Dishman Hills House raises concerns

Putting eight recovering alcoholics and drug addicts into a house without a supervisor doesn’t sound like a formula for success to residents of a small Spokane Valley enclave.

In fact, that’s exactly what works, according to veterans of the Oxford House program that’s come to the 200 block of South Sargent Road.

Residents say they govern themselves democratically and police themselves rigorously. Each has a stake in the others’ success.

“We’re not a halfway house, and our success rate is very high,” Oxford House’s Blake Bippes said. “We can turn treatment statistics upside-down.”

Bippes is a regional outreach representative for Oxford House Inc. The nonprofit organization is private, but Bippes’ salary is paid under contract with the Washington Division of Alcohol and Substance Abuse.

State officials like the program because it works, he said.

Someone who spends six or more months in one of the nonprofit organization’s homes has an 86 percent chance of long-term sobriety, according to Bippes.

Regardless of success rates or neighbors’ fears, Spokane Valley officials say there’s nothing they can do about the Dishman Hills House.

Recovering addicts are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. City officials must allow them in single-family homes regardless of how many unrelated people otherwise would be allowed in a house.

Spokane Valley building official Mary Kate Martin said the eight people who will live in seven bedrooms in the 2,126-square-foot Dishman Hills House are well within size-based occupancy limits.

Martin said owners John and Elizabeth Bellefeuille, who purchased the house in April for $27,500, have obtained the necessary permit for ongoing renovations.

The house has a troubled history and was the subject of a Spokesman-Review story in May 1995 when tenants complained their health was threatened by an overflowing septic system.

The owner at the time applied for a sewer connection hours after the story was published, but the house remained in poor condition.

“It’ll take a little while, but this house is going to be one of the nicest houses on the block,” Bippes said.

Residents planned an early morning work party last week to tackle the overgrown backyard.

Bippes and other Oxford House leaders gathered last week at the Dishman Hills House to discuss concerns neighbors have raised.

“I know that we’re going to have problems with theft and what have you,” neighbor Joyce Kelley had said in an interview.

She and others, who were represented at a recent City Council meeting by Judith Crosby, are concerned about children at the Dishman Hills Natural Area park at the end of their block-long, dead-end section of Sargent Road.

Crosby doesn’t live in the neighborhood, but spoke for her disabled brother who lives next door to Oxford’s Dishman Hills House. She also delivered letters from others – some from people who don’t live there – with concerns.

Crosby said she sympathizes with the recovering addicts because her brother overcame alcohol addiction.

“It hits every home, every family, and if it hasn’t hit you, then you’re very blessed,” Crosby told council members. “But I’m worried about the children.”

Some Oxford House residents elsewhere have relapsed and stolen from neighbors on rare occasions, but it’s wrong to assume addicts are sex offenders, Bippes said.

“We just absolutely do not accept sex offenders,” he said.

Nor do they tolerate the presence of alcohol or drugs, much less their use, he said.

Oxford houses have no resident supervisors and only three basic rules: Stay clean and sober, pay your share of expenses and run the house democratically.

Clean and sober means not even a can of beer in the house for someone whose drug of choice isn’t alcohol.

“A drug is a drug, is a drug, is a drug,” said Stacie Anderson, who was hired two months ago as Oxford House’s new Tri-Cities-based outreach representative.

She moved into one of the organization’s homes for women two years ago to recover from methamphetamine addiction and regained custody of her son.

“What I got out of it was the support of the other people in the house,” Anderson said.

Previously, when she tried to get clean on her own, she failed. Anderson said she didn’t start with the basics of changing her “people, places and things.”

Like addiction, sobriety has a social component.

“It’s contagious,” said Patrick Zacher, chairman of Oxford House’s Spokane-based Chapter 17.

“I can honestly say I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for Oxford House,” said chapter treasurer David McConnell, who also is president of the Dishman Hills House.

Accountability and a sense of “belonging” are the big benefits for McConnell, who began walking in Zacher’s, Anderson’s and Bippes’ footsteps last October.

While on meth, money management was not his specialty. Now he’s learned to balance the chapter’s books and, equally important, has earned chapter members’ trust. Officers are elected.

McConnell said he’s also gotten rehired by an employer with whom he had burned a bridge.

He is expected to be a mentor at the Dishman Hills House, but his vote counts no more than anyone else’s.

Problems are resolved at weekly house meetings or, if necessary, in a special session.

A resident who doesn’t do his chores can expect a fine or maybe a last-chance “contract,” but those who fail a random drug test generally have 15 minutes to pack a few things and move out.

“It’s like a poison to the house,” Bippes said. “We just can’t have that.”

Although Oxford houses are run democratically, outside leaders such as Bippes, Anderson and Zacher keep an eye on them. If they see dishes piling up or overgrown lawns, they know something’s wrong.

And if they discover a grievous problem, such as violence or evidence of drug use, “we can come in and play God,” Bippes said.

“I will not allow things not to work the Oxford way,” he said. “I don’t do this for the money.”

Bippes said he planned to meet with neighbors in an effort to allay their fears, and promised an open house when improvements are complete.

“Give us a chance and you will learn to like us,” Bippes said. “I almost guarantee it.”