OXFORD — A religious group has withdrawn its proposal to open a group home for recovering addicts in a residential neighborhood because of concerns it could turn the community against them. 

Pastor Roland Laliberty, the organizer behind CityReach Oxford Hills, said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon that plans to locate a faith-based recovery home for men was taken off the table after hearing from concerned neighbors. 

“We didn’t want to put the community through any more hardship,” Laliberty said. “We’re looking to do good. (Opening the home) would have burnt bridges with neighbors and the town.”

Plans called for the group to run a “discipleship” for men addicted to drugs. The 9-month, intensive treatment program would have seen up to eight participants vetted for suitability to live, work and pray at the home.

The program differed greatly from traditional recovery homes: rather than receiving clinical treatment, participants would have been weaned from their addiction through faith-based studies, vocational placement and community service. 

The plan was opposed by neighbors from the outset, who said privately and at a public meeting that a recovery home would devalue their properties, invite crime and break the peace of a quiet community. 

Those concerns came to a head in June, when several neighbors voiced their disapproval at a contentious Planning Board hearing. Several residents said the program would be better off in a bigger city and didn’t feel its members, who have backgrounds at clinical treatment facilities, were equipped to handle sobering addicts. 

Located at 298 Coldwater Brook Road, the property had been zoned as a residential area where churches are allowed but not drug addiction treatment facilities.

However, the town ordinance defines such a facility as that “for outpatient detoxification and treatment of narcotic-dependent persons which administers or dispenses drugs used to alleviate adverse physiological or psychological effects incident to withdrawal from continuous or sustained drug use.” 

The group said previously that they did not administer or dispense drugs and are federally recognized as a church. The group operates several homes in Maine, including Bangor and Lewiston.

Moreover, at the Planning Board meeting Pastor Robert Bledsoe, the CityReach Regional director for New England, said the program was similar to a monastery, where drugs, alcohol and smoking are prohibited.

At the meeting, Bledsoe said state and federal anti-discrimination laws protected their right to open the home, and if necessary they could get a court order. When Planning Board members disagreed, both sides said they would contact their lawyers. 

But those plans never came to fruition. After being contacted by lawyers from major cities eager to take up their case, Laliberty said he ultimately decided forcing their way in would do more harm than good. Their search for a space in Oxford Hills isn’t over, but it won’t be in Oxford, he said. 

“We didn’t want to contribute any more to that fear,” he said. 

[email protected]