Construction of an illegal second story on a home on Lernhart Street may result in the city regulating homes for people recovering from drug and alcohol addiction.

The Napa City Council allowed John Apodaca Tuesday to have a second story game room for recovering addicts at 1983 Lernhart St., but said the proliferation of such homes in south Napa needed to be controlled.

Neighbors had organized against the addition, saying Apodaca, the CEO of Serenity Homes of Napa Valley, was threatening to overrun their neighborhood with group homes.

Serenity Homes said it had three facilities in the Lernhart area and two more elsewhere in Napa. Neighbors alleged Serenity had more.

Apodaca's homes are generally well-run, neighbors said, but they feared his expansion plans. According to William Cocke, Apodaca bid on two more houses in the Lernhart neighborhood this year.

"Nobody is against Johnny," said Dan Hall of Locust Street. "We're afraid it will go too far and then we'll have a problem."

Napa City Attorney Michael Barrett said the city could likely control the number of people in the group homes and the concentration of homes in a neighborhood.

The state exempts most group homes from local control, Barrett said. Since Apodaca's facilities are not licensed by the state and do not offer social services, this creates an opportunity for city regulation, he said.

The council told Barrett to come back with a zoning revision to deal with facilities offering transitional housing for people in recovery.

"The good work can still be done," Councilman Kevin Block said. "The entire city needs to be part of that, to share the benefits and the burdens."

More than a dozen people who have known addiction praised the work of Serenity Homes, saying it was a vital link to returning people to productive lives.

The issue before the council Tuesday night was not supposed to be the usage at 1983 Lernhart St., but the design of the half-finished second story the city red tagged a year ago for lack of a building permit.

Subsequently, property owner Judy Bickell applied for a 468-square-foot game room, with a wrap-around second-story balcony on three sides of the house.

The Planning Commission voted to allow only a stub of a balcony facing the rear yard after neighbors voiced privacy concerns. They feared the game room would become a gathering spot for residents of all Serenity homes and attract former residents as well.

The council went further, voting to eliminate the balcony entirely and restrict the second-story windows to the smallest size possible.

Apodaca is allowed to complete the game room, which has been under a blue tarp for nearly a year.

"It's workable," Apodaca said of the council decision.