To get the most out of this article, read this one first: Henrico County leaders unite behind sober home reform

Last month, the consequences of self-regulation in Virginia’s sober home industry officially entered public discourse in Henrico County. 

Presenting to the Board of Supervisors on Sept. 5, Deputy County Manager for Public Safety Michael Feinmel outlined many of the same problems highlighted throughout this series — the lack of qualifications for house leaders, the potential for Medicaid fraud, the unique power of sober home operators to evict residents at-will, among other issues — and the impacts on surrounding communities.

Henrico County — the state’s mecca for recovery housing — committed to taking the lead on a push for legislative reforms. 

A few weeks later, at a Sept. 24 special meeting of the Board of Supervisors, Feinmel returned to the lectern, this time bringing the sober home crisis to the attention of state lawmakers representing Central Virginia: Delegates David Owen (R-Goochland), Delores McQuinn (D-Charles City County) and Destiny LeVere Bolling (D-Henrico) and state Sen. Schuyler VanValkenburg (D-Henrico). 

Feinmel started by sharing the varied responses to his Sept. 5 presentation.

“As anticipated, both I and Henrico County are already being accused of being insensitive to people in recovery, for not being informed about stigma and of marginalizing people with a disability,” he said. “That accusation … is vastly inaccurate. And it is an attempt to marginalize valid questions and concerns that are felt by many in this area.”

On the other end of the spectrum, much of the feedback Feinmel received had been overwhelmingly positive, he said. Throughout the previous few weeks, he’d discussed recovery housing issues with numerous stakeholders, including mental health clinicians, county employees, employees of private agencies, local government leaders in Richmond and Chesterfield, four operators accredited by the Virginia Association of Recovery Residences (VARR), three elected commonwealth’s attorneys, judges “at all three levels of courts,” and four “respected and high-volume” criminal defense attorneys.

“There is pretty much uniform agreement that there is a profound need for best practices and neutral party oversight,” Feinmel said. 

He continued:

As have our residents, most that I’ve talked to question the reliability of (VARR’s) complaint process, governed and operated by the very entities and their friends and/or competitors who would be the subject of a grievance. The uniform theme from almost everyone I’ve spoken with is that self-oversight and credentialing is no oversight. …

Multiple people, including operators, have told me they’re aware of recovery residence operators who will not apply for certification … out of mistrust of the process and/or VARR.

In the last few weeks, VARR has come to the table with a willingness to “discuss ideas towards meaningful reform,” Feinmel said.

In addition to providing a condensed version of his Sept. 5 presentation, Feinmel expanded upon the topic of qualifications — or lack thereof — required to manage a recovery home.

Currently, neither VARR standards nor state code require any credentials or period of verified sobriety for someone to own and operate a recovery house.

“I think it’s really essential to compare the requirements for being a recovery residence operator (to) other areas of this field,” Feinmel said. He introduced two peer specialists in the room: William Pye with Henrico Area Mental Health & Developmental Services and Amber Harris with Henrico County’s Division of Fire. “They are among many of Henrico’s peer specialists who work with people … that have been kicked out of recovery homes and have nowhere to go,” Feinmel said. “These are tireless advocates for people who in the past have had no voices.”

He noted what was required for Harris and Pye to become certified peer recovery specialists (CPRS): a minimum of one year of sobriety, completion of a 72-hour training through the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS), completion of 500 supervised hours in areas such as “ethics, advocacy (or) recovery and wellness,” passing a state exam and completing yearly continuing education credits.

There are some sober home operators with CPRS credentials, Feinmel said, “but it certainly raises a strong question as to why peer specialists like Amber and William met such an onerous requirement, and the state has developed no such requirements for recovery residence operators.”

“That’s scary,” said Owen, in response to learning about the lack of qualifications required to manage a recovery house.

