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For $610 a month, Smart Start Living Society has been giving recovering addicts a roof over their heads, some food and a drive to the pharmacy to get their daily dispensed methadone or Suboxone and other prescriptions.

There is also supposed to be cable, Wi-Fi and a house phone.

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But beyond that, a resident and his wife say, it’s a free-for-all at the society’s houses with open drug use and none of the minimal supports that he was promised to help put his life back together.

After doing well in the first stage of addictions recovery treatment, he has relapsed since moving into one of the society’s three houses on 137th Street in Surrey.

“It’s awful,” he told me. “I’m just trying to survive and get through each day.”

Thomas Goldbeck founded the society. He insists that there hasn’t been a single complaint filed about the society’s three homes.

Yet, it was because of complaints that Surrey bylaw inspectors were at Smart Start’s houses late last month. They were back again a couple of weeks ago.