My Dragon's Lair Sharing is the reason for my being...: Who's side would you be on? The man or the neighbors and city?

City cites illegal rooming house Owner: use porper as aid to ex-addicts.

By Christine McConville, Globe Staff July 29 2007

MEDFORD -- From the street, William Maragioglio's house looks perfectly in place among the others in this densely packed neighborhood near the Malden city line.

But what's inside the blue four-bedroom at 112 Second St. is a different story.

The dwelling is now the subject of a federal administrative probe, after city officials sided with Maragioglio's neighbors and took him to court for allegedly operating an illegal rooming house.

The city wants to shut Maragioglio down, or at least force him to scale back. He has as many as 10 men, all of them recovering drug addicts and alcoholics, living in the house -- far more than allowed under city zoning laws that prohibit four or more unrelated people from sharing a single-family home, City Solicitor Mark Rumley said.

But Maragioglio is fighting back.

Maragioglio's lawyer, Bruce T. MacDonald, said he is protected by federal housing laws that designate recovering addicts as disabled people, and when disabled people request reasonable accommodations, those accommodations must be provided.

The "reasonable accommodation" in this case is a waiver from local zoning, and by not allowing 10 men to live in Maragioglio's so-called sober home, the city is discriminating against the disabled, MacDonald said.

Maragioglio recently complained to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, after Medford officials asked a Somerville District Court clerk-magistrate to issue a criminal complaint against him.

The federal agency is investigating the dispute. HUD spokesman James Barnes declined to comment on the matter, saying the probe is ongoing.

Medford officials and Maragioglio began locking horns in March soon after he bought the clapboard house for $429,900 and brought in tenants.

The house sits in a quiet, family-oriented neighborhood, where some old-timers still converse in their native Italian. Many of the homes are decorated with American flags and well-tended flowerpots.

City officials first heard about the sober home after a utility worker, surprised by the number of beds in the building, told a neighbor, who alerted City Hall.

Officials found nine or 10 men living in the house. Some had come straight from prison, others from halfway houses and recovery programs, MacDonald said.

The men each paid a $270 entrance fee, and then about $135 a week in rent. Many of them work, but some pay rent with government-funded disability checks.

One of the tenants said the home provides a much-needed low-cost and positive environment for recovering addicts.

"This place has been great for me," said Bobby Manchester, 37, an aspiring restaurateur who has lived at the home since March. "I couldn't afford $15,000 for a private detox center."

Manchester and MacDonald said tenants must provide three urine samples each week to New England Transitions, Maragioglio's addiction treatment company, plus additional urine tests on demand. The company also recommends that tenants attend at least three recovery meetings each week, they said. Continued...

But neighbors and city officials contend the operation is no more than a rooming house because there is no professional oversight.

Through the spring, as tenants came and went, neighbors became increasingly upset about the change in the neighborhood.

"It used to be that when you saw a new person in the neighborhood, you knew that a house had been sold," said Julia Hendrix, a schoolteacher who has lived on the street for 12 years. "Now, you see somebody new and wonder, 'Does this person live at 112? Does this person have a record?'

"We've got an element here that is potentially dangerous, and there's no oversight," she said.

MacDonald contends the men are no more dangerous than the general public. He said the freedom is exactly what the men need at this point in their rehabilitation as they make a transition to more independent lifestyles.

"The whole point is to mainstream people back into the community," he said.

Rumley said that while Maragioglio and his tenants have certain rights under the federal Fair Housing Act, the neighbors also have rights, and the city is trying to balance both concerns. As a compromise, he said, the city in May offered to allow up to six recovering addicts to live in the home as long as Maragioglio ran criminal background checks on the tenants, to verify earlier public statements that no convicted sex offenders or arsonists would live in the home.

"The city has continually offered to keep the door of dialogue open with Maragioglio to reach an agreement on reasonable accommodation," Rumley told HUD in a recent report.

But Maragioglio will not compromise, said MacDonald. "There will be no criminal background checks."

And so now, for both parties, the future is uncertain. If the federal government backs the city, Maragioglio could be forced to shutter his operation. But if HUD finds Medford guilty of discrimination, the sober home could be here to stay.

Clerk-magistrate Margaret Weeks has put the city's request on hold, pending the outcome of the HUD investigation.

The review is expected to be complete by late August.