The clients of Valley Recovery Center will be calling a new place home, at least temporarily, after the recovery facility was served an eviction notice Monday afternoon by Merced County officials.

Merced County Community and Economic Development Director Steve Maxey said the facility was red tagged for illegal occupancy and health and safety concerns that still need to be addressed. The County is working with the facility management to make sure that the dozen residents being displaced will have somewhere to go.

“The County doesn’t want to see anyone homeless,” Maxey said. “We are going to help them get the resources they need and take care of the people out here.”

Earlier this year Valley Recovery Center leased a portion of the old West Side Community Hospital on Highway 33 to create temporary housing for individuals on their addiction recovery journey. The site was never going to be a detox or an addiction treatment center. Rather it is a place that people can use as temporary housing, usually for three months to a year, while they continue to recover. The clients pay a monthly fee, attend Alcoholic Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings and undergo routine testing.

“It’s not just a place to live,” said Director Lon Stromnes when the facility opened. “It’s a place to restore one’s life, from the challenges, the ravages of addiction. People come to us that are somewhat stabilized, usually through treatment centers and they’ll come here to continue their journey of recovery.”

Valley Recovery on the West Side is an offshoot of Valley Sober Living, which has recovery homes in San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Calaveras and Sacramento counties. Generally, residents come from within a 25 mile radius from the center.

Stromnes said the property owners were fully committed to the Center. He said he started to get an inkling that things might not go as smoothly as hoped with the County when they went to apply for their business license and were told they had to have Planning sign-off first.

“Merced County is telling us that this is zoned for ag, but there has been a hospital here, the ambulance district and even a daycare for a short time,” Stromnes said. “The property owners said they rented to us because they had the same assumption.”

Stromnes said the Center has made the upgrades and repairs flagged under the health and safety codes and have had two fire inspections since that time. The hang up remains with an outdated sprinkler system.

“Everything else has been cleared,” Stromnes said. “We had hoped the County would give us some time to get the sprinkler system done but they said no.”

Stromnes and Sherry Daley, the vice president of government affairs for the California Consortium of Addiction Programs and Professionals, who has been advocating for the Center, both were hoping for a last minute reprieve but as the clock clicked towards 3 p.m. Monday, they realized that help wasn’t going to arrive.

“This is a dark day for the County,” Daley said. “Politicians and administrators like to talk about helping prevent opioid deaths and keeping people off the streets, but here they are closing the doors of a place that is actually helping.”

Daley and Stromnes both said they think the health and safety issues raised were just a “pretext” and that the real reason they are being evicted is because of “Not In My Back Yard.”

Michelle Gomes’ parents live near the facility and she said that despite the Center’s claim to be good neighbors, the opposite has been the reality for her elderly parents.

“They have trespassed on the property, stolen the fruit off the trees and there have been violent outbursts by some of them,” Gomes said. “The swearing has been off the charts. There are just no boundaries.”

Gomes said all the neighbors that have property adjacent to the Center have banded together to tell the County their dissatisfaction with how the Center is operated. She said her parents were not notified of the Center setting up shop at the site and that the Center never should have started bringing in residents when they knew there were issues with the zoning.

“There’s no monitoring of anything,” Gomes said. “People come and go and they’re smoking near all this dry grass, which is a fire hazard for everyone in the area.

“My parents have lived here for 50 some years,” Gomes said. “They shouldn’t have to worry about this kind of behavior. My mom is afraid to be her alone.”

Stromnes said six or seven of the residents will be going to a facility in Ceres. Others will be given some options provided by Merced County and a few others like Luis Vickery, will be staying with family.

Vickery said he started staying at the Center in June and despite having a relapse nine days ago, he was allowed to stay because he showed a renewed commitment to sobriety.

“There was a time that this would have been an excuse for me to have a rip roaring time,” Vickery said. “But now, I’m not going to let this get in my way to staying sober.”