Recovery housing not always ideal
Asked her brother's age, Regina Haft hesitated. Did he turn 53 last month? Or had he died at 52?
Haft needed a moment to settle on an answer.
"Hopefully, he is 53," she said of her troubled brother, Albert Haft. "I can't use past tense.
But I also can't imagine where he could be."
Albert Haft went missing in December during a crisis that began, like so many in his life, after an episode of drinking and difficult behavior.
He had been staying in an East Side duplex operated by a nonprofit organization that bills itself as a "transitional stay program" for people whose struggles - with mental illness, substance abuse, incarceration or other problems - make it difficult for them to maintain housing.
Regina Haft said she had modest hopes for her brother's stability after he was referred to the housing provider following treatment at a local psychiatric hospital.
But she soon felt bitter about what she described as the home's poor environment, lack of supportive programs, unqualified staff and relatively high cost: nearly $600 a month for a shared bedroom with no dresser and meals that rarely went beyond frozen TV dinners.
"What they say they want to do is very noble," Regina Haft said. "What they're doing is something very different."
The housing provider, the William Brady Charitable Organization, operates 11 houses in Columbus that offer a home and a chance to those who might otherwise live on the streets or in shelters, founder William Brady said.
He has had few complaints since he began housing work in 2009, he said, but he acknowledged that his nonprofit-registration status with the Ohio attorney general's office is not current.
His clients receive a lot for the rent they pay, including transportation to appointments, Brady said. The money often comes from a disability check.
"You give me the $596, I'm going to carry you for the month," he said. "That's better than giving it to the dope man."
Demand for so-called recovery housing is soaring in central Ohio and throughout the state, advocates say. So, too, is the need for providers to embrace a set of quality standards, said Lori Criss, associate director of the Ohio Council of Behavioral Health & Family Services Providers.
"There is a concern that there are some places that are holding themselves up as recovery housing and they're not," she said. "At best, they're afford-
able housing for people who have no other chance of obtaining it."
Criss helps lead the newly formed Ohio Recovery Housing, an affiliate of the National Alliance for Recovery Residences. The Ohio group has adopted quality and ethical standards and recently created a peer-review process to evaluate providers, she said.
Because the state doesn't regulate recovery houses, compliance is voluntary. But being in good standing soon will allow associate providers to be listed in a searchable database on the state affiliate's website, Criss said.
"We're trying to let the public know what great looks like, and what they should be looking for," she said. "I think of it as a public service."
Although recovery housing has been around since the 1800s, it's just now in the early stages of being defined.
Models range from peer-run houses where residents support one another's sobriety to fully staffed homes with clinical supervision. The names vary, too - sober, halfway, transitional, faith-based and supportive housing are among the terms providers use to describe places that could be considered recovery housing.
Advocates say there aren't yet reliable estimates of the growing numbers of such housing providers. But they know that many of the residents have diagnoses in addition to their substance-abuse disorders - mental illness, for example - that call for careful, tailored approaches.
That's the case with her brother, Regina Haft said. Albert Haft's struggles are, or were, complex.
On Dec. 9, after violating house rules by drinking, Albert Haft was told he needed to leave the East Side house on Seymour Avenue.
Karen Carlisle, administrative assistant at the William Brady Charitable Organization, said he declined to be transported to Netcare for treatment so he was taken to North Central Mental Health Services.
Regina Haft said he was merely dropped off on the sidewalk; Carlisle said he went inside.
Either way, Albert Haft - who had no money or extra clothing with him - didn't stay. The next evening, he was the subject of a police report.
"He goes into a hotel restaurant and ordered a bottle of nice wine and a shrimp salad," Regina Haft said. "He left without paying."
One of his former caseworkers found him wandering Downtown the next day with minor head injuries. Regina Haft met her brother and the caseworker at a North Side motel and paid for a room so that he could eat, get cleaned up and rest.
She was trying to figure out what to do next when her brother left the motel; he hasn't been seen since.
She thinks his physical and mental condition had worsened in the Brady house, where she said drinking and drug use were common.
Carlisle disagrees.
"I saw his face on a flier, and I was devastated," she said, referring to the missing-person posters made by Regina Haft. "She wants to blame us. That's not right."
Michael Darling, who lived in one of the Brady houses from mid-December to early February, said the experience wasn't conducive to stability and recovery.
"I think I was the only one staying sober," he said.
Darling said he documented missing smoke detectors, an inoperable and overflowing toilet, and rodent droppings in the kitchen.
"I think I was in the most expensive flophouse in the world," he said. "One of the assistant managers, the U.S. marshals came in and got him."
Brady and Carlisle said they manage problems, repairs and crises as quickly as they can.
"We are in these houses every day," Brady said. "What we do, we believe in strongly."
Criss, of Ohio Recovery Housing, said better networking and standards can help everyone.
"There's an opportunity and a need to bring operators together and encourage them to pursue - or sustain - quality," she said. "There are folks who would be happy to help with that."
Regina Haft said the stakes are higher than families realize. The last words she had with her brother, once a gifted artist and musician, weren't pleasant.
She can only hope they have another chance.
@RitaPrice