, that was cut off.

They stopped doing that, and then the providers came to the state for other funds, whether it was housing supports or a different program.

Housing sports is the name of a state program that provides funding.

And that kicked them very definitively into our supportive housing category.

They probably should have been already if they were receiving funding from new New Way or Evergreen, they just didn't necessarily know it because it wasn't state funding.

Also, this came up several times.

Um initially, DSI said if you're providing meals, that makes you supportive housing.

Uh they changed that determination.

That's not really true.

So I think someone at there was a discussion at BCA if a piece if pizza is delivered on a regular basis just makes supportive housing.

No, it does not.

And there's a proposal to clarify that in code, but DSI changed changed their uh determination on that.

So nutritional services is what it says in code, and that's more than just bring in meals, that's providing counseling and such.

I appreciate the explanation as to why that delicious looking pizza is on the screen at a time when all of us might be a little hungry.

That's Eastside Pizzeria on uh Payne Avenue if anyone's here later.

Glad it's local.

Very nice.

Um and this this is actually a local sober house as well.

I'm I forget the name of it though.

So I'll I'd like to take you through the recommendations by the planning commission.

I do realize all of this is pretty dense material, so please stop me with any questions.

Um, one is to amend the reasonable accommodations process to make it align more with uh what federal law says.

Uh, two is to create a sober house registration rather than requiring reasonable accommodations for all sober houses.

So then people would only apply if they needed reasonable accommodations, otherwise, it would be a registration.

DSI would still have a way of keeping track of these facilities and making sure that our code is met.

And planning commission is also recommending a cap at 10 residents for sober houses.

Uh right now there is effectively no cap.

Um you could go up to any level because of the shall be granted language.

So planning commission is recommended to keep that at mostly 10.

There still could be exceptions through a variance or through a legitimate reasonable accommodations request, but all those reasonable accommodations would be evaluated on a case by case basis using the standard legal criteria and not shall be granted language.

Some minor recommendations to be aware of coming from the planning commission.

Um sober house versus supportive housing facility definitions.

For instance, Silver House would actually change its name in the code to Silver House financially self-supporting to make it crystal clear.

Supportive housing facility has similar language written in.

So there is a recommendation to require a conditional use permit in fewer districts for a shelter for battered persons.

It just didn't seem to make sense.

They saw a CUP recently and were wondering why they saw it.

Uh it was in a multifamily district.

So to have a facility that only wanted to have, I think, 12 people asking for a CEP and multifamily did not seem to make sense if it met all the standards.

So they recommended that.

And then some other minor updates and clarifications.

There is a copy of the planning commission resolution with red lines in front of you if you wanted to get into all the details, but uh I I would classify under minor updates and clarifications.

Perhaps more interesting is what is not recommended by the planning commission, but was debated and discussed quite a bit at the public hearing.

A couple things.

So one is planning commission has not recommended, uh, nor did staff any change to the minimum separation distances between sober houses.

Why not?

If they truly are going to be family like and be 10 or fewer people, they should be uh lightly regulated, and there's no reason to increase the minimum separation distance.

If we're avoiding those 30 plus person sober houses, 330 feet works just fine.

And I think we'll hear the most testimony about this at your public hearing in March.

No changes recommended to the separation distances between supportive housing facilities and other facilities.

So keeping it at 1320 in most of the city.

Um a lot of thought went into this, and I I anticipate more debate going forward.

Why not?

Um management seems to be the key factor.

So that's something we heard through the public hearing, but also after the public hearing.

We had staff level talk to our colleagues in the homeless action response team, police and fire department to get their input, and this is one of the key messages they had for us.

Management matters.

So you could have a large facility, or you could have a facility that uh emphasizes uh housing first.

Um, but that doesn't necessarily tell you anything.

What matters are factors more like do they have appropriate staffing level?

Do they have the right types of staff?

Does it do the facilities communicate with city personnel on a regular basis?

Um we figured out a lot of that um in the last couple of years with problem facilities.

Um but the state regulation doesn't do that alone.

We had to figure that out, and obviously the state is paying a lot of attention, a lot of attention to this part of uh state funding, and it seems like regulation is in need of improvement.

So, with that status, this 1320 number perhaps should be revisited in a couple of years, but in the in the meantime, without that certainty, uh keeping it at 1320 would avoid flooding certain corridors like university in West 7th and uh overwhelming the neighborhood.

