Single-story ranch homes line the narrow streets of Indigo Park, a community in James City County. From the outside, the landscape looks peaceful, but behind closed doors residents are waging a battle against group homes moving into the neighborhood.
Indigo Park has survived nearly 60 years, 12 U.S. Presidents and 10 wars, but over the past year the community has claimed it’s under threat from two group homes. Residents are now asking county planners to ban a third group home from moving in.
When the first Oxford House came to the neighborhood 12 years ago, people didn’t think too much about it. Michael O’Neal raised his family in Indigo Park, and when an Oxford House popped up next door to him, he came to get along with the new residents.
“I live next door to an Oxford House, I do not have a problem with any of my neighbors,” O’Neal said at a public meeting last Thursday. “They want to get their life together and I don’t have a problem with that…They’re good people.”
But when the second Oxford House came to the neighborhood, residents started to grow concerned that the group homes would change the character of the neighborhood.
“The problem I’m having is that we’re being inundated in our neighborhood with more than one or two,” O’Neal said.
Neighbors were suspicious of the haphazardly parked cars on the lawn and the comings and goings of the men who live in the home.
With a third Oxford House on its way to Indigo Park, residents are pushing the county to restrict any more group homes from having the right to move into the area without a special use permit from the county.
On May 11, over 20 Indigo Park residents gathered together to air their grievances to county planners at a public meeting.
“I think there’s a place for everything,” resident Stephen Moyer said. “I think three houses in 500 feet is tough on a community neighborhood such as this.”
Oxford Houses provides housing opportunities to as many as 38 recovering addicts and alcoholics in the greater Williamsburg area, and as many as 40 percent of those in recovery stay in Indigo Park.
The first group home in the neighborhood was chartered May 1, 2005 and the second was chartered less than a year ago — July 1, 2016, and a third home is under contract, putting three group homes within 1,000 feet of one another.
Oxford House, Inc., is a national nonprofit specializing in providing self-help recovery housing opportunities to recovering addicts and alcoholics since 1975, according to its website. The organization boasts that it has a recovery rate of 80 to 87 percent, according to spokesman Kevin McCormick.
Sean Coffey a 31-year old, graduate of Virginia Wesleyan College and resident of one of the group homes spoke to his neighbors about what he thought were some misperceptions circulating through Indigo Park.
“We’re not the boogiemen,” Coffey said. “I’ve had the best time of my life living here, and the Oxford House saved my life. I’m not here to offend you or cause problems with your life.”
The county’s Planning Commission will meet next month to discuss any potential updates to the definition of a group home in the county code, but until then Commissioner Danny Schmidt said one of the ongoing challenges facing any locality is working with federal regulations.
“There are a lot of legislative processes that are complicated due to federal statutes,” Schmidt said.
Federal law makes it illegal to discriminate against group homes for people recovering from drug and alcohol abuse. Virginia state law forces cities and counties to treat group homes the same as single family homes, but only if there are eight or fewer residents in the group home.
“Group Homes as defined by the state law are permitted as a matter of right in all residential zoning districts,” said Assistant County Attorney Max Hlavin.
While residents claim group homes change the character of their community, McCormick said family neighborhoods like Indigo Park were vital to the success of those trying to reintegrate into society.
“I’m willing to bet that everybody in this room knows somebody that has dealt with alcohol and drug addiction,” McCormick told the crowd of residents last Thursday. “We want our houses in safe areas. If it’s in a good area and a good neighborhood and it’s safe for our people to live in, then that’s where we want them to be. It’s about getting them into safe and good neighborhoods because our people do live as a family.”
Some residents took a more measured approach to the topic of group homes in Indigo Park, saying it was the concentration of group homes in one neighborhood that concerned them.
“It’s not against anybody recovering I understand that totally,” neighborhood resident Joe Fisher said. “It’s just the proximity is my big deal. Of the 133 [Oxford Houses] you said you had in the state of Virginia, how many are in a 200-yard radius?”
