Austin House Men's Recovery House

About this Recovery House

Austin House is a men's sober house in Columbia, Missouri, in Boone County, operated by Fresh Start Sober Living Programs and accredited by the Missouri Coalition of Recovery Support Providers.

A Men's Recovery Home Run by Peers

The house has no clinical staff, and that is intentional. Men living here answer to each other and to a written set of expectations, and their treatment happens with providers elsewhere in Columbia. The model is cheap enough to be sustainable and durable enough to hold a person through the stretch when a treatment discharge is still fresh.

Missouri Sober Living Accreditation, and Why It Is Voluntary

There is no Missouri statute governing recovery residences and no state agency inspecting them. MCRSP, the state's NARR affiliate, runs the accreditation program, and its standard requires published ethics, fees and rules disclosed in writing before move-in, a written relapse and discharge policy, and outside complaint review. Choosing to be accredited is the operator's decision, and it is the only external check a resident has.

Twenty Properties and One Application Route

Fresh Start runs roughly twenty properties in Columbia serving about a hundred residents. One application reaches all of them, so a man who does not fit the first house he is placed in can be moved without leaving the program. The rules, the fee structure and the people making decisions stay the same across addresses.

Boone County Employment and Recovery Housing

Columbia's economy runs on the University of Missouri, MU Health Care, Boone Health, Stephens College, Columbia College and a large restaurant and retail sector, and all of it is reachable on COMO Connect. Sober houses that require work within thirty days need a city where that requirement is achievable. This is the one in mid-Missouri.

Applying to This Columbia Sober Living Home

The address is not published and placement runs through the operator. Ask what is open, what the weekly fee covers, whether the room is shared, the curfew, and whether the house accepts residents on prescribed medication for opioid use disorder.