Also, 1320 feet is the same distance that Minneapolis uses.

It's reasonable, um, it's needed for now to protect from recreating an institutional environment, and it is not new.

So that's the basic logic behind it.

Ms.

Coleman.

Thank you.

Um, I know we're not here yet and might not be for a couple of years, it sounds like, but could you just say a little bit more about the management regulation that might need to be that is potentially a need of improvement?

Is that in terms of how we enforce our existing requirements, or is the suggestion there that we might need to revisit legal requirements on the well, I for the most part management is regulated by the state.

Um at a city level, we have gotten involved informally because of certain issues at certain facilities in the city.

Um but the state mostly regulates that, and and that's the regulation that seems to be in need of improvement.

Let's see, yes, okay.

Um, so key policy questions for you to keep in mind to think about.

First three of these, the planning commission put out to the public and asked for feedback on and forth as kind of an iterative question that came out of the public input they received.

Um, one, how many adult residents should be permitted in sober house?

Planning commission said generally 10 or fewer.

How far should sober houses be separated from each other?

They said keep it at 330 feet.

How far should supportive housing and certain other congruent living be separated from each other?

They said keep it at 1320, 1320 feet.

And should supportive housing be regulated by the city in other ways was the question that was raised.

Um for instance, by size or if they have a housing first philosophy where ideas that were put out during public inputs, planning commission ultimately decided against regulating in other ways besides the minimum separation distance.

So with that, I'd be glad to take any other questions or thoughts that you have.

I see Ms.

Yang and then Ms.

Coleman, and then Ms.

Trust.

Thank you, Council President.

I really appreciate the presentation your presentation here, Bill.

I thought you did a really great job explaining to us what exactly is in front of us and giving us context.

I'm wondering if you can share a bit more about the funding changes.

I know that's at the state level, but I'm I'm curious about what sort of movement is happening within the community around advocacy on this at the state level.

I do I did speak to a community member who whose um uh field is in um recovery for people with chemical dependency, and they talked about just the the impact that this has had um in the number of beds available for people who actually need it, and so it's very concerning to me.

And so I'm wondering do you know if there's any advocacy happening around changes to funding to make it more equitable and work for sober houses?

Um council president, council member.

In short, I don't know the specifics of what people are advocating at this time.

I do know there is uh um some fraud-related concerns at the state level and in auditing their programs, but beyond that, I I couldn't answer.

Okay, thank you.

Well, I just wanted to um to uplift that.

I think this would be something um really important for us to revisit and also add into our legislative agenda.

There are community members in this field who are really concerned about the lack of beds available.

And uh I I don't recall if this is something that we already have in the draft that we've been seeing go around, but I really like for something to be done about it.

And so I would love to connect more with the leaders have been talking to, and then um be able to share back with you all what they hope to see happen.

Thank you, Ms.

Yang.

And I I don't know either, but I do know um in conversations with Ms.

O'Rourke that she is open to amendments the legislative agenda even after today.

So that would be a welcome addition.

Thank you.

Um Ms.

Coleman.

Thank you.

Um could you share a little bit more about the conversation around 10 as kind of the default cap?

I'm curious if higher or lower caps were discussed either by staff or plenty commission members and sort of how that that number was reached.

Sure.

Um council president Kelsey Mount Coleman.

Uh 10 was a number that had existed in code, so perhaps it's it was an anchor that we gravitated towards.

Um it is uh was an automatic approval in any zoning district from the get-go to have 10 up to 10 people.

The code then um allowed greater amounts in certain districts with a conditional use permit and with the reasonable accommodations.

So there was something in the process uh put forth to have greater than 10.

Um in effect that meant automatic approval is how it's turned out over the past uh 17 years or whatever it is since it was approved.

But um the idea originally behind 10 is it was somewhat more flexible than our um maximum family size, which was four at the time and has since been increased to six.

So uh is ten a magic number?

No, but the idea is to be a little more um uh a little larger than a typical maximum family size.

Ms.

Just um thank you, Council President.

Um thank you, Mr.

Derby.

I really appreciate this summary.

Um I don't think I have a specific question, but just a few comments.

I um I do just generally think that you know a lot more clarity in regulation around sober houses and support of housing is is needed.

We have one of these in our um my ward, and it you know created a lot of confusion and issues.

I I do agree with um a lot of the planning commission's opinions.

