Expansion of Addiction Treatment Sparks Debate Over Burden and Belonging
By Devonte Barr, Columnist
San Pedro has long carried a reputation—hard drinking, working-class in parts, but also home to
generations of institutions built around helping those in need.
For some, that history now doubles as justification. If addiction has always been part of the
culture, then recovery services belong here too—maybe more than anywhere else.
It’s a line of thinking that has quietly shaped decades of policy decisions about where treatment
infrastructure gets built—and where it does not. A stereotype, slowly, becomes a blueprint.
But that history is more complicated than “simple” zoning logic. For more than a century, San
Pedro has been home to some of Los Angeles’ earliest nonprofit and faith-based aid systems.
Organizations tied to the Catholic Church, Methodist ministries, and groups like the YMCA and
YWCA helped establish a network of services for the poor, the addicted, and the
displaced—long before the city’s modern homelessness infrastructure took shape.
Fred Brown Recovery Center, founded in 1983 by Vietnam veteran Fred Brown—who
experienced addiction and homelessness in San Pedro before entering recovery—was built on a
model of local, community-based care. What began as a small sober-living effort grew into one
of the Harbor Area’s most recognizable treatment providers.
What’s being proposed now is not another program but a large-scale expansion of an existing
one. Backed by tens of millions in public funding, centered on one of the community’s most
recognizable properties—the former Little Sisters of the Poor facility, now under consideration
by Fred Brown Recovery Center.
The debate unfolding around it isn’t at all about whether addiction treatment is necessary.
It’s about who carries the weight of solving it—and whether proximity to a problem is the same
thing as responsibility for fixing it.
Proposition 1, a 2024 statewide bond, allocated roughly $6 billion for drug and alcohol treatment
infrastructure. Through that program, Fred Brown Recovery Center has applied for—and been
tentatively awarded—approximately $74 million to purchase and convert the property into a
treatment campus, pending final state approval. The organization operates on roughly $12
million a year—about the equivalent of asking someone who rents a studio apartment to
suddenly manage a resort.
If completed, the project would include more than 100 residential beds and serve roughly 175 to
200 outpatient clients daily, with a phased rollout projected through 2031. State officials say the
scale reflects what is urgently needed: more beds, faster access, and expanded capacity in a
system where treatment demand consistently outpaced availability.
The logic is familiar: demand exceeds supply, so build more supply. Except demand has
exceeded supply for decades, no matter how much gets built. Patients cycle through emergency
rooms because there aren’t enough beds. The solution, apparently, is more beds for them to cycle
through.
But on the ground in San Pedro, the conversation is more complicated.
At a recent interview and subsequent town hall, Councilmember Tim McOsker, who represents
the Harbor Area, said he broadly supports addiction treatment, but questioned whether this particular proposal—and its scale—fits the site.
His concerns start with the people already living there.
The property currently houses roughly 70 residents, many in their 80s and 90s, receiving
memory and convalescent care. McOsker raised questions about how displacement would be
handled and whether operating two different care models on the same site was feasible or
appropriate.
Beyond that, he pointed to the size of the undertaking. A nonprofit managing a project several
times its annual budget, with significantly expanded capacity and operational demands, raises
questions about whether the organization can sustain it.
Supporters of the project point to a different reality. Clinicians working in the Harbor Area
describe a system where patients ready for treatment often cannot find a bed in time, cycling
instead through emergency rooms and short-term stabilization without access to sustained care.
Los Angeles County Department of Public Health data shows that demand for residential
treatment beds consistently exceed availability, leaving people in crisis with nowhere to go.
Law enforcement and public health officials have also identified substance use as an ongoing
issue within the Harbor Area itself, underscoring that the need for treatment is not solely driven
by outside populations.
In that context, the proposal represents more than a single development—it reflects an attempt to
address a longstanding shortage of treatment capacity across Los Angeles County.
And that’s where the division is more legible.
No one in this debate is arguing that recovery services shouldn’t exist. Facilities such as Fred
Brown Recovery Center and Beacon House Association of San Pedro have operated in the
Harbor Area for decades, providing structured care for people who often have limited
alternatives.
The question isn’t whether San Pedro participates in that system—it always has.
The question is whether the scale and placement of new projects reflect thoughtful planning or
simply follow the path of least resistance. And San Pedro has become that path—not because it’s
ideal, but because it has been saying yes for a hundred years. That history of service has become
an expectation.
That divide was on full display at a recent town hall, where hundreds of residents filled the room.
While some opposition focused on displacement and capacity, the tone of portions of the meeting suggested a deeper divide. Many of the most vocal critics came from surrounding middle- and upper-middle-class neighborhoods—communities that have their own relationship to regional burden-sharing, which is to say, they don’t. Their concerns were not only about the project’s scale, but about the type of population it would serve.
Officials emphasized that no final decision has been made and that multiple steps remain before
any project moves forward.
In the meantime, San Pedro is being pulled in two directions at once.
The city and the Port of Los Angeles continue to invest in waterfront promenade development,
West Harbor redevelopment, and port-backed infrastructure to reshape the area into a regional
destination. At the same time, it remains a central hub for recovery services, transitional housing,
and other forms of social support that serve a broader population beyond the Harbor Area.
Each of those priorities makes sense independently.
Together, they create a vision that is either admirably inclusive or fundamentally incoherent: San
Pedro is both a destination and a place other neighborhoods send problems they’d rather not deal
with.
What happens next will depend on whether the proposal clears its remaining approvals, how
concerns about capacity and displacement are addressed, and whether Fred Brown Recovery
Center responds to the growing scrutiny surrounding the project.
Because beneath the arguments about zoning, funding, and feasibility is something more
fundamental:
Not whether recovery services belong in San Pedro—But whether San Pedro is being asked to carry more than its share
