Dear family, friends, and compassionate acquaintances,

I'm a proud member of the board of directors of Milestone House, a nonprofit organization aimed at providing stable, safe and stable supportive housing for those in recovery from drug or alcohol use. I am asking for your support (read: $$)

All who received a link to this page are fortunate in many, many ways. We are fortunate in terms of relationships, work, job stability, financial stability, and housing.

Picture someone without the fortunate life circumstances that I mentioned above. Someone who, by virtue of their birthplace, upbringing, education issues, or deterioration in their life circumstances due to substance use, has lost some or all of these privileges. Stable recovery depends on restoring all of these. Primary among them, safe and stable housing.

Many of my patients struggle with housing and face a lack of housing options for several reasons. Among them, severed relations with family members, debt,, poor credit, and incarceration. Some lose housing after brief periods of incarceration for things not directly related to substance use, such as traffic offenses or nonpayment of alimony. Some are related to their previous substance use, for example disorderly conduct when intoxicated or possession of drug paraphernalia. They may become unhoused after leaving detox or rehab. Landlords do not empathize with situations resulting in getting behind on rent.

In these circumstances, community organizations or social services may place them in boarding houses, motels or apartments in unsafe parts of town. For many, this puts them right back in the middle of the situation in which they were misusing substances. They are faced with ready availability of drugs and alcohol and are often triggered by those people who continue to use in public.

Quantitatively, a cost benefit analysis of 1 sober living situation compares the cost of rent to the benefits that accrue due to living in the house, for example, higher employment and lower criminal behavior. They find the benefits exceed the cost by an average of $9,000 per resident over a 1-year period. Another study looking at a sober living situation versus routine community care 1 year later showed employment 76% versus 48%, incarceration (first or recidivist) 3% versus 9%, and abstinence 64% versus 30%. Monthly income approximately doubles for those in sober living vs not.

As one of my mentors taught- “we treat people, not numbers”. There are many qualitative benefits to sober living situation. Examples- fellowship, structure, accountability, consequences for return to substance use, and self-supporting nature. Structure, which takes many forms but is often in the form of house rules, may include for the resident to be current on child support or alimony payments, and many residents credit recovery residences as an invaluable force in maintaining their recovery and eliminating these social costs. Residents often relate a transformation from individuals who have experienced firsthand the stigma and burden of substance use disorders to engaged community members.

$1,240 supports 1 person for 1 month and gives them a chance to get back on their feet and reestablish themselves as a stable, sober, productive member of the community. No price can be put on the benefit to that individual. About $41.00 a day. As they say in AA, “one day at a time.” The first day is the most important. How many people can Team Ganon give their first day of a new, sober life?

Please do your best to support Milestone House. We provide continued sober living to more than 70 people currently with a maximum capacity of 83 individuals. We help with everything they need to get back on their feet. We can’t help them without your generosity.

Thanks,

Michael/ Dr G