Critics: Sober houses need to be regulated

Sober houses save lives, providing a drug-free home for someone in recovery from addiction, say supporters.

Those who own the homes and those who have found sobriety in them also will say there are both good and bad houses, and that if someone wants to find drugs, there’s little to stop them.

Sober houses are not regulated by the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, but many are voluntarily certified by the Connecticut Alliance of Recovery Residences, known as CTARR, an affiliate of the National Alliance for Recovery Residences, whose members meet the national organization’s standards.

Those standards include providing a safe and healthy environment in which alcohol and other drugs are not allowed, operating as a legal and ethical business or nonprofit, following building codes, having naloxone on site and helping residents follow their recovery plan. There is no requirement for medical staff on site.

The state contracts with sober houses to provide beds for clients on Husky (Medicaid) when they come out of treatment, at a daily rate of $25 per bed, according to DMHAS spokesman Art Mongillo. The state has a contract with Advanced Behavioral Health to ensure the houses meet state standards.

“Each sober house is run independently,” said Carleen Zambetti, behavioral health clinical manager at DMHAS. “There is no one regulation that everybody is under. … In general, I think they’re really helpful to people by providing a substance-free living environment as people are coming out of their treatment and learning how to reinforce what they’ve learned in treatment. But I think because they’re all independent that there are good ones and bad ones.”

Zambetti said she and an ABH staff member visit each sober house once annually. “We pull charts and we have certain documentation requirements, and so one of them is a treatment plan,” she said. “We verify that they meet with the person and they document their sessions with the person and what they’re working on. Generally, it’s a simple plan. And it usually revolves around employment and housing.”

Zambetti said if there were more formal regulation of sober houses, “I think that that would limit access for people right now, because of the way

it’s structured,” she said. “There’s a lot of places that people can go and if they were regulated, I think a lot of those places would not be able to operate, and so that would limit people’s ability to move through their recovery and have a safe environment to live in.”

Karen Ablondi, vice president of CTARR, said there are gaps in the state’s system and that Connecticut is the only state in New England that doesn’t financially support its NARR affiliate. “We want DMHAS to fund CTARR so we can hire an executive director, so we can inspect and certify recovery homes, provide training … and collect data,” she said.

She said a third party should inspect the houses, rather than Advanced Behavioral Health.

Not all of the state-contracted houses are on CTARR’s list. Mongillo said the state agency’s requirements are stricter than CTARR’s.

‘A death sentence’

The lack of oversight creates a potential risk if a resident is not being given medical treatment, according to Dr. Gail D’Onofrio, former chairwoman of emergency medicine at the Yale School of Medicine and an expert in addiction treatment. Medicationassisted treatment with methadone, buprenorphine or naltrexone is critical, she said.

People who come out of detox or prison who were not given medication are at risk if they relapse, D’Onofrio said. She said that “could be a death sentence … because all you have to do is use once and you could die because of the potency of fentanyl that’s on the street.”

The risk is not just the drug itself. Going substance-free without medication is the “highest-risk time to die because you’re no longer tolerant from a physical point of view, but the addiction in your brain is still there,” D’Onofrio said. “So you go out, you use once and you die.” Withdrawal doesn’t change the “connections in the brain that are incredibly powerful towards craving and reward system,” she said. “We don’t know how many years, if ever, they go back.”

D’Onofrio said such medication should be available in sober houses. For recovering addicts, “It’s important that they be in environments in which they feel ‘safe’ … meaning that there aren’t other people there using drugs with drug paraphernalia or drinking that could trigger their addiction,” she said. “The problem is, is that they’re not regulated. … Anybody who has a couple of rooms can open it up … and some can be very bad, and some can be excellent.”

Another issue is what happens if someone fails a drug test, which many sober houses require. Putting an addict back on the street also is dangerous, D’Onofrio said. “Something’s not going right. So I need to work with the patient and say, ‘what else do you need? What’s going on? How can I help you,’ as opposed to kicking them out,” she said.

CTARR inspects, trains

Dan Smith of Canaan, CTARR’s president, said the group has 65 member houses with 500 beds in Connecticut. “We inspect and certify recovery homes, we provide trainings to administrators at homes as well as to the general public,” he said. “We have a monthly forum … so every month we’re providing trainings that are open to the public.” There also is a grievance committee.

