Halfway House Battle

Written by Eben Lasker January 2006

Over the past couple of decades, as South Florida has grown into one of private addiction treatment’s leading regions, so too has the ancillary business of providing sober living facilities and services boomed. Not only is the sober house business highly profitable in and of itself, but it has provided an ideal way in which to finance entrepreneurial participation in South Florida’s red hot real estate market, where housing prices have doubled and tripled over the past decade.

It is within this business and economic environment that Steve Manko has built his Boca House sober living community in Boca Raton into what is quite possibly the largest for-profit halfway house operation in the country, with over 400 beds and more than two dozen facilities. Manko has become a millionaire many times over as his beds remain consistently full and the value of his real estate holdings has skyrocketed. Despite its status as one of the nation’s major centers for stock market and other types of white collar fraud, with strong participation these activities by the New York mob, the City of Boca Raton nevertheless inexplicably considers itself to be an upper class community. As Boca House and other players like him in grew in Boca Raton and thrived, a substantial NIMBY - not in my backyard - movement grew to
oppose the expansion of the halfway house businesses. The City of Boca Raton, which has led the Palm Beach County regional efforts to quash the growth of halfway houses, a few years ago passed a highly controversial ordinance that effectively prohibited the opening of new halfway houses in the city, with the police presence around Boca House facilities suddenly strengthening and Boca House residents, according to Manko, increasingly harassed.

Quickly swinging into action, Manko did not hesitate to commit the considerable financial resources he had amassed as a result of his halfway house business success to defend the business in the region and, as it has turned out, nationally as well. He hired private Miami attorney William Hill, and got local American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU, attorney Jim Green of West Palm Beach heavily involved as well. For Green, the Boca Raton halfway house battle was natural one for the ACLU to become involved in. “There are a whole range of levels in which the actions of Boca Raton, and the cities around it that have been considering similar legislative action, are wrong,” said Green. “And not only are they wrong, they are also massively illegal.” Green and Hill filed a suit challenging the legality of the Boca Raton ordinance, which prompted cities like nearby Delray Beach to hold off passing similar ordinances while the courts determined their legality. “Our suit challenged the Boca Raton ordinance on a number of different levels,” said Green. “Firstly, we argued that the law was in direct contravention of the federal Fair Housing Act and the Americans With Disabilities Act, as well as being generally unconstitutional in a number of different ways.”

The effort by Manko to challenge the Boca Raton ordinance in court has not been cheap, with costs so far amounting to $800,000, costs that have come directly out of Manko’s pocket. Manko says he is not concerned about the money, but is nevertheless happy that there is now a likelihood that the City of Boca Raton will have to pay him that money as part of settling the case. In recent weeks, the U.S. Department of Justice has stepped in, signaling its intent to side with Manko, using its considerable clout to seek to force the City of Boca Raton to rescind its ordinance, while also reimbursing Manko the expenses he has been forced to underwrite in his effort to defend himself and the local halfway house industry. According to Green, the DOJ is also siding with the ACLU in a simlar case in Sarasota on the west coast of Florida, where that city has also passed an ordinance restricting and inhibiting the activities of halfway houses. “There is no question that this case has national implications,” says Manko’s Miami attorney William Hill. “The DOJ action will have a chilling effect on efforts by municipalities nationwide that seek to restrict halfway houses.”