Soon after I moved here I noticed a rustic-looking hotel on Carrillo that I thought might be a good spot for out-of-town visitors... until I start paying closer attention to the client base. At any point in the day, you see people in various states of dishevelment lingering on the lawn in front of the hotel, garbed in the finest the nearby Goodwill has to offer. "What is this, some kind of whorehouse?" I wondered.
As it turns out, the Hotel de Riviera is a space for adults in recovery, a "Dual Diagnosis Structural Clean & Sober Living Environment" with 30 single-occupant rooms. Pretty sweet deal for those down on their luck, right? There are six other projects like the Hotel de Riviera in Santa Barbara County, which are collectively "State Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) Rental Housing Complexes."
