Fair Housing
Resource Center
The purpose of this memorandum is to explain how the federal Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988
applies to local land use and zoning regulations impacting recovery residences. More specifically, this memorandum
explains: (1) the legal basis for treating households of unrelated individuals with disabilities in recovery for
substance abuse as other single-family households of related individuals and (2) the authority for regulating recovery
homes as residential uses, not commercial uses, subject only to the requirements of other single-family dwelling
households.