Sherwin Women's Recovery Home

About this Recovery Home

Sherwin is a women's sober house on Sherwin Place in Glen Allen, Virginia, a Henrico County address at the northwestern edge of the Richmond metro. Journey House operates it as one of two women's residences in a set of eight recovery homes the organization runs across the county and the city of Richmond.

A Women's Sober House in Glen Allen

This recovery home serves women, and in a market where men's beds outnumber women's by a wide margin that is the first fact most callers are checking. Sherwin Place sits in the 23059 ZIP code, the newer residential side of northern Henrico County around Twin Hickory and Wyndham. Streets are quiet, houses sit on real lots, and the retail and office employment along West Broad Street and Nuckols Road is a short drive. The trade a resident accepts for that calm is distance: this is a part of the county built around cars, and getting to a downtown appointment takes planning.

Women's Recovery Housing in Henrico County

A single-gender house settles a set of questions at once. Bedrooms, bathrooms and house meetings belong to one population. House rules are written for one household. Nobody is the only woman in a mixed building, and the peer accountability that carries a monitored residence works better when the people in it are facing the same things. For a woman coming out of treatment or a jail term in the Richmond area, the shortlist of certified women's addresses is short, and northern Henrico is a different environment from the city blocks where most of the region's recovery housing sits.

How Virginia Regulates Sober Living

Virginia treats recovery housing as a regulated category. Certification is mandatory under Va. Code 37.2-431.1, the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services recognizes two credentialing bodies, and the department publishes a register of certified residences naming the operator, street, city and level of support for each one. That register is the document to read before signing anywhere in the state, and it is republished as houses are added and removed. Anyone comparing addresses should confirm the specific house against the current publication, because certification in Virginia is granted residence by residence.

Questions Worth Asking About This Recovery Home

Placement runs through Journey House, which also operates a recovery center providing peer support, recovery coaching, life skills guidance and navigation into treatment and community resources. The useful questions at this stage are concrete. What does the weekly fee cover, and what is charged separately. Is there a house manager living on site. How many women share a bedroom. What happens after a relapse, and is it written down. Is medication for opioid use disorder accepted. Are referrals taken from treatment providers and from drug court. Those answers, in writing, tell a prospective resident more than any description of the house can.