About this Sober House
Hope is Alive Recovery Home H2 is a men's sober living home in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, in Oklahoma County. Nine men live here under Hope is Alive Ministries, and the house holds Level 2 certification from the Oklahoma Alliance for Recovery Resources.
A Men's Sober House on the Northwest Side of Oklahoma City
The house sits in northwest Oklahoma City, in the Putnam City part of town where the residential grid runs out toward Lake Overholser and the Northwest Expressway. That corner of the metro is where a good deal of the city's entry-level work sits, in the retail and service corridors along Northwest Expressway and around the turnpike interchange, and a man without a car has a shorter walk to a job here than he would in most of Oklahoma County. Hope is Alive identifies its houses by code, and H2 is the identifier both the ministry and the state registry use for this one.
Nine Beds and the Sobriety Coach Model
Nine beds makes this one of the smaller men's houses in the network, and the difference is felt daily. Most rooms hold two men. Each resident gets a bed with new bedding, a dresser, a nightstand and a lamp, roughly four feet of hanging space and a defined share of the kitchen, which sounds trivial until you have lived somewhere those boundaries were never set. A sobriety coach is assigned to the house and walks alongside the men living there. In a house this size the coach knows everyone's situation without being told.
What OKARR Level 2 Certification Buys a Resident
Certification comes from the Oklahoma Alliance for Recovery Resources, the state's sole recognized certifier of recovery residences and its affiliate of the National Alliance for Recovery Residences. A certified house commits in writing to a code of ethics, hands over its fees and rules before anyone moves in, keeps a written relapse and discharge policy, and submits to a complaint process outside the house. Level 2 is peer-managed housing with a manager and structured expectations, with clinical care coming from outside providers. Oklahoma exempts recovery residences from mandatory certification, so a certified house here has volunteered for the scrutiny.
Work, School and the Three-Week Rule in HIA Sober Living
The ministry asks residents to hold a full-time job within the first three weeks of moving in, and the whole house schedule is built around the assumption that everyone has somewhere to be during the day. School and structured volunteering count. Thirty twelve-step meetings are expected in the first thirty days, and a sponsor within six months. Drug testing uses sixteen-panel tests on move-in and randomly afterward. The three-week rule tells a prospective resident what this house is for: it is a place to rebuild a working life, not a place to rest.
Oklahoma County Recovery Housing and the Interstate 44 Corridor
Oklahoma City is the state capital and the seat of Oklahoma County, and it holds roughly twenty-five certified recovery residences. For a man living on the northwest side, Interstate 44 and the John Kilpatrick Turnpike put the rest of the metro inside half an hour, and the county courthouse, the state agencies and the outpatient providers are all in the same city. Hope is Alive runs eight houses in Oklahoma City, so a resident who needs a different set of housemates or a different part of town can move inside the same program without leaving the county.
