About this Sober House
Esther Residence is a transitional recovery home for women in Saco, Maine, on Thornton Avenue. Saco sits in York County on the southern Maine coast, on the far bank of the river from Biddeford, and the two towns together form the largest population center between Portland and the New Hampshire border. The program has been part of that community for a long time, and its purpose has stayed narrow and clear throughout.
Who Esther Residence Serves
Esther Residence is a transitional program for women leaving incarceration or leaving treatment. That is a specific population and a demanding one to serve well. A woman coming out of a county jail or a state facility faces a set of obstacles that a general sober house is not built for: a record that closes doors with landlords and employers, probation conditions to satisfy, sometimes children to work back toward, and often no address at all on the day of release. Housing at that moment is not a comfort but the hinge everything else turns on, because without a stable address most of the other requirements placed on her cannot be met.
Transitional housing of this kind occupies the ground between an institution and independent life. It provides a place to live with structure and support attached, for long enough that a woman can find work, meet the conditions she is under, and build the record of stability that a landlord will eventually accept.
A Program with Long Roots in Saco
Esther Residence was founded in 2006 and was run by the Good Shepherd Sisters, a religious congregation with a long history of work with women in difficulty. Two decades is a considerable run for a small transitional program, and it means that a great many women in York County have passed through the house and that local courts, probation officers, treatment providers and social workers have known where to send someone for years.
The program also appears in the July 2020 Maine Recovery Residences Directory, listed as a women's residence in Saco with its address unpublished. Withholding the street address is standard practice for women's housing and is a protection for the residents rather than an oversight.
Esther Residence and Saint Andre Home
The program's governance changed recently. Effective 8 August 2025, Esther Residence, described as a trusted transitional housing program for women in Saco, joined Saint Andre Home as a branch of that organization. Saint Andre Home has since stated that services at Esther Residence will pause while it thoughtfully reviews program operations and prepares for a strong relaunch, and that it anticipates welcoming new residents in 2026. Anyone seeking a place should therefore approach Saint Andre Home directly for the current position on admissions.
A transfer of this sort is a common way for a small, long-standing program to continue. The alternative for many such houses is closure when the founding body can no longer carry them, and a larger parent organization brings administrative capacity that a small residence rarely has on its own.
Women's Recovery Housing in York County
York County stretches from the New Hampshire line along the coast to the edge of Greater Portland, taking in Sanford, Biddeford, Saco, Kennebunk and the beach towns. It has real recovery resources but nothing like Portland's density, and women's housing specifically is the thinnest category of all in Maine. For a woman leaving incarceration or treatment in southern Maine, the practical route is to work through a caseworker, a probation officer or a treatment counselor, to inquire with more than one program at once, and to ask directly about current admissions rather than assuming a listing reflects this week's position.
