Good Samaritan Haven Recovery Residence Coed Recovery Home

About this Recovery Home

The Good Samaritan Haven Recovery Residence is a certified recovery home at 580 South Barre Road in Barre, Vermont, in Washington County. It is a Victorian farmhouse with double-occupancy bedrooms, opened as a thirteen-bed residence in 2021 and converted in 2023 into what the operator describes as the first recovery-oriented shelter in the state.

A Recovery House for People Coming From Homelessness

This residence exists for a specific population that most recovery housing quietly screens out: people who are homeless and dealing with substance use disorder at the same time. Someone arriving from a shelter usually has no income, no plan and no references, and conventional recovery residences are not built for that arrival. This house is. Guests are people committed to sober living, and they guide the house's activities as a community while working their individual recovery plans.

What the Farmhouse on South Barre Road Provides

The building holds double-occupancy bedrooms with a common kitchen, living room, dining room and exercise room, and bath, shower and laundry facilities are on site. Guests have some personal storage space and provide their own meals. Transportation from the house is limited, which is a real constraint on a rural road south of the city and worth asking about before moving in.

What Certification Establishes for This Recovery Residence

The house is certified by the Vermont Alliance for Recovery Residences, which received it as a new program. Certification commits a residence to a code of ethics, written disclosure of fees and rules before move-in, a written relapse and discharge policy, an annual onsite inspection and grievances reviewed from outside the household. Vermont operates no licensure scheme for recovery housing, so certification is the only external standard available.

Eligibility for This Barre Sober House

Anyone seeking a bed meets with staff to complete an intake assessment that determines eligibility, and people listed on the Vermont Sex Offender Registry are ineligible across all of the operator's locations. Applicants who do not qualify are referred to Economic Services during the day or to 2-1-1 after hours.

Recovery Housing in the Barre and Montpelier Corridor

Barre is the largest city in Washington County, and Montpelier, the shire town and the state capital, sits a few miles up a corridor served by Green Mountain Transit. Central Vermont Medical Center serves the area from Berlin, the county courthouse and state offices are within the same short stretch of road, and the Turning Point Center of Central Vermont operates in Barre. For a resident rebuilding a routine after homelessness, that concentration of services along one bus route is the practical argument for central Vermont.