About this Recovery House
Sober Houses of White Plains (SHOWP) is a men's sober living residence in White Plains, New York, the seat of Westchester County, operating peer sober houses in the city's downtown.
Men's Sober Houses in Downtown White Plains
SHOWP houses are centrally located in downtown White Plains and serve adult men. Individual street addresses are not published, so placement runs through the organization after an application. Downtown location is the operative fact here. White Plains is a walkable small city with its transit hub, its courts, its employers and its meeting schedule packed into a compact core, and a man living downtown without a car can reach all of it. In Westchester County, where distances are otherwise punishing without a vehicle, that is worth a great deal.
What This Sober House Requires of Members
The organization publishes its expectations plainly, and they are the core of what a resident is agreeing to:
- A zero tolerance policy concerning the use of drugs and alcohol.
- Attendance at SHOWP house meetings and at area twelve-step meetings.
- Ongoing alcohol and drug testing.
- Payment of fees on time.
- Willingness to live in a sober environment.
Ongoing testing is the requirement that does the most work. It converts the zero tolerance policy from a statement into a verifiable condition of residence, and it means every man in the house knows the others are being held to the same standard he is. The organization's stated values are sobriety, honesty, openness and willingness, which is the vocabulary of twelve-step recovery applied to a household.
Applying to This Westchester County Recovery Home
Membership spaces are limited, and the organization states that admission of accepted applicants may be delayed or subject to a waiting list. That is honest and it is useful planning information. A man who expects to need housing at discharge should apply before the discharge date, and anyone helping him should treat the application as something to start weeks early, well ahead of the release date.
White Plains as a Base for Recovery Housing
White Plains is the seat of Westchester County and its commercial center. The county courthouse, the county's social services offices, Westchester Medical Center's network, White Plains Hospital and the largest concentration of employment in the county all sit here. Metro-North's Harlem Line runs from the White Plains station to Grand Central in roughly forty minutes, and the Bee-Line bus system radiates through the rest of the county. For a man with a court obligation, an outpatient appointment and a job to find, everything is on one map.
What to Ask Before Joining This White Plains Sober House
Applications go through the organization. New York does not certify sober homes as a requirement, so the written material a house provides before move-in is the record a resident has. Ask what the weekly or monthly fee is and what it covers, how bedrooms are assigned, whether a house manager lives on site, how the testing schedule runs, what happens after a positive test, and how long the current wait for a bed is.
