Roohallah Mobarez, CEO of Mobarez Solutions and operator of a recently opened recovery residence in Firestone, was a topic of public comment during an April 24, 2024, Firestone Board of Trustees meeting about an emergency ordinance regarding sex offenders. (Andrew Fraieli for Colorado Newsline)
The town of Firestone recently passed a set of emergency ordinances explicitly targeted at a state-approved recovery residence that municipal officials behind the scenes, citing registered sex offenders who lived there, aimed to shut down.
The first emergency ordinance banned multiple sex offenders from living together, and was passed on April 24 with no previous public discussion or public comment. Emails obtained by Colorado Newsline reveal that the ordinance was intended to shut down the recovery residence, a home with services for people recovering from a substance use disorder.
Town officials in the emails insist that the residence is a “group home” and therefore violated Firestone’s development code due to its lack of a permit, despite the owner — Roohallah Mobarez, CEO of Mobarez Solutions — correcting them. The officials also claim that Mobarez is “trying to hide his true intentions” and “mislead” the town, even after Planning and Development Director Todd Bjerkaas received a letter from the state-sanctioned Colorado Agency for Recovery Residencies, or CARR, stating that it had certified Mobarez’s recovery residence.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
A group home — which has no consistent definition across municipalities — requires a permit in Firestone, but recovery residences are overseen by the state and cannot be regulated any differently than single-family homes. The difference between the two is significant, as the emergency ordinance was informally targeted at the residence. Housing discrimination against those with disabilities, such as addiction, is against state and federal law.
“It is quite common that people who oppose housing for individuals with disabilities in residential zones will label a shared household as a ‘group home,’ attaching a negative connotation to the use, which may or may not be protected under federal and state fair housing laws,” Director Butch Lewis of CARR told Colorado Newsline. CARR is sanctioned by the state to certify and oversee recovery residencies.
‘Please keep this quiet’
“I promise we will do everything in our power to stop this,” Town Manager A.J. Krieger said in an email to multiple residents of Firestone, referring to the recovery residence.
Other emails sent to residents of Firestone from Krieger reveal he intended to hide the proposed ordinance from Mobarez.
“It’s imperative that he not learn about our plans prior to Wednesday evening,” Krieger said, Wednesday being the night of the Board of Trustees meeting. “I encourage residents to attend the Board meeting Wednesday — but please keep this quiet, and ask your neighbors to do so as well!”
The ordinance was put on the agenda at the last legal moment, 24 hours prior to the meeting, having only been drafted the previous week and scheduled to be voted on prior to public comment.
Krieger presented the ordinance as a solution to the “group home” in emails to Firestone residents, but the town’s explanation in the ordinance itself is that “the Town is aware of attempts to subvert the use requirements of the Firestone Development Code.” This explanation of why the ordinance would be necessary for the “immediate preservation of the public peace, health or safety” is required by state law for passing an emergency ordinance, which allows it to become law immediately rather than 30 days later.
There is no further explanation in the ordinance why banning sex offenders from living together is a solution to a development code violation. The town’s code already contains multiple repercussions the Planning and Development director could impose against the violator. Neither Krieger nor Bjerkaas responded to multiple requests for comment.
During an April 24, 2024, meeting, the Firestone Board of Trustees passed an emergency ordinance banning sex offenders from living together. So many residents were present that the town opened a second viewing room. (Andrew Fraieli for Colorado Newsline)
Lewis said that Firestone knew the facility was a recovery residence, not a group home, because he had an in-depth conversation with Krieger and the town attorney, William Hayashi, the very morning of the emergency ordinance vote. He doesn’t understand why the development code violation was still invoked, he said.
“With this case, the thing that was so powerful was all the evidence around it of just pure discrimination, pure dislike of these folks who wanted to live there,” Maddie Lips, a Denver-based civil rights attorney with Killmer Lane who began looking into the situation, told Newsline. “Which part of the development code and why don’t you enforce that code then? Why do you need to make another ordinance?”
Killmer Lane initially intended to represent Mobarez in a lawsuit against Firestone, but dropped what would have been a direct discrimination case against sex offenders after the town’s passage of a second ordinance, which more decisively restricted where sex offenders could live in Firestone.
On the verge of homelessness
Mobarez and Firestone continued to be at odds over the town’s tactic of focusing on sex offenders in their ordinances and ignoring the home’s certified status as a recovery residence by CARR.
A recovery residence is defined by the state as housing for people with a substance use disorder — a disability covered by state fair housing laws and the Americans with Disabilities Act — that “promotes independent living and life skill development” and “structured activities and recovery support services that are primarily intended to promote recovery from substance use disorders.”
Emails show that Mobarez gave Bjerkaas a letter addressed to Firestone from Lewis a week before the first ordinance vote that clarified the definition of a recovery residence and explained that “Mobarez Solutions has either met or exceeded recovery residence certification requirements upon every application it has submitted to the State.” Mobarez has never had a grievance filed against his residences, the letter said.
“I would absolutely tell you that I thought they were trying to limit the number of sex offenders in this residence, 100%,” Lewis said. He told Newsline that he believes, based on multiple conversations with Firestone, that the town was trying to shut down Mobarez’s recovery residence, but only because they understood it as a group home operating against their ordinances. He doesn’t think Firestone was acting maliciously.
