About this Sober House
Responsibility House is a recovery residence and treatment provider in Terrytown, Louisiana, in Jefferson Parish on the West Bank of greater New Orleans. The nonprofit has operated since 1994 and runs three distinct things at once: outpatient substance use treatment, a residential treatment program, and supportive housing built on the Housing First model.
Three Programs Under One Recovery Housing Organization
Understanding what Responsibility House is matters more here than at a standalone sober house, because a caller can be admitted into any of three different things. There are two levels of outpatient treatment for people living elsewhere. There is a residential treatment program that runs roughly three months. And there is supportive housing, which follows Housing First principles and is aimed at people whose primary problem is that they have nowhere to live. The right question at intake is which program a bed or a slot belongs to, because the requirements, the length of stay and the level of clinical involvement differ across all three.
Housing First and What It Changes
Housing First is a specific commitment. Housing comes before sobriety milestones, program compliance or treatment completion, on the reasoning that people stabilize faster with an address than without one. That is the opposite of how a conventional sober house works, where continued residence depends on staying sober and following house rules. For someone who has been discharged from abstinence-contingent housing before, a Housing First program is often the only door still open. For someone looking for a peer-run sober living house with a curfew and drug testing, the residential treatment program is the closer match.
A Licensed Residential Program and a Recovery Residence
Because Responsibility House provides treatment as well as housing, part of what it does falls under state oversight in a way that a peer-run recovery residence does not. Louisiana licenses substance use treatment providers through the Department of Health, which maintains the state's provider directory. When a credential or a license comes up in conversation, establish which arm of the organization it attaches to, because the housing side and the clinical side are governed differently.
Certification of Recovery Residences Across Louisiana
Recovery residences themselves are not licensed, registered or inspected in Louisiana. Certification through the Louisiana Association of Recovery Residences is voluntary and the association publishes no directory of the homes that hold it. An established nonprofit with three decades of operating history and licensed clinical programs leaves a far longer public trail than certification alone would produce, which is the practical reason organizations like this one are easier to evaluate than a new house with a phone number.
Recovery Housing on the West Bank of Greater New Orleans
Terrytown sits immediately south of Gretna, the West Bank seat of Jefferson Parish, and just across the Mississippi from New Orleans. The location gives residents the whole metropolitan area without New Orleans rents. Jefferson Transit runs the Terry Parkway and Belle Chasse Highway corridors, the Crescent City Connection reaches downtown in minutes, and the Twenty-Fourth Judicial District Court sits in Gretna. Someone with obligations spread across Orleans and Jefferson Parishes can meet them from here.
Who These Programs Suit
The organization suits people who need clinical treatment and housing from the same place, people who have exhausted abstinence-contingent housing options, and people leaving incarceration or homelessness in the greater New Orleans area. Anyone specifically looking for a peer-run sober living house with a house manager, a weekly rent and a set of resident-enforced rules should ask directly whether that model exists inside the organization, because these programs are structured differently.
