I’m so pleased to see that legislators are taking the reports of unethical treatment in sober houses seriously. It’s madness that there hasn’t been infrastructure in place to report deaths and serious injuries. That said, I fear that this bill is entirely reliant on the idea that NARR and VARR are reputable groups, worthy of DBHDS’s trust. In my personal opinion, NARR’s standards and certification processes are complete mumbo jumbo, because they’re entirely unenforceable. The state is outsourcing and entrusting non-profits to set ethical standards, but NARR isn’t in the business of enforcing anything, and neither is the state of Virginia in this case. I’m afraid legislation of this type will breed even more of a hush-hush environment in sober houses. Our legislators don’t understand that the more we entrust groups like NARR and VARR to channel people into recovery houses, the more likely we are to put people like the Sangsters, who run the FROG houses in RVA, out of business, and have systemic corruption across the board that prevents any victims from coming forward. Moreover, victims will have no options other than VARR or Oxford housing. It’s not as lucrative for VARR members when there are private citizens out there keeping alcoholics safe. I get that there should be ethical standards across the board, but if DBHDS is entrusting a corrupt group or groups to implement those standards, what do we think will happen? I’ll go out on a limb and say they’ll use all their resources to funnel people directly from incarceration into recovery housing under the guise of giving them a fresh start, but prevent them from having a choice in what sober living situation they would like to have. They’ll try to run private entities like the Sangsters out of business, continue to abuse people in their homes, and continue to get away with it because there’s no enforcement. So, you know, this legislation is all good and well, except I think that we’ve gone drastically awry in entrusting non-profits in this way; I feel what is effectively happening is the legislators are saying “yeah, be sure to report those deaths, by the way. Wow, look at us, such bleeding hearts, helping these vulnerable citizens,” and in response, VARR members will say, “oh lol, yeah, we’ll be sure to do that, wink-wink,” and nothing is changing. The Parham Papers is the only hope the state of VA has to upend this madness and stop it before it’s too institutionalized to undo.