The staff of The Herald-Times first heard of Malibu House in December 2024. A local business was helping to raise funds for the sober living business and a related business called Impossible the Movement.
The H-T began looking for information about Malibu House and tracked its incorporation papers to a man name Kiel Sheppard, whose mugshot is prominently displayed on the websites of several news outlets in Florida.
Then we heard from someone working in the recovery field about his concerns related to Malibu House. Conditions in the houses were not up to a safe standard, he told us.
We pulled a background report on Sheppard and, in January, filed a records request with the city of Bloomington. That request was fulfilled last month.
In February, the H-T reporting team began talking to people who have lived in a Malibu House, people in the recovery field, and researching requirements to qualify as a sober living house. Turns out, there really aren’t any in Indiana.
Laura Lane tracked Sheppard down at a court hearing and again on the street outside the Malibu House office. She also attended the court hearing of another former resident, one whose freedom is threatened by his eviction from one of the residences.
Boris Ladwig spoke with a former resident about the conditions in the houses where he lived. Brian Rosenzweig talked to Courage to Change co-founder Marilyn Grimes about her expanding network of nonprofit sober living houses.
The reporters talked to experts about the delicate balance of providing safe shelter for people struggling with addiction and teetering on the edge of homelessness and researched some of the pitfalls of a lax regulatory environment.
What do you think about sober living in Bloomington? Do you support Malibu House’s for-profit business model?
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: How we did it: Reporting on Malibu House and sober living in Bloomington
Reporting by Jill Bond, The Herald-Times / The Herald-Times
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