PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) – Pennsylvania’s Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs will soon be issuing hefty fines to recovery homes that are not licensed.
The Why Not Prosper home in Northwest Philadelphia was the first to get licensed.
“It’s a bunch of love here,” said Tawana Wulf. She was previously incarcerated and trying to stay off drugs. She has been in the recovery program for three weeks at Why Not Prosper, located along Chelten Avenue near McMahon Street.
“I would be back home getting high. I would probably be getting high by now. I know I would. I’m here to better my life.“
Pennsylvania Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs Secretary Jen Smith toured the home on Tuesday. She said that starting on June 9, unlicensed recovery homes that are funded by a federal or state agency could face fines of $1,000 per day. They must be licensed to take in referrals from state agencies or state-funded programs.
“In December 2017, the governor and the General Assembly passed a statute to give us the authority to start licensing these entities, and then It took us several years to build the regulations for which those houses would be governed. Just this past December, we started accepting licenses and started building that process, so it is very new,” said Smith.
“Without recovery housing standards or protections, there are unknown numbers of substandard facilities who may be exploiting this vulnerable population.”
Smith estimates that there are probably thousands of recovery houses in Pennsylvania.
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“Of those thousands, we have about 25 that have officially gone through the licensure process,” she explained.
“We have about 100 or so more in process of getting licensed, so we still have a lot of houses out there that still have not begun the process to be licensed.”
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