About this Sober House
Rochester Street is a men's recovery residence in Westbrook, Maine, in Cumberland County. It is one of two houses run by Valdar Inc., the other being in South Portland, and it has been listed as a men's house in the statewide Maine recovery residence directory. The address is a residential one in Westbrook rather than an institutional or clinical site.
Who Rochester Street Serves
This is a men's house. The Maine recovery residence directory circulated in July 2020 records the Westbrook house under Valdar's owner and lists it as serving men, which is the population it has been associated with throughout its appearances in the statewide listings. Men's recovery housing in Cumberland County generally serves adults who are living in the community and want a sober, shared household around them while they re-establish work, family relationships and a routine.
The Operator Behind Rochester Street
Valdar Inc. runs two recovery residences in Cumberland County, this one in Westbrook and one in South Portland. The organization is a MARR member operator and was named as such in the association's 2021 testimony to the Maine Legislature's Health and Human Services committee, where it was described as running two recovery residences. Valdar's South Portland house is currently certified by MARR at Level 2. Anything a prospective resident wants to know about how the Westbrook house is run is best put to the operator directly, and the operator page for Valdar Inc. in this directory sets out what is on the public record about the organization as a whole.
Recovery Housing in Westbrook, Cumberland County
Westbrook is a Cumberland County city on the Presumpscot River, immediately inland of Portland and part of the same metropolitan area. That location does a good deal of work for someone in recovery. The greater Portland area has the densest schedule of AA, NA and other mutual-aid meetings in Maine, the broadest labor market in the state, and bus connections between the surrounding cities, so a resident without a car is not cut off from meetings, work or appointments. Westbrook itself is a working city with its own downtown, which means daily life does not have to be organized around a trip into Portland.
The Rochester Street house does not appear on the Maine Department of Health and Human Services list of currently operating licensed residential substance use treatment facilities. That is the expected position for a recovery residence: this is housing, not licensed clinical care, and residents access any treatment or counseling they need from providers out in the community.
What to Ask Before You Move In
Less is published about this house than about many, so the useful questions are worth putting directly to the operator. Ask what the house expects of residents in terms of meetings, work and household responsibilities. Ask how the house is overseen day to day and who is responsible when something goes wrong. Ask about the intake process and what a new resident is expected to have in place before arriving. Ask about certification, and about how the house handles a relapse, which is the question that most reveals the culture of a residence. A well-run recovery residence will answer all of that plainly, and the answers are the fairest basis for deciding whether a particular house in Westbrook is the right place for the next stage of your recovery.
