Rapid City SD- The tension between a neighborhood’s “right to know” and a citizen’s federal right to privacy collided at city hall this month.

The result? A fundamental change to how Rapid City handles group living accommodations is now one vote away from final passage — conveniently ending the exact kind of scrutiny that had already caught the council’s own president off guard.

On August 17, the Rapid City Council passed the first reading of Ordinance 6726, an amendment to the municipal code that would remove the public hearing requirement for conditional use permits when citizens with disabilities — specifically those in addiction recovery — seek reasonable housing accommodations. A second reading, required for final passage, is still to come.

The debate surrounding the ordinance was dense, tangled in the intersection of the Fair Housing Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and local zoning laws. But before the legal jargon took over the chamber, the human stakes were laid bare — and so was a conflict of interest that has followed this ordinance since before it had a bill number.

The Human Element: “A Chosen Family”

The most compelling case for the ordinance didn’t come from a city attorney, but from Carl Hodson III, the Chapter 2 Chairperson for Oxford House for Meade and Pennington counties.

Hodson grounded the abstract zoning conversation in life-or-death stakes, sharing his journey from the prison system to a Deadwood jail, and finally, to recovery.

“There came a time where I wanted to give it my all, where I wanted to live, because I was on the verge of not, or going back to prison for a very long time,” Hodson told the council. “And the one thing that kept me out of there was Oxford House.”

Hodson tackled neighborhood fears head-on, explaining that sober living homes are not chaotic flophouses, but strictly governed environments run by the residents themselves.

The rules require absolute abstinence, democratic operation, obeying all laws, and paying an equal share of expenses.

He also cited the network’s long-term success data as evidence the model works — and the research backs him up.

A randomized study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that Oxford House residents had significantly lower substance use than a comparison group at the 24-month mark (31.3% vs. 64.8%), along with higher income and lower incarceration rates.

A separate national study found 81.5% of residents who left Oxford House reported no substance use during the following year.

But the crux of Hodson’s testimony addressed the core zoning conflict: why six to ten unrelated individuals need to live together under one roof. It isn’t just about splitting rent; it is the fundamental mechanism of their recovery.

“Because there are six to 10 people per house, chances are you’re going to have shared life experiences with others fighting the same battles as yourself, and you’re going to build relationships through equality,” Hodson said. “We form strong lifelong bonds and we form a family, and it’s a chosen family.”

The Federal Mandate & The Liability Trap

The legal reality facing Rapid City is that addiction recovery is a protected impairment under both the Fair Housing Act (FHA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Currently, the city defines a “single-family home” as five or fewer unrelated people living together. Oxford Houses and other sober living environments require a waiver of that specific rule to operate.

The problem with the old system, according to Deputy City Attorney Kinsley Groote during the August 12 Legal & Finance Committee meeting, was the public hearing itself.

Forcing individuals in recovery to stand before a crowd and publicly disclose their protected medical history just to live in a residential neighborhood opens the city up to massive liability.

Groote explained that an administrative process guards against “illegal discrimination and discriminatory community pressure.”

City Attorney Carla Cushman echoed this at the full council meeting, providing a stark warning to those seeking to maintain neighborhood notifications.

“If we had a requirement in the zoning code where these kinds of uses required notification to the neighborhood, that may be appropriate in these cases, but we don’t have that requirement,” Cushman explained. “If we put it into place when a reasonable accommodation is requested, that’s the definition of discrimination.”

The Council President’s Stake

What the legal framing leaves out is why this ordinance arrived with such urgency in the first place — and why Council President Stephen Tamang abstained from voting on it.

Tamang owns multiple properties in Rapid City leased to Oxford House.

One of them, sold by its previous owners in July 2025, became the subject of a formal zoning complaint filed by a neighbor, Kathy Minnick, in November 2025 — after the city’s own zoning department confirmed the five-unrelated-adult limit applies to everyone, including a sitting council member.

The city’s notice of violation to Tamang did not even cite the correct violation. Records show Tamang never filed a Conditional Use Permit for any of his Oxford House-leased properties.

