About this Sober House
High Street is a men's sober living residence in South Portland, Maine, in Cumberland County. It is operated by Valdar Inc., and it is certified by the Maine Association of Recovery Residences at Level II, which places it among the monitored recovery residences in the Portland area. The house occupies a residential address at 48 High Street rather than any kind of institutional setting.
Who High Street Serves
The residence is for men only, and it has been listed that way consistently in the statewide recovery residence directories. Its residents are adults in recovery who are living in the community, working or looking for work, and using a structured household as the setting for that rather than a clinical program. The kind of person a monitored men's house tends to suit is someone who has done the clinical part, or does not need it, but who knows that going straight back to an unstructured living situation is a poor bet.
MARR Level II Certification
High Street appears in MARR's certified residence directory as a Level II residence in South Portland.
What Level II Means
A Level II residence in the MARR scheme is a monitored one. It is peer-run, with a house manager, so there is somebody carrying responsibility for the running of the household and for the standards the house keeps. That is a meaningful step up from an uncertified shared house, where nothing external holds the arrangement to account, and a meaningful step down in intensity from residential treatment, where clinical staff deliver care on site. Certification also means the house has put itself in front of an outside body and met a published standard, which is the practical value of MARR's directory to families and referrers.
A Long-Standing South Portland Address
48 High Street is not a recent arrival. The house was recorded as a MARR-certified men's residence at this address in the statewide Maine recovery residence directory published in November 2019, and again in the July 2020 edition of the same directory. Continuity of that kind is worth something when you are assessing recovery housing. A house that has held the same address and the same certification across years has, at minimum, demonstrated that it can keep going, which is not true of every residence that opens.
A Residence, Not a Treatment Facility
High Street is a home on a residential street in South Portland. The address does not appear on the Maine Department of Health and Human Services list of currently operating licensed residential substance use treatment facilities, and that absence is exactly what should be expected of a recovery residence. Recovery residences and licensed treatment facilities are separate categories in Maine: the first provides sober, structured housing, and the second provides clinical care under state licensure. Confusing the two leads people to expect the wrong thing from a house, so it is worth being clear which one you are looking at.
Sober Living in South Portland, Cumberland County
South Portland sits across the harbour from Portland in Cumberland County, and it is one of the more workable places in Maine to be in early recovery. The greater Portland area carries the densest meeting schedule in the state, the widest range of entry-level and skilled employment, and public transport that connects the surrounding cities. For a man leaving treatment or leaving a less stable living situation, a monitored men's house in South Portland puts all of that within reach at once. Anyone considering High Street should contact Valdar Inc. directly to ask about availability and about the specific expectations of the house, since the terms of a residence are best established before a move rather than discovered after it.
