Women's Dismas House Women's Recovery Home

About this Recovery Home

The Women's Dismas House is a certified women's sober house in Rutland, Vermont, in Rutland County, operated by Dismas of Vermont. It opened in March 2021 as the organization's fifth Vermont residence and is dedicated entirely to women leaving incarceration.

A Women's Sober House Built for One Population

The operator ran four mixed and men's houses before opening this one, and it opened this one because the reintegration challenges facing formerly incarcerated women are different enough to need their own address. Everything in the household is written for women: the rules, the meetings, the shared space and the peer group. A resident is never the only woman in the building, which is the specific failure mode a single-gender house exists to prevent.

What Certification Establishes for This Recovery Residence

The house is certified by the Vermont Alliance for Recovery Residences. Certification obliges the residence to a published 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 by someone outside the house. In a state with no licensure for recovery housing, that record is what a woman comparing options can actually verify.

Dinners and Daily Life in a Rutland Recovery Home

Residents live family-style and share weekday dinners with staff and community volunteers who cook and stay to eat. Women who have moved on from the house have described continuing to come back for those dinners and for group activities after taking their own apartments, which says something about how the household holds together past discharge.

Recovery Housing in Rutland and Southwestern Vermont

Rutland is the shire town of Rutland County and the regional hub for the southwestern quarter of the state, with Rutland Regional Medical Center, the courthouse, the Turning Point Center of Rutland and city transit all inside its limits. The operator's men's house sits elsewhere in the same city, so the organization can serve a county-wide reentry population without mixing households.

Moving On From This Women's Recovery Home

Residents in good standing who reach three months may apply for a satellite apartment shared with two others, keeping the organization's support attached through the move to independent housing. The address of the house is not published, and admission runs through the house team.