California Inquiry Targets Unlicensed Sober Home After Santa Monica Death

The California Department of Health Care Services has opened an inquiry into Resolutions Living, an upscale sober living home in Santa Monica where Presley Gerber, the son of supermodel Cindy Crawford and businessman Rande Gerber, was found dead on Sept. 20 of a suspected overdose. The agency is reviewing whether the residence was operating as an unlicensed addiction treatment facility, which would put it in violation of state law.

DHCS spokesman Anthony Cava confirmed the review, which followed a complaint from a rehab reform advocate. "DHCS does not oversee sober living homes, and would only investigate sober living homes to determine if they are operating as an unlicensed treatment facility in violation of state law," Cava said. He declined to provide further detail. The coroner has not publicly confirmed a cause of death.

Resolutions Living describes itself as a "recovery residence." Its home on Berkeley Street is valued at $7.7 million, with seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms. The facility has a sister operation, an outpatient center on Wilshire Boulevard called Resolutions Therapeutic Services. Neither is licensed by the state health department. Both were founded by psychologist Reza Nabavi, who did not respond to requests for comment.

What the complaint asks regulators to determine

The complaint was filed by Jennifer Turner, an advocate whose daughter was injured at an unrelated mental health treatment center in 2016. Turner wrote that the circumstances of the death "warrant a thorough regulatory investigation into the facility" regardless of the ultimate cause.

Her filing asks state officials to establish whether Gerber required a higher level of care and was admitted to a facility not authorized to provide detoxification, withdrawal management, clinical monitoring or residential substance-use treatment. She also asked who assessed him, what that person's qualifications were, and whether staff were supervising medications or observing withdrawal.

"Was an individual reportedly under the influence admitted to a sober living residence that was not authorized to provide the level of care he required, and was Resolutions Living actually providing regulated addiction treatment, detoxification, clinical monitoring, or recovery services beyond the lawful scope of sober housing?" the complaint asks.

Turner also challenged the operation's marketing, noting that its website uses terms including "mental health recovery residence," "three-phase recovery program" and "addiction and mental health support." She argued that if group sessions were being held at the residence, the home would fall under state regulation.

Angela McMahon, a licensing and accreditation consultant who reviewed the operation for the Southern California News Group, said the outpatient arm "sits in a gray area" as well, because its site advertises relapse prevention and carries a dedicated substance use disorder page. "The way SUD treatment is promoted could be argued as treating it as a primary diagnosis," McMahon said, which could in turn require a license.

The narrow line between sober housing and licensed treatment

California draws a line between recovery residences, which offer housing and peer support, and treatment facilities, which provide clinical services and require licensure. Sober living homes are supposed to provide only a place to live for people recovering from substance use disorder. Many states, including California, allow them to operate with no license at all as long as no clinical treatment is taking place on site or by staff.

That boundary is difficult to enforce when a residence employs clinical staff, advertises treatment services or accepts residents who need withdrawal management. People leaving medical detoxification or stepping down from residential treatment are often the ones most at risk during that transition — research cited in the complaint notes that the weeks after leaving care carry sharply elevated mortality risk. The complaint specifically questions why a person who arrived visibly intoxicated was not instead referred to a licensed withdrawal-management or emergency setting.

A decade of scrutiny for California's private-pay rehab industry

The inquiry lands amid a long-running investigation by the Southern California News Group into fraud, abuse and death in the state's private-pay addiction treatment system. That reporting has already prompted changes to state law, but reporters and reform advocates say the bar for opening a facility remains low, oversight is thin, and medical support is often missing — conditions that have produced fatal overdoses in licensed and unlicensed homes alike.

The broader industry picture is one of uneven regulation. Kentucky, for example, has moved in the opposite direction, creating a statewide certification program for recovery housing that requires trauma-informed staff training and support for medication-assisted treatment on site. Whether California follows with tighter rules for recovery residences is likely to be one of the questions raised by the Santa Monica case.

What happens next

DHCS has not said how long the review will take or whether it will result in enforcement action. Advocates say the answer matters beyond one address: without clearer rules, families searching for help have few ways to tell a licensed program from a residence that is not authorized to provide the care it advertises.