Operators of the five sober home organizations I’ve covered to date — True Recovery RVA, WAR Foundation, Starfish Recovery & Wellness, Journey House and Lotus Recovery RVA — do not have current CPRS credentials. Only one of them previously attained that credential, which expired last year.

The lack of qualifications and verified sobriety (or clean time) needed to operate recovery housing has been a recurring theme throughout this series.

• Former VARR president (and then-VARR board member) David Rook maintained authority over True Recovery RVA — an organization housing roughly 200 people — for nearly a year after his intermittent return to drug use. 
• Kate Grimes — wife of VARR Executive Director Anthony Grimes — never stepped down as the CEO of WAR Foundation after her documented relapse. She had house leaders (WAR Foundation clients) step up into staff roles during that time.
• Frank Bellanger had barely been out of inpatient drug treatment for a year when he launched Starfish Recovery & Wellness with his wife, who had no known professional experience in the recovery field. 
• Isiah Bagby — brother of VARR ally and state Sen. Lamont Bagby (D-Henrico) — went straight from being a resident and transportation coordinator at True Recovery to running his own taxpayer-funded sober home. 

There has been no indication that VARR operators are held accountable for maintaining their personal recovery and no indication that VARR policy or practice would prevent someone in active addiction from managing a VARR-certified recovery house.

Under VARR standards, anyone can be a recovery house operator.

But now that such gaps are entering the purview of lawmakers and government leaders, there’s been a shift. “To their credit, VARR has come to the table with an open mind and a willingness to discuss the issue of operator credentialing,” Feinmel said.

He continued:

We have discussed with VARR even specifics such as mandating trauma-informed training, human trafficking training, and skill building towards fostering engagement and collaboration with local governments and neighbors. These are positive steps and I’m very happy that VARR is willing to partner with the community.

While there are currently no limits to who can operate a recovery house, Feinmel acknowledged that VARR has “substantial requirements” for a recovery home to become accredited. “And VARR is willing to open up and be transparent to us about what those requirements are,” he said. (According to VARR operators with whom I’ve spoken, those requirements involve house inspections by a VARR employee, a review of the applicant’s policies and procedures, and verification of liability insurance coverage.)

VARR’s reported willingness to be transparent represents a sharp pivot from the organization’s recent trajectory of compounding secrecy.

Throughout the last couple of years, VARR has been mostly unresponsive to questions about its policies and procedures — even when presented with evidence of ethics violations that fly in the face of the organization’s written standards, including a recording of a VARR operator (and husband of a former VARR board member) screaming and cursing at a group of residents.

Documents provided to me by a former VARR board member and multiple current VARR operators also show that over the last couple of years, VARR — a multimillion-dollar organization funded almost entirely with taxpayer money — has implemented policies to keep its operations in the dark, silence dissent and protect its leaders from scrutiny.

In 2022, VARR established a confidentiality policy that prohibits staff, board members and volunteers from disclosing any information about VARR that is “not generally known by the public.”

In July 2020, the Certification & Compliance Agreement for VARR members simply contained the nine core principles of the National Alliance for Recovery Residences (NARR) — VARR’s parent organization — and VARR’s incident reporting policy.

In July 2020, the Certification & Compliance Agreement for VARR members simply contained the nine core principles of the National Alliance for Recovery Residences (NARR) — VARR’s parent organization — and VARR’s incident reporting policy.

An August 2022 revised version of that agreement contained a new “professional code,” which required all VARR-certified operators to refrain from criticizing other VARR operators:

Starting in 2023, VARR took the “professional code” a step further.

