MANCHESTER, N.H. – The Manchester Zoning Board of Adjustment (ZBA) approved a variance request for a sober living home on Orange Street on Thursday night, but not after lengthy discussion and an amendment from the sober home operator’s original request.
The operators, 296 Orange Street LLC, sought relief to allow 11 unrelated individuals to live within the sober home, a single-family home at 296 Orange St. The property is located in a Residential Two-Family District (R-2), which only allows four unrelated individuals to live in a home by right.
Representatives of 296 Orange Street LLC also asked for a reasonable accommodation under the Fair Housing Act as an alternative request to a variance, which would classify occupants of the house as eligible for protections under federal anti-discrimination law.
Attempts to obtain permits aiming to renovate the home from three bedrooms to six bedrooms have been denied since the building is currently not in compliance with city zoning ordinance.
The sober living home began operation in 2019 and 296 Orange Street LLC sought a variance in 2021 after learning that a variance would be needed to operate a congregate living facility in that location. That variance request was denied, and up until this new request for a different variance, the decision had been awaiting a challenge in federal court.
According to testimony provided to the board, there have been only a handful of calls to the property by first responders since 2019 and an analysis by realtors indicated that nearby property values had not dropped in recent years.
Several neighbors challenged the property value analysis and also expressed concerns with construction happening late at night on the property as well as individuals in the house congregating loudly outside the home at night. Concerns over activity on the property led to the creation of a Neighborhood Watch by some neighbors, and there was also frustration with the perspective that the building has operated as a sober home despite failure to obtain a variance to do so, leading to the belief that its operators are willing to ignore local laws.
However, responses from neighbors were not entirely negative. Kelly Goumas, who lives on the property directly behind 296 Orange St., said that she has never had any problems with the occupants and feels more comfortable with the building now than when it was vacant. ZBA Chair Greg Powers stated that he lives only eight houses away from the property and drives by it multiple times a week, stating that he had never seen issues at the property.
Attorney Andrew Tine, representing 296 Orange Street LLC, said that occupants of the sober home were not the type of people described by many of the neighbors, but instead trying to escape those types of people.
“Those people don’t want to be in the tree streets, those are the neighborhoods they escaped,” he said. “They love this neighborhood. They feel safe in this neighborhood. They care about that house and they deserve to be there as much as anybody.”
A motion by Powers to accept the applicant’s request for reasonable accommodations failed 3-2, with Bill Bevelaqua, Kathryn Beleski and Vice Chair Joe Prieto opposing and Raymond Hebert joining in supporting the motion.
Bevelaqua then made a motion to deny the variance, which could not obtain a second. A third motion, which would allow the variance, but with only eight occupants rather than 11, passed unanimously.
A subsequent amendment to the motion that passed allowed 90 days before enforcement of the variance would be required, as it was indicated that there is on average approximately one person leaving and one person joining the house each month, thus the eight-person limit can likely be met in a few months if replacement occupants are delayed for the near future.