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available to provide services. The more clients could be served with the highest of overhead expenses, the larger the size of contracts that could be awazded. Despite the use of aggressive autonomy, other voices, most notably the National League of Cities (see Whitman and Paznas, 19995) have recommended that group homes "enter into good neighbor agreements, which promote positive relationships with the community." The guidelines that prospective operators use only deal with one side of what one researcher (Cowan, 20036) called the dilemma. That author notes that "...the guidelines therefore take no account of the potential for a lack of consultation to become a topic of opposition in itself on the grounds that local people have a right to know about things that will affect them." While the guidelines referred to come from Scotland, they are remarkably similaz to those promulgated as a result of the Fair Housing Acts. Of course, in the process, the original concept behind deinstitutionalization was lost because it was in no operator's interest to allocate the necessary resources. Rather, program design focused on aspects that could be given within the hermetic environment of a single closed house. In the substance abuse realm, the so-called California plan (which was based on the AA model of peer service delivery) is one such "closed" house plan. Unfortunately, the evaluations of these plans aze, at best, mixed and whether they represent the best allocation of taxpayer dollazs has yet to be conclusively answered. It is uncleaz when the focus on defining a "family" became the entee of these programs into neighborhoods, but that is the current method being used to attack zoning regulations. This then is the backdrop against which we made the recommendations that appear at the beginning of this document. We respectfully hope that the Council will give those recommendations careful consideration and turn down this unwanted and unwise proposal. Thank you for allowing me to express my opinion on this proposal. I hope you will now send it back tc, the Planning Department with a clear and unequivocal denial. s Whitman, C. & Parnas, S. (1999). Local O~cials Guide: The Siting of Group Homes for the Disabled and Children, Washington, DC: National League of Cities. e Cowan, S. (2003). NIMBY syndrome and public consultation policy: The implications of a discourse analysis of local responses to the establishment of a community mental health facility. Health and Social Care in the Community, ! 1(5). ~ Borlcman, T., Kaskutas, L., Room, J., Bryan, K., and Barrow, D. (1998). M historical and developmental analysis of social model programs. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, /S(!), 7-17.