An effort to establish a recovery house for women suffering from substance misuse is drawing a vocal response from neighbors who live near the planned home.
A group of Iolans living in the Meadowbrook Addition attended Monday’s City Council meeting to protest plans for an Oxford House facility in a long-vacant house in the neighborhood.
They presented the Council with a petition of 38 names in opposition.
An Oxford House is billed as a self-supporting recovery facility that relies on peer support as a means to promote responsibility and learning new life skills in a drug- and alcohol-free environment.
An Oxford House is not a treatment facility, but a residence for those recovering from substance misuse. The house will be for women only. The women share expenses for food and utilities. 
Robin Lohman, who owns the property, addressed the opponents at the meeting, pointing to the success rates for such facilities. The organization reports a national success rate of 87%.
A neighborhood such as Meadowbrook, with a park nearby and clean streets, “shows this is an excellent place for an Oxford House,” Lohman said. “Those are things the Oxford House looks for in a successful environment.”
Lohman and husband Nich, a City Council member, purchased the house within the past two months and were in the process of putting plans together for the facility — which she said would have included reaching out to neighbors — but word spread before plans could be finalized, drawing the opponents to Monday’s meeting.
In other communities, Oxford Houses are considered good neighbors, Lohman said.
“I’m super excited about it,” she said.
THE 25 OR so residents who attended Monday’s meeting lacked her optimism.
“This Oxford House will bring into our neighborhood mostly non-local, transient residents, some of whom have criminal records, to live in a house that was not designed to accommodate up to eight women with substance abuse problems,” said Mark Kauth, one of the neighbors.
He asked the Council “to do everything it can to prevent this from happening.”
The city probably won’t have much say in the matter, City Administrator Matt Rehder said afterward.
“There’s plenty of case law out there that says we can’t,” Rehder told the Register, aside from limiting the number of occupants to five, in accordance with Iola’s zoning ordinance that limits such homes to five non-related tenants. A 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision in City of Edmond v. Oxford House ruled that municipalities cannot use single-family zoning restrictions in an attempt to bar group homes, including those which house those recovering from substance misuse.
