About this Recovery House
Serenity Meadows is a women's sober living home on North Shore Road in Absecon, New Jersey, in Atlantic County. It is one of the Hansen Foundation's recovery residences, an Atlantic County nonprofit whose housing is built around the year that follows treatment. Absecon sits on the mainland at the doorstep of Absecon Island, which puts the house within a few miles of Atlantic City without putting it in the middle of one.
A Women's Sober Living Home on North Shore Road
North Shore Road runs the length of Absecon, roughly parallel to Route 9, through a stretch of older homes, small businesses and marsh edge. It is a residential address in a small city, which is what most women coming out of treatment are looking for: sidewalks, neighbors, a corner store, and enough distance from the boardwalk to make an evening quiet. Serving women only means the house rules, the sleeping arrangements and the shared space are written for one population, and nobody is the exception in the building.
What a State License Means for an Absecon Recovery Residence
New Jersey has no recovery residence certification. The state licenses instead, through the Department of Community Affairs, which classifies a cooperative sober living residence as a Class F facility and makes the license mandatory for anyone operating one. That distinction matters when reading marketing copy, because a New Jersey house claiming a certification level is claiming something the state does not issue. The Hansen Foundation holds Department of Community Affairs licenses on its recovery housing. For someone weighing houses from out of state, a public licensing file beats a logo, and the rules governing who may open a sober living home in New Jersey are written down and checkable.
Absecon and Shore-Area Recovery Homes in Atlantic County
Absecon is the mainland gateway to the barrier island, sitting where the White Horse Pike, Route 9 and the Atlantic City Expressway corridor converge. Mays Landing is the county seat and holds the courthouse and the county offices, and Stockton University and AtlantiCare's mainland campus are a short run north on Jimmie Leeds Road. Atlantic County recovery housing is denser than in most of South Jersey, with roughly fifty licensed cooperative sober living residences across the county, most of them in the shore towns and the mainland communities behind them. A woman searching this market has real options, which makes the details of a particular house worth investigating.
Getting to Work and Treatment From This Sober House
An Absecon address solves the transportation problem better than most in the county. NJ Transit's Atlantic City Line stops in Absecon and runs into the city and out toward Philadelphia, and the bus routes along the White Horse Pike cover the same ground more frequently. Casino, hotel and restaurant employers in Atlantic City hire year-round and heavily in season. Outpatient providers and recovery support meetings are spread across the mainland towns. A resident here can hold a job, keep an appointment and get to a meeting without owning a car, which is the arrangement most people need in the first year.
Applying to a Hansen Foundation Recovery Residence
Applications are handled by the foundation, which operates ten residences in the Atlantic County region and also houses people enrolled in Enlightened Recovery's partial hospitalization program in Egg Harbor City. The organization's expectations are consistent across its houses: a weekly house meeting, a weekly twelve-step meeting, chores, volunteer hours, employment or an active search, and progress through a phase program. A woman who applies is evaluated by the organization for placement across its houses, and if the first placement is wrong, the second conversation is with the same people.
Sober living homes are group residences for people who are recovering from addiction. In most instances, people who live in sober homes have to follow certain house rules and contribute to the home by doing chores. Most importantly, residents must stay sober throughout their stay in the home
Residents living at Serenity House are expected to work full-time, go to school or volunteer. They are responsible for transporting themselves wherever they need to go.
All of our houses are very close to public transportation and residents may have their own car. Residents do all of their own food shopping and prepare their own meals in our well-appointed kitchens. Chores are rotated weekly among residents and each person is responsible to keep their space clean. Washers and dryers are supplied in each house and all cleaning supplies are provided. A house computer is available to all residents to write resumes and to facilitate their job search.