In order to be VARR-certified today, an operator must also agree to refrain from criticizing VARR itself and to notify VARR if other operators engage in “unprofessional conduct” (i.e. — criticizing VARR):

I asked VARR President Sarah Scarbrough and VARR Executive Director Anthony Grimes to comment on these policies in light of VARR’s nearly exclusive funding source (taxpayer dollars) as well as VARR’s recent promise of transparency. They provided the following statement:

VARR has been working closely with Henrico County officials, as well as other Virginia stakeholders and interest groups, on meaningful reforms to state laws and regulations covering recovery residences. We are in agreement with Henrico officials and others that recovery residences play a vital role in providing stable transitional housing, and peer-to-peer support, for people battling substance use disorder. VARR is eager to continue this partnership with Henrico County on proposed reforms that would strengthen and improve standards for recovery residences, beyond the national standards certified residences already are accredited under. 

Our board has recently adopted a comprehensive framework focused on key areas of research aimed at enhancing accountability and transparency. This framework ensures that the public can actively engage with, observe, and participate in our efforts.

We take pride in collaborating with stakeholders and others in the field to continually strengthen and expand recovery and support services for those in need.

Feinmel didn’t know VARR banned its members from criticizing VARR and VARR operators until I brought it to his attention this week.

“That is concerning,” he told me. “(It) is not something that I would find to be consistent with how we know best practices should be in place.”

He added:

I very much want to learn what all the best practices are in the industry and making sure that what we have in Virginia is compliant with national best practices. And we may have to look at best practices outside of the recovery residence operation and just look at other similar industries and how they operate under best practices.

Feinmel closed his presentation at the Board of Supervisors meeting by reading an email he recently received from a Henrico County resident:

If there is truth in half of what I’ve been told over the past few years, directly from residents in Henrico recovery housing, the situation in our county, with the exception of some, is a mess. My concerns about the house in question are primarily, who’s in charge? What are their credentials? What does sobriety look like? Is there clinical oversight? And why didn’t we know this was happening? I love people in recovery, and I’m a person in decades-long recovery. I’ve lost people to addiction. This is not a (not in my backyard) concern. It’s a real unease about who is living here all of a sudden. What are their legal issues? What is their mental health like? Who’s taking care of them? What services (do) they receive and under what licensure? What kind of medication is on site, and who monitors that? Essentially, who is responsible? It pains me to say that I have little regard for VARR as a professional governing body for many reasons, the primary (one being) that they are self-governing and responsible only to themselves.

With only a few minutes left over for reflections, Bolling commented:

I’ve had a lot of emails from residents about this (recovery housing) issue. And it is a near and dear issue to my heart, so I do look forward to collaborating with the county on some resolution to help us move forward, as I know all my colleagues do.

According to Feinmel and Tuckahoe District Supervisor Jody Rogish, further discussions with the lawmakers in attendance indicated all of them were receptive to the need for change and willing to be part of the solution. What exactly that change will look like has yet to be determined. “It’s going to be extremely complex,” Feinmel told me. “It’s going to take a lot of work.” 

The day after I published this section, VanValkenburg weighed in.

“It’s clear that we need to have some more regulation in this space,” he told me.

In the short term, localities should be given more authority to shut down non-accredited recovery homes, he said. But the work shouldn’t stop there:

We’re in a moment of self-accreditation, or self-policing, and we need to have a third party that is policing that accreditation, that has more control over that accreditation. … It’s not necessarily just enough to say, ‘Hey, people who aren’t accredited, you can’t be here,’ right? And also, we need more stringent accreditation standards. I think that’s pretty clearly true as well. 

VanValkenburg would support a bill similar to the one state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Loudoun County) introduced last year that would have started the process of creating a system for state oversight of all Virginia recovery residences.

He added:

We’re in a space where, you know, we finally started getting the resources right. We finally started focusing on what is an epidemic and a problem. But now the next step is we have to really craft laws and regulations that make sure that that money is being wisely spent, that communities are being positively impacted, and that people are going to places where they’re going to recover.

What’s next?

Henrico County leaders are setting up meetings to carry the same message to state legislators throughout the commonwealth.

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The full audio recording of the Sept. 24 special meeting of the Henrico County Board of Supervisors is available below. (The audio quality is not ideal. I adjusted the volume in various places and removed long periods of silence.)

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