Ohio lawmakers hear testimony supporting House Bill 58 to regulate recovery housing

The House Community Revitalization Committee held a second hearing on House Bill 58, a proposal to create a certificate-of-need process for recovery housing, where local prosecutors, public-safety officials and recovery-system leaders urged legislators to give local authorities more power to inspect and shut down substandard facilities.

Prosecuting Attorney Shane Tinneman of Scioto County told the committee that growth in recovery housing has been “exponential” and that bad actors operating to “maximize profit at the expense of providing the client with all the tools and resources needed to advance recovery” have harmed neighborhoods and strained first responders. “House Bill 58 also provides a fair mechanism to fund these local efforts and ensures that the locality can handle the needs and issues of this particular industry,” Tinneman said.

The bill would authorize local Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services (ADDM) boards to inspect facilities, investigate complaints and set local limits through a certificate-of-need process, supporters said. Edwin Martel, a former Portsmouth city councilman, said the measure is “pro recovery, pro safety, and pro community,” and urged lawmakers to ensure homes meet basic health and safety standards so residents are not placed in unsafe conditions.

Susan Schultz, executive director of the Alcohol, Drug Addiction, and Mental Health Services Board of Adams, Lawrence and Scioto counties, told the committee she supports HB 58 but asked for additional details about implementation. Schultz said her three-county board’s lists show at least 201 recovery houses across the three counties (11 in Adams, 80 in Lawrence and 10 in Scioto, per the Ohio Mental Health and Addiction Registry and the Ohio Recovery Housing certification list), but she cautioned that registry lists do not capture every provider. Schultz raised operational concerns: training and staffing for investigators, whether inspections would use ORH or other standards, the timing of fee revenues (which she said could take more than a year to reach a local board), and a request to replace a flat $250 application fee with a tiered fee tied to bed counts.

Sheriff David Thurlman described public-safety consequences he attributes to unregulated recovery housing. He told the committee his office’s list showed 77 recovery facilities in Scioto County with 871 beds and that from Jan. 1, 2022, to February of the current year his department logged 456 calls for service tied to eight listed recovery providers. “This crisis is not just about health care, it's a public safety issue,” Thurlman said, and he urged the committee to give local boards authority to inspect and close facilities that exploit vulnerable people.

Supporters also argued HB 58 would better distribute recovery services across the state. Scioto County Commissioner Scotty Powell compared the concept to nursing-home bed licensing: a certificate of need would limit clustering in some counties and encourage expansion into underserved areas. “By supporting House Bill 58, you are taking the second step to ensure a minimum standard of quality and care,” Powell said.

Several witnesses described problems they said occur in some recovery homes: lack of hot water and plumbing, use of portable toilets outdoors, overcrowding, inconsistent supervision, and operators resisting local oversight. Witnesses credited prior steps — testimony cited House Bill 33 and recent registration efforts through state lists — for improving tracking, but they said registration alone did not create enforceable, locally actionable standards.

Committee members asked how the new inspection and complaint roles would align with existing fire, building and health inspections and whether county ADDM boards could ramp up staffing and training quickly. Schultz and other witnesses said the state should set baseline standards (witnesses referenced Ohio Recovery Housing, “ORH,” and the state registry lists), and locals should handle complaint investigation and enforcement, but they also warned that implementation will require funding and time to hire and train investigators.

No formal committee vote on HB 58 was recorded during the hearing. The hearing concluded after multiple rounds of witness testimony and questions.

Why it matters: Committee testimony framed HB 58 as an attempt to protect both people in recovery and the neighborhoods that host recovery homes by creating enforceable local oversight and limiting the concentration of facilities. Witnesses — including prosecutors, sheriffs, county commissioners and recovery-system board directors — said the bill would bring recovery housing closer to the regulatory standards applied to other health-care settings and help stem problems they say have accompanied rapid industry growth.

Ending: The committee heard more than a dozen witnesses and extensive questioning; lawmakers did not take a final vote during the hearing and indicated they will continue to seek details on inspection standards, fee structures and timelines for local enforcement.