I um I do think some of their minor recommendations I'm you know interested in exploring like clarifying sober house versus supportive housing facility, you know, there were so many other categories of supportive housing, even beyond just the um sober house or like chemical dependency support.

So I think that's something that that I would certainly be be interested in, but just really appreciate all of this work and trying to trying to help clarify this this issue that you know is also not as regulated at the state level as maybe it should be.

So I I agree that this is something we should bring to our legislative agenda too.

Um council president, councilmember Jose.

On the question of uh clarity between the two definitions, um there that was a question that was asked to the public uh along the lines of these uh on the screen, and we did not get any feedback from the public hearing one way or another.

Um we're hoping to, but providers who spoke up were more focused on other issues, they didn't say anything about this.

So the hope there or the assumption from staff and planning commission is that if we didn't hear any negative feedback, then they then providers must think this has done a good job of providing clarity.

Certainly we'd uh if that's not the case, we hope to hear from them during the next public hearing.

Um, Mr.

Germany, a couple quick questions and then one, well, I think they're all quick.

Um, was there any discussion about you mentioned that the state is calling these recovery residences level one and level two, or is was there any discussion about actually changing our terms to align with that just to remove some of the confusion and and make it clear to applicants what we're talking about?

Um council president, uh good question.

Um there was no discussion about it, but it was certainly something I thought about.

So um and generally speaking, I would advise not attempting to match the state terms because they change from time to time.

So that was the lesson we learned when we overhauled the entire congregate living section in 2016.

We used to align to state terms and they kept changing, um, and we had a tough time keeping up with it, which was one of the reasons we created this supportive housing category, which had a bunch of things under that.

Um, and broke ourselves free from the state.

So uh I think it may actually be beneficial that the word sober will no longer be part of the state terminology, so that it's clear you're either talking about city definitions or the states.

Um but you know, there are there are other ways we could go the other direction too and try to match the state, it's just be a matter of uh making sure we kept up with it over time.

Thanks.

And I defer to you and your your institutional memory on this.

Um I could see it, I could see the downsides.

I was just wondering if some of what started all of this was the state changing and then there being confusion, I think, about what we meant and what they meant.

So that's where the question came from.

And then I guess my my last question is just can you walk us through how these changes would change the situation we started with?

So we we were originally seeing all of these applications coming in from sober houses that to your point had, I think mostly because they had lost one source of funding, we're now which they shouldn't have been getting in the first place if they were sober houses, coming to the state for a different kind of funding, and therefore needing to provide food, and therefore needing in our code to become supportive housing, which they should have been anyway, because they were taking funding, and then finding themselves running up against the separation distance issue.

Um I'm trying to figure out how this would how this would change the situation we started.

Um Kelsey President, thank you for raising that.

This is a surprising outcome of the planning commission's deliberation recommendation.

So they uh went into it asking people if supportive housing should be separated by a lesser distance, like 300 feet or 600 or a thousand feet.

Um if you had asked me in September, I would have thought we probably would be going that direction.

But um in the end, they on that particular issue they decided to recommend not making a change.

So we would still um but for good reason is as I laid out in the presentation here.

So we would still those facilities that had been seeking variances, they would either have to obtain a variance or uh deal with only serving six people or go back to being a true sober house.

Um those would be the choices.

So, in the sense of making sure that these facilities are able to operate with the number of people they want, whether it's 12 or 22, I think was the general range of those facilities, uh this would not allow them to do that.

Okay, thank you.

So we should expect to see most of those folks who are coming in for variances before still needing to come in for variances unless they want to become a true sober house.

And and they could now serve up to 10 people only as a true sober house as opposed to potentially more before.

Or if they want to be supportive housing up to six as a family.

Okay, and by the way, asking the question and answering it with actually we want things to stay as they are, I think is still a very worthwhile exercise because we've asked it and we've looked into it and we've answered it.

So um that's that question is not being asked with any editorializing at all.

I just want to make sure I knew kind of where we were, whether things were changing.

So thank you.

Um so can you just give us a sense of timeline from here?

Sure.

Um public notes has gone out already, so you might start hearing from people.

Um your first reading is March 4th, public hearing March 11th.

And to us, everything's done at Planning Commission.

Everything's done at Planning Commission.

Uh it's not in Legistar yet, but uh hopefully this week yet.

Great.

Any other questions, comments, or discussion?

Seeing none, I thank you so much again for the time and the work in the presentation, and we stand adjourned.

Bagel.

Now that we've all been made hungry by