The town first learned of the recovery residence March 14, according to emails. Days later, Bjerkaas, treating the residency as a group home, emailed Mobarez stating that he required a permit to operate. The town, and Bjerkaas, continued to insist that the recovery residence was a group home, with Firestone police even denying multiple sex offenders from registering as living at the recovery residence.
With this case, the thing that was so powerful was all the evidence around it of just pure discrimination, pure dislike of these folks who wanted to live there.
– Maddie Lips, civil rights attorney with Killmer Lane
An email from Firestone Police Chief David Angelo to himself shows that two days before the emergency ordinance was to be passed, one resident of the home went to the police department to register, but Angelo denied him. State law allows an agency to deny registration if doing so would violate state law or local ordinance, and Angelo cited Bjerkaas’ claim to him that the residence was a group home operating without a permit, even as the resident corrected him.
Mobarez told Newsline that he’s helped one resident find an apartment with their family in another town, is in the midst of helping another do the same, and a third is on the verge of homelessness unless they find another recovery residence for him. Mobarez Solutions is the only certified program in Colorado dedicated to working with sex offenders, Lewis said, but other programs do consider them for admission on a case-to-case basis.
All sex offenders in Firestone affected
Before the Board of Trustees unanimously approved the emergency ordinance, Trustee Matt Holcomb asked whether town officials had data on recidivism of offenders. They did not — more evidence, Lips said, that the ordinance was “purely based on bias and personal fears.”
A 2013 study found that the most common type of criminal recidivism for sex offenders was, by far, non-sexual: technical violations of conditions of their release. Non-sexual misdemeanors was second. A Department of Justice report from 2019 tracked sex offenders convicted for rape or sexual assault released from state prison in 2005 for nine years and found that only 8% were arrested for the same crimes during those years.
Other studies have continued to show that treatment heavily reduces recidivism in sex offenders of all types — up to 22% — with community treatment being the most effective. “The evidence demonstrates that if the public and elected officials were committed to reducing recidivism, community treatment rather than institutional treatment is proven to reduce recidivism,” one study states.
Firestone Town Manager A.J. Krieger encouraged residents in emails to not tell Mobarez about an ordinance banning sex offenders from living together on the agenda for April 24. (Andrew
Public comment after the ordinance’s passing at the April 24 Firestone Board meeting saw residents express that they didn’t feel safe in the neighborhood anymore, citing sexual harassment and assault that had happened in their own families, the fact that Mobarez himself is a recovered sex offender, and claiming high recidivism rates for offenders.
Mimi Salonen, a Firestone resident with multiple kids in the same neighborhood as the recovery residence, referring to those comments, told Newsline that people experiencing homelessness live in the same area.
“I feel a lot more scared of that than I do a house that has four people in it that are all being watched at all times now by the neighborhood,” she said.
There were already 19 registered sex offenders living within the town’s limits. They are all now affected by a second emergency ordinance the town passed on May 8. This ordinance bans any sex offender from residing within 1,000 feet of any school, child care facility, school bus stop, public park, playground, public recreational trail, open space, pool, library, church, recreation center or community center.
Other towns and cities have similar ordinances, and some have been successfully challenged for essentially banning sex offenders from the municipality.
In 2013, the ACLU of Colorado won a case they brought against Englewood for an ordinance that banned certain sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of any school, park, or playground or 1,000 feet of any licensed day care center, recreation center or swimming pool, or any property located adjacent to any designated public or private school bus stop, walk-to-school route, or recreational trail.
The court specifically highlighted the lack of consideration about the “nature of the offense, the treatment the offender has received, the risk that he or she will reoffend against children, and the evaluation and recommendations of qualified state officials …”
“The municipalities I don’t feel are trying to outright stop recovery residences from opening within their municipalities,” Lewis said. “What I believe they are trying to do is trying to get them to operate within the local ordinances, as they have written, which sometimes just by doing that prohibits the recovery residence from operating.”
Lips thinks differently.
“(Firestone) started off saying things that were teeing up as a potential ADA violation, and with apparent motivation to shut (Mobarez) down completely. And then it seems like they changed tact and went after the justice and sex offender aspect of it,” Lips said.
But municipalities also cannot pass ordinances with the sole rationalization being direct discrimination, she continued.
“There was a good basis, I think, to show that their actions were purely taken out of dislike of a certain group, which is not permitted. And then it seems they got wise and realized they should say more of the magic words,” she said, referring to the second ordinance.
Other public comments at the Board of Trustees meeting pointed at what was felt to be a lack of communication between Mobarez and residents about opening the recovery residence. Salonen visited the residence’s open house on the same day as the trustees’ vote on the first ordinance and said that, while people might not admit it, she thinks they worry about property values, too, and consideration of practical aspects might have gone a long way.
“If it’s about keeping our kids safe, about keeping our neighborhood safe, the only way to do that is with a stupid amount of kindness. And if you’re going to ask people to be kind, you have to give them something,” she said. “I do think if you’re a sex offender … on a case about taking care of yourself and taking the steps to become a different person, then I don’t know what more I can ask.”
SUPPORT NEWS YOU TRUST.
The post Firestone scrambled to shut down state-approved recovery residence where sex offenders lived appeared first on Colorado Newsline.