Residents go to court against rehab house

Recovery is not against the law! –

Oct. 28, 2020 – The house next to them on Oakwood Drive Southwest, which had been a single-family residence, was sold in June and converted into a temporary home for clients of Pinnacle Treatment Services, a facility across town on Peters Creek Road. The Marshes did not know that the house had been sold and turned into what is known as a recovery residence. Apparently, neither did any of the residents of the Oak Hill neighborhood.

A Roanoke zoning administrator had allowed the recovery residence to be established in the single-family residential neighborhood through her interpretation of zoning ordinances regarding group homes and through compliance with federal law that prohibits housing discrimination. More than 30 homeowners in the neighborhood appealed that zoning decision to the city’s board of zoning appeals, which ruled against them after a four-hour public hearing Oct. 14 and allowed the recovery residence to stay.

Now, some in the neighborhood are taking their case to court. Some residents, acting on behalf of the neighborhood association, filed a petition in Roanoke Circuit Court on Tuesday that asks the court to overturn the BZA’s decision and to direct that Pinnacle immediately cease operations at the Oakwood Drive house.