California Orders Costa Mesa to Let a Sober Living Home Stay Open

California's civil rights agency announced a settlement Wednesday requiring the city of Costa Mesa to grant a zoning exception to Ohio House, a sober living facility that has operated on East Wilson Street since 2012 while the city fought its permits for nine years. The agreement came eight days after the City Council voted 7-0 to issue the home a conditional use permit and operator's license covering up to 35 male clients in five single-family houses.

The California Civil Rights Department opened its inquiry after Ohio House and several residents filed a discrimination complaint in 2025. According to the complaint, the city retroactively applied a 650-foot separation requirement between group homes, leaving Ohio House — reportedly about 550 feet from another facility that did receive a city permit — unable to obtain one while it continued to house dozens of people in recovery.

"This settlement is a major victory for the rights of people with disabilities," said CRD Director Kevin Kish. "By coming to the bargaining table, the City of Costa Mesa is helping keep dozens of residents housed in a setting where they can live safely, independently, and with community support."

Nine years of rulings the other way

Ohio House grew out of an informal arrangement: Brandon Stump moved from Ohio to California in 2008 to get sober, and by 2010 he was housing newly arrived friends from home. The operation expanded into a program built on house rules and accountability, run by Stump and his brother Ryan, and by 2013 Costa Mesa had roughly 200 recovery-related facilities, according to the Daily Pilot.

The city responded with ordinances — first for single-family neighborhoods in 2014, then for multifamily properties in 2015 — that required permits and imposed a 650-foot buffer. Ohio House, which predated both, applied in 2016 and was refused because the facility at 165 East Wilson Street had already been approved 550 feet away. The Stumps began requesting a reasonable accommodation in 2017; the city denied those requests, the Planning Commission upheld the denials, and state and federal appellate courts sided with Costa Mesa in 2022 and 2025.

Where the zoning rule met disability law

The state's inquiry turned on an issue the earlier litigation had not resolved for the city: how a spacing rule applies to a home whose residents qualify as people with disabilities.

CRD's release states the obligation plainly. Local governments in California must affirmatively further fair housing, and antidiscrimination protections extend to group homes serving people with disabilities, limiting how restrictive zoning can be applied. In June, an official at the Department of Housing and Community Development wrote to Costa Mesa that its sober living ordinance violated fair housing law and pointed back to a 2023 department letter recommending the ordinance be repealed outright.

The city chose a narrower path: rather than repeal the rules, it reconsidered the pending accommodation request. Brandon Stump told the Daily Pilot it was the first time in nine years that the operators and city officials sat down together.

What the settlement commits the city to

Costa Mesa admitted no wrongdoing. Under the voluntary agreement, the city will:

• Grant Ohio House an exception to its land use and zoning requirements as a reasonable accommodation, allowing the facility to stay open.
• Work with CRD attorneys on possible revisions to its zoning code and to the reasonable accommodation process for group homes.
• Review issues identified in technical assistance that HCD provided in consultation with CRD attorneys.
• Report its compliance back to the department.

The agreement was mediated by CRD Senior Attorney Mediator Yu-Yee Wu, with Associate Chief Counsel Jacy Gaige and Assistant Chief Counsel James Zahradka supporting the case.

The residents behind the docket

The council hearing that preceded the settlement put the people the buffer rule was displacing on the record. Chad Steinetz, a client from 2017 to 2019, told the council the home was the first place he felt he belonged. Councilmember Jeff Pettis, who has described his own recovery 20 years ago, voted with the rest of the council and told the operators to keep going.

Sober living homes are not licensed treatment in California, and the city's own ordinances from 2014 and 2015 required operators to submit house rules, intake procedures and relapse policies and to affirm that residents, because of their addiction, qualified as handicapped under state and federal law. The rule that kept Ohio House unpermitted sat uneasily next to that requirement. For people leaving residential treatment, a shared house with a house manager and a curfew is often what stands between a settled routine and a return to the street, and it depends on leases, zoning and neighbors in a way that standard outpatient care does not.

What is still unresolved

The ordinance that produced the fight remains on the books, and the settlement requires only that the city consider revisions, not make them. Whether other operators in Costa Mesa face the same 650-foot arithmetic will depend on how far the city goes in rewriting the rules and on whether HCD's 2023 recommendation to repeal them is taken up.

For now the practical result is one licensed facility, 35 beds and a compliance report owed to Sacramento. Nine years of litigation produced what the council ultimately granted unanimously in a single hearing, a fact the operators have not been shy about noting, and one that other cities reading the settlement will have to weigh against the cost of defending a buffer rule in front of a state civil rights agency. People looking for recovery housing and treatment can search substance use disorder programs by state and level of care.