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The Clean and Sober Housing Alliance of Yakima County (or simply, The Clean and Sober Housing Alliance) is a cooperative committee consisting of landlords of clean and sober houses in and around Yakima, Washington. The group operates as a non-profit organization, in the traditional sense of the term, meaning that while it does not have tax-exemption status, (as this is unnecessary, due to the fact that there are no financial transactions as a matter of course) the main purpose of its existence is simply to provide a self-governing body to ensure oversight for those providing housing for persons in recovery from substance abuse, long identified as an easily-exploited demographic.

The Clean and Sober Housing Alliance meets on a monthly basis to discuss the issues at hand, familiarize itself with local colleagues, discuss policy and procedure, adapt and cater to the changing needs of clients, code compliance, landlord-tenant law, elections of officers and similar related issues.

The stated purpose of the Alliance is to enhance the quality of housing and services provided by its members to better unify quality management of Clean & Sober Housing in Yakima County and to represent the interests of the people who utilize these services.

History

Yakima, Washington is a medium-sized city in Central Washington State that is home to numerous drug and alcohol treatment centers. Less than five miles from downtown Yakima, in the Yakima River Canyon, outside the town in Selah, is home to one of the nations largest and most prominent treatment centers, Sundown M Ranch. The City of Yakima is also home to a large campus of Central Washington Comprehensive Mental Health, with a detox center and a drug and alcohol inpatient treatment center called Pathways, in addition to its outpatient services. Other treatment centers include Triumph Treatment Services, which operates an outpatient facility in town and inpatient James Oldham Treatment Center in the nearby town of Buena. Yakima is also home to Merit Resources, Barth Clinic, Casa de Esperanza, and several other smaller drug and alcohol counseling services.

As a result of hosting all these treatment centers, the Yakima Valley has become somewhat of a mecca for persons in recovery, and in turn, the need for recovery-specific housing has grown significantly over the years.

Since the advent of clean and sober housing in the Yakima area in the early 1990s, and prior to the formation of the Clean and Sober Housing Alliance, there had been no real accountability for the management of these operations. As a result, it was not uncommon for some of these landlords to take advantage of this vulnerable demographic by maintaining substandard and unsafe housing conditions, including overcrowding, sporadic pricing, unethical business practices, and in some cases, allowing drug and alcohol use to continue unchecked.

In 2005, several concerned landlords of Yakima's clean and sober housing agencies decided to attempt to put an end to this era. They soon set up a meeting and got together to discuss this issue with the Coordinator of the Yakima County Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse (DASA) to see if they might have any success in developing a higher set of standards for the local housing providers to meet. The group felt that because DASA is the agency which issues rental assistance checks for many people after leaving inpatient treatment centers, it could also be instrumental in helping to create these standards and ensure that the local agencies are all on a relatively level playing field, ensuring equal exposure of members to potential tenants by way of a single housing list to be distributed at local drug and alcohol treatment centers and related agencies, and also to indirectly use the financial factor as an incentive to comply with those standards and ensure continued membership.

After several monthly meetings at the local Mel's Diner, the small group unanimously decided that it would attempt to create a larger, more formal group that meets monthly, draw up a set of bylaws, and invite the leadership of all local housing providers who consider their houses to be clean and sober housing (the west coast equivalent of halfway houses).

Within two months, membership from nearly every related agency in the area was represented and the Yakima County Clean and Sober Housing Alliance was then formally named. Many topics were discussed in those early months, not the least of which was Washington State landlord-tenant law, which has always been a hot-button issue amongst members in this field. Other crucial early issues were city code compliance and fire code standards, as well as the possibility of the need for an internal inspection committee to help ensure compliance. After several months of debate and presentations by city code officials and a visit from a specialist landlord-tenant law attorney, the Alliance came to the conclusion that it would be best to assume basic city code compliance and leave that task to the professionals, with the caveat that the newly-formed internal inspection committee would, during its random inspections, check member houses for current fire extinguishers and operational smoke detectors, among a short list of other less-crucial items to monitor, such as working appliances and the presence of urinalysis tests.

In the second half of 2008, as the chairperson (Elizabeth Benefiel) stepped down (due to a career move)and meeting participation began to slowly decline, the Alliance recognized the need to refocus its efforts in order to maintain viability for the future and continue to command favor from the treatment centers. After agreeing to redouble their efforts and commit to keeping the cause of the Alliance in the forefront, the remaining members elected new officers to the board, and added the position of chief technical officer, who would be responsible for building and maintaining an Alliance website. This website would become the public face of the Alliance, and act as a portal to clean and sober housing for those in need. During this restructuring, the group also agreed to a slight name change from Yakima County Clean and Sober Housing Alliance to the Clean and Sober Housing Alliance of Yakima County, in part, because it was thought that this iteration of the name would allow for simpler addition of other counties in the event that future expansion was deemed necessary. The Alliance also agreed to organize a workshop that would offer local treatment providers the opportunity to meet with the Alliance members in an open forum, to answer any questions or address any concerns they may have, and especially to put an actual face to the name of these individual agencies. Some of these agencies had been working together with the treatment centers for years, but had always conducted business over the phone or via mail or fax, and had never met face to face. The Alliance felt this was an important hurdle to overcome, in order to gain the full confidence of the treatment providers, some of whom had grown skeptical over the years - and with good reason. The Alliance feels its efforts are crucial to the recovery of hundreds of addicts and alcoholics, as to date, the Clean and Sober Housing Alliance is the only measure of accountability available to tenants and to treatment providers who refer their clients to clean and sober housing.