Lincoln City Council Approves of Ordinance for Collaborative Living Houses

LINCOLN–(KFOR July 11)–A maximum of 10 people can live in a collaborative living house, or sober living homes, while those places have to be between 500 feet and 1,000 feet apart from each other, plus include a parking spot for every two residents.

That’s the final decision made by the Lincoln City Council on Monday in a 6-1 vote.

Before the vote, Council member Tom Duden offered an amendment to include group homes in the spacing requirement and doubled the fine for collaborative living homes that violate city code from $100 to $200.  Ultimately, that amendment was defeated on a 3-to-4 vote.

“Collaborative living is a totally unsupervised facility.  All the other facilities are supervised,” Duden told fellow council members.

Council chair Tom Beckius said overall, the ordinance right now is a good starting point should there be changes needed in the future.

“I think it’s, again, important to have a baseline in which to work from,” Beckius added.

The council’s decision comes after months of changes, following hearings from collaborative living home owners, who have requested reasonable accommodations through existing ordinances from the Fair Housing Act, which says cities can’t discriminate against people with disabilities.

Courts have said that would also apply to people going through recovery.