About this Recovery Home
Bernie Lorenz Recovery House is a women's recovery home on Kingman Boulevard in Des Moines, Iowa, in Polk County. It is operated by Community & Family Resources, the licensed Iowa behavioral health organization formerly known as Prelude Behavioral Services, and it provides extended residential support for adult women continuing recovery after treatment.
A Women's Recovery Home on Kingman Boulevard
Kingman Boulevard is a wide residential street on the west side of Des Moines, lined with older single-family homes and close to the Drake University district. The setting is deliberate. A house on a quiet street with neighbors, sidewalks and a bus line reads as an address. Residents can walk out the door to a job or a meeting without a staff escort. Women live here together, and the household runs on one set of expectations written for one population.
The Prelude Name and What Changed
Anyone searching for this house will find it listed under two names, and both are correct. It was built and run for years by Prelude Behavioral Services out of Iowa City. Prelude merged into Community & Family Resources, and the eastern and central Iowa programs now carry the Community & Family Resources name, including this one. Nothing about the address changed. What changed is the letterhead and the phone tree, so a referral written to Prelude and a referral written to Community & Family Resources reach the same intake staff.
An Integrated Provider Behind This Des Moines Recovery Residence
Housing sits at one end of a longer continuum this organization operates: assessment, outpatient counseling, detox and residential care all belong to the same agency. For a woman moving into this recovery residence, that has a concrete effect. Her housing and her clinical services can be coordinated by people who already share a record, and a change in one does not automatically threaten the other.
What Certification Means for Iowa Recovery Homes
Iowa is one of the few states with no NARR affiliate. Certification intake is handled directly by the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, which publishes its own recovery housing protocol and checklist, and providers enter the process voluntarily unless they are seeking state reimbursement or Recovery Housing Fund dollars. The practical consequence for a family in Des Moines is that no public list settles the question of quality. What settles it is licensure, tenure and the answers a provider gives in writing.
Des Moines Sober Living Inside the State's Largest Service Network
Polk County holds more treatment capacity, more court supervision and more social services than any other county in Iowa, and Des Moines holds most of Polk County. A woman living on the city's west side can reach outpatient care, a probation appointment, a pharmacy and an evening meeting without leaving the metro. Women arriving from rural central Iowa often find this is the closest place where all of those things exist in the same week.
Applying to This Des Moines Women's Sober House
Admission is handled centrally by Community & Family Resources. The questions that matter at intake are the ordinary ones: what the stay is expected to cost and what assistance is available, how long women typically remain, what clinical participation is required while living there, how a relapse is handled, and what the discharge process looks like. A licensed provider should have all of those answers documented.
Program
The purpose of the Bernie Lorenz Recovery (BLR) program is to increase opportunities for women in early recovery to build or rebuild healthy and successful lives. With the support of BLR staff, program participants will enhance their vocational skills and/or further their education to assist them in achieving financial stability. They will also improve life skills such as parenting, job search and interviewing, meal planning and shopping, homemaking, and managing finances.