“I think it’s a common misperception of what the public sees,” Smith said. “They usually hear about more of the sad stories rather than all the positive ones. … There’s lots and lots of people that are passing away that have not had the opportunity to be in a sober house … a place that is safe, supportive, that does do drug testing, that does do breathalyzing, that does have accountability to best support those that are in recovery living there.”

Death in a sober house

Teddy Gagnon was 24 when he died on June 9, 2017, in a sober house on Sylvan Avenue in New Haven, one of five run by Rick DelValle under the name A New Beginning.

“It was the same year my husband passed away from cancer,” said his mother, Tracey Gagnon. Teddy Gagnon had been “helping himself to my husband’s medication” so Tracey Gagnon “threw him out of the house,” she said.

She said she was grateful when Teddy found a sober house, “because I had told Teddy I could not have you come home. You’re going to have to work this and fix your life. The harder it is for you to do the work, it might stick to you.”

When she saw the house, however, Gagnon said she was upset at its condition and the neighborhood’s. “He was paying almost $200 a week to live in this sober living house and it was just a bed,” she said.

Teddy Gagnon did get a job and stayed clean. He planned to take his mother to lunch, one day after he passed a drug test. But she got a call from DelValle telling her Gagnon had overdosed.

After medical technicians tried to revive him, Teddy was taken to the hospital. “My cousin and I went back and as soon as I opened the door they pronounced him as I stood there,” she said.

She said owners of sober houses have no accountability. “There’s very, very little if any oversight whatsoever. Zero,” she said. “They get this certification and they get this little document and that paves the way.”

DelValle confirmed Teddy Gagnon died in his house. “The kid came home from work. He was doing well,” he said. “He went into the bathroom and did carfentanil.”

DelValle said he and his wife Jess have six houses with 86 beds. “We opened up our first sober house … and we fell in love with it,” he said. “We’re all about helping guys rebuild their lives.” He said he charges $175 per week.

He also owned Redemption House, “a landing spot for them to go until they figure out what their next step was.” It was financed with donations, but he said he had to close it for lack of funds. “We saved 486 people and got them off the street and got them to soberhood or got them into treatment,” he said.

While he had six fatal overdoses in two years in his houses, DelValle said, “We haven’t had any overdoses probably in two, three years.”

“I thank God for people in recovery like myself who want to help,” he said. “I agree there needs to be more oversight. Let’s open some Redemption Houses. Let’s get every house in the state of Connecticut certified. We’re out here trying to save lives.”

He’s bought a house on State Street in Hamden that he hopes to turn into another Redemption House.

Community navigators

Tony Morrissey of New Milford, who lost his son, Brian Cody Waldron, in August 2019, set up Brian Cody’s Brothers & Sisters Foundation to create outreach programs and reduce barriers to recovery. He and his wife, Tracey, helped get a bill passed in 2021 to create a pilot program for community navigators in towns across the state to work with families to help get those in addiction into treatment.

Morrissey praised DelValle’s Redemption House, which included peer counselors. “My organization placed numerous people there and we’ve seen pretty much nothing but miraculous results,” he said.

However, Morrissey said, there are sober houses that operate without any oversight. “Some of them really are not good at all,” he said. “In fact, some would argue that the worst thing you do is send somebody who’s trying to recover to a place like that, and there are many of them.”

Kayti Meehan, owner of Park Place, a coed sober house in Bridgeport, said there needs to be criteria, but “to be totally honest, it works for me.”

“We have our own rules that we abide by, that the residents have to abide by,” she said. “There’s no tolerance for drug and alcohol use and we test them weekly. We are always on top of what they’re into.”

Tony Kiniry, executive director of Recovery Community Development, which runs Noble House in Bridgeport and Norwalk Harbor House, said CTARR has “pretty high standards. They come and inspect the house to make sure that it’s up to code, that you have Narcan in the house, that you have enough room for people.”

He charges $750 per month, including utilities but not food. “There’s three kitchens in the house,” Kiniry said. “Guys will eat together as a family. … I know the people that are with us, they can tell you how it saved their life.”