San Pedro residents fight plans to put an addiction recovery center in their neighborhood

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More than 200 people who live near a proposed addiction recovery center in San Pedro protested at the site Sunday afternoon, arguing the facility — which would share property with or displace a nursing home — is a bad fit for the neighborhood.Some residents are hopeful that a Tuesday evening town hall meeting will shed more light on the project, which they say was unexpected.

The nonprofit Fred Brown’s Recovery Services is seeking to acquire the five-acre property at 2100 Western Avenue and turn it into a 122-bed inpatient recovery facility that would serve “veterans, the justice-involved, the unhoused, and those with co-occuring conditions,” Fred Brown’s said in a two-page information notice sent to area residents.The facility also would serve about 1,000 people on an outpatient basis.Protesters held signs and banners, some reading “Future home of 1,000 non-local addicts” and “No Skid Row in San Pedro.”Many residents, including Ivana Poste, said a similar but smaller and short-lived treatment center on the property, not managed by Fred Brown‘s, made their neighborhood feel less safe in recent months.“It felt like a little taste of what could happen,” Poste, a 36-year-old occupational therapist, said.

Her husband’s car was broken into, and she saw people who she believed were on drugs walking around the quiet neighborhood.Poste supports recovery but said a large-scale treatment facility on that property would be difficult to manage.

“They’re doing us a disservice, and we’re doing them a disservice, because this is a community that helps each other,” she said.Others said San Pedro has several alternative residential treatment facilities but almost no other low-cost senior care homes.

“San Pedro has done enough,” Maryanne Pesic, 72, said.“We need this like we need a hole in the head.”In a statement to The Times, Fred Brown’s said ...