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The denial of a zoning exception for a drug treatment center was based on “fear and bias” and must be reversed, the Court of Appeals of Indiana ruled Wednesday.
The case of Tipton County Board of Zoning Appeals v. Hope for the Hurting, 23A-MI-1733, involves a drug treatment center that faith-based charity Hope for the Hurting wants to open in rural Tipton County. Warren and Michelle Stine donated their property to the charity to open the treatment center.
To open the center, known as the “Oasis,” Hope for the Hurting applied for a special use exception because the donated property was zoned as agricultural. But at a hearing in June 2022, remonstrators opposed the exception because they did not want people who are “not disciplined and irresponsible,” meaning those in recovery, living nearby.
The BZA denied the special use exception, citing the remonstrators’ safety concerns.
Hope then sought judicial review, and the Grant Circuit Court reversed the BZA.
According to the trial court, “the opponents’ presentations did not consist of factual observations regarding the project or the Property (other than its proximity to their real estate) but was made up largely of opinions of people in recovery and speculative ‘parade of horribles’ of imagined scenarios where the patients of the facility would engage in criminal or reckless behavior.’”
The trial court also found, “The BZA’s findings … rest not on facts but on the opponents’ unreasonable and irrational animus towards those trying to recover from addiction.”
The BZA appealed the trial court’s reversal, but the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court’s decision, looking to Subsections B and G of the local zoning ordinance.
“The comments voiced by remonstrators during the hearing about their beliefs and concerns against granting Hope the special use exception do not amount to evidence upon which a reasonable mind would rely,” Judge Patricia Riley wrote. “… The BZA’s own findings acknowledged that remonstrators’ statements veered into unsupported territory when it observed that ‘[t]he BZA gives appropriate weight and due consideration to the testimony and statements which appear to be based on reason or supported by credible argument. Any testimony or statements which appeared utterly devoid of relevant facts, or which seemed to go against all common sense, was [sic] discounted and not relied upon.’
“However, by still crediting these ungrounded statements and explicitly incorporating them in its findings, the BZA elevated fear and bias to the level of evidence,” Riley wrote. “The BZA cannot support its decision with conjecture or speculation, but that is precisely what it did in its findings on Subsection B. Because there was ‘no basis that would lead a reasonable and honest person to the same conclusion,’ the BZA’s conclusion with respect to Subsection B should be reversed.”
Further, the Oasis would not be contrary to the local Comprehensive Plan, the COA continued.
“We agree with the trial court’s statement that ‘[p]erhaps the best evidence that operating a Social Rehabilitation Center is consistent with the Comprehensive Plan is the [O]rdinance itself, which has long allowed such use as a special exception under the zoning ordinance,’” Riley wrote. “If the Ordinance itself encourages the establishment of new Social Rehabilitation Centers, then such use would certainly include the Oasis, which will be located in existing residential houses on Property that has always complied with the Ordinance.
“… The totality of the evidence before us reflects that the BZA’s findings in denying Hope’s request for a special use exception are based on a catalogue of speculative and hypothetical dangers the Oasis residents might pose,” Riley concluded. “This hyperbole and conjecture have no basis in fact and do not amount to substantial evidence sufficient to support the BZA’s denial.”
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