That history was already public before the Aug 17 vote.Ordinance 6726 doesn’t just resolve a federal compliance gap; it retroactively legitimizes the exact arrangement Tamang was already running without a permit, by removing the public hearing he would otherwise have faced.

The “Right to Know” Pushback

Despite the legal warnings, the loss of neighborhood transparency sat uneasy with some.

Councilman Kevin Maher voiced the primary opposition, arguing that while he supports the Oxford House mission, the lack of public notice is a flaw in the new system.

“We can adjust the occupancy limits and we can adjust the spacing requirements and no consideration for the neighbors, nothing, no public notice,” Maher said. “I think the neighbors deserve the right to know.”

Minnick pointed out the potential loopholes regarding maximum occupancy.

“I struggle to understand why defining a group of unrelated individuals as a family should mean that there is effectively no limit on how many people can occupy a home,” she stated — a concern shaped, in her case, by personal experience with the very property at the center of this ordinance’s origin story.

Community Development Director Vicki Fisher countered the notification argument by pointing out that the city does not notify neighborhoods for other, often more disruptive, permitted uses.

“Where else in the city do we notice the neighborhood if a family comes in and there’s more than five people or nine people or 18 people in that family? We don’t do it,” Fisher said. “We don’t notice for a vacation home… we don’t notice for an in-home daycare.”

That comparison, though, sidesteps a real inconsistency: informal living arrangements — a neighbor’s family member staying during addiction recovery, for instance — draw no notification requirement of any kind, while formal, professionally run accommodation programs like Oxford House, with an established track record, are the ones now stripped of a hearing after facing years of scrutiny neither category asked for equally.

The Administrative Checks and Balances

To alleviate fears of unilateral power being handed to the Community Development Department, Fisher outlined a multi-department review process built into the new ordinance to keep these homes accountable:

• The Development Review Team: Applications must be routed through engineering, fire, and building code officials.
• Legal Oversight: The City Attorney’s office must co-sign any approvals to ensure federal compliance.
• Strict Operational Plans: The city can now require and enforce a specific operational plan. If a house requests nine residents, they must prove they have the off-street parking to accommodate them.
• No Commercial Activity: The city can stipulate that no commercial uses — such as on-site detox services, medical facilities, or bringing in outside managers for applicant interviews — are permitted on the property. It must remain strictly residential.

If a house breaches its operational plan, the city has mechanisms in place to initiate revocation procedures.

Ultimately, the council recognized the legal writing on the wall. The first reading of Ordinance 6726 passed with a singular “no” vote from Councilman Maher and an abstention from Councilman Tamang. A second reading still stands between the ordinance and final passage.

Sourcing

---

*Quotes from Carl Hodson III, Deputy City Attorney Kinsley Groote, City Attorney Carla Cushman, Councilman Kevin Maher, and Community Development Director Vicki Fisher via the Aug. 12, 2026 Legal & Finance Committee meeting and the Aug. 17, 2026 Rapid City Council meeting, official video via rapidcitygovernment. Kathy Minnick’s public comment and her July 16, 2026 letter to the council obtained via city records; background on her November 2025 zoning complaint against Council President Stephen Tamang’s property, and confirmation Tamang has never filed a Conditional Use Permit for any of his Oxford House-leased properties, via a July 17, 2026 letter to the council from resident Markie Zacharias, also obtained via city records. Oxford House success-rate data from Jason, L.A., Olson, B.D., Ferrari, J.R., & Lo Sasso, A.T. (2006). “Communal Housing Settings Enhance Substance Abuse Recovery,” *American Journal of Public Health*, 96(10), 1727-1729; and Jason, L.A. & Ferrari, J.R. (2010). “Oxford House Recovery Homes: Characteristics and Effectiveness,” *Psychological Services, 7(2), 92-102. Both DePaul University Center for Community Research. Background on Ordinance 6726 and Tamang’s conflict of interest via the Sentinel’s prior reporting, “Tamang’s Own Zoning Violation Meets the Ordinance That Would Excuse It.”