Cookeville City Council is pushing to include Putnam County in an amended Tennessee Code that would allow cities and towns to more strictly regulate sober living homes.
City Manager James Mills said sober living homes in Cookeville have been a topic of discussion for several years.
“The city has received calls with concerns and sometimes complaints about the location of sober living homes throughout the city,” Mills said. “This really came to a head a few weeks ago with the incident that we had at one of our local sober living homes.”
Last month, a 40-year-old man was stabbed and killed inside a sober living home located on Miller Avenue. Mills said state law currently limits the city’s ability to regulate sober living homes.
“State law provides that they have no more than eight occupants plus up to three caregivers, then they have to be treated just like a single-family residential home,” Mills said. “So basically, they can go in any subdivision in the city, and we’ve got several scattered through the city.”
Mills said the law would include a separation requirement of 1,000 feet from any school, pre-school, or daycare. Mills said he is not sure what other restrictions would be allowed under the state law.
“We are currently in contact with communities where this has been enacted, cause again it ought to become effective in May of this year,” Mills said. “The governor signed the public chapter. So we got some time to research this, see if this goes through. It will be next May or next June before it’s effective, then we will have time to draw up an ordinance. So it gives us lots of time to research that, but this is all that we can find that will give us some extra ability to regulate sober living homes.”
Council will vote on the resolution at Thursday’s council meeting.