Elmhurst Home

About Elmhurst Home

Elmhurst Home is a sober living operator in Detroit, Michigan, running Medicaid-funded recovery housing in Wayne County alongside residential treatment, outpatient care and behavioral health services. The nonprofit was founded in 1972 and has served the city for more than fifty years under the banner of recovery with dignity.

A Detroit Recovery Housing Provider With Half a Century Behind It

Elmhurst Home describes its mission as person-centered, stage-matched, evidence-based care for people with substance use disorders and mental health conditions, and the phrase stage-matched is the operative one. The organization runs residential treatment, outpatient services, prevention programs, recovery housing and recovery support, so a resident moves between levels of care inside one system instead of reapplying at each step. It has operated as a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic since 2021, which places it among the providers obligated to serve anyone who asks.

Two Recovery Homes in Wayne County

The organization runs gender-separate housing at two addresses:

• The James Oden Center, on Linwood in Detroit, for men.
• Naomi's Nest, on Pitkin in Highland Park, for women.

Highland Park is an independent city entirely surrounded by Detroit, so the two houses are minutes apart and share the same courts, transit and provider network. Both are congregate settings with staff on site, both are recorded as ADA accessible, and both are certified at Level 4.

Recovery Housing at No Out-of-Pocket Cost

The recovery housing program is built for people with Medicaid and eligible residents pay nothing out of pocket. The organization states that it serves anyone requesting care for mental health or substance use regardless of ability to pay, place of residence or age, and it offers a sliding scale to people outside coverage. For someone leaving jail, detox or a shelter, that removes the deposit and the first month, which is where most housing searches end. Funding comes through Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network, Wayne County, the Michigan Department of Corrections and faith-based partners.

Level 4 Certification Across This Operator's Sober Living

Both residences are certified by the Michigan Association of Recovery Residences at Level 4, the highest tier in the framework of the National Alliance for Recovery Residences, describing credentialed staff and clinical programming delivered on site. Michigan has no state licensure or registry for recovery residences, so certification is voluntary and the tier is the only published measure of how much structure a house provides. Certification is granted residence by residence, and this operator carries it on both.

Men's and Women's Sober Houses Kept Separate

Men are housed in Detroit and women in Highland Park, in separate buildings with separate staff. Keeping the split at the address level means programming, house norms and shared space are written for one population, and nobody is the only woman or the only man in a mixed congregate building. Residents on medication for opioid use disorder are accepted at both houses, and applicants with felony records are accepted.

Serving Detroit, Highland Park and the Reentry Population

Support from the Michigan Department of Corrections tells a prospective resident something specific: people arriving from custody are a population this operator is funded to take. Detroit is the seat of Wayne County and the state's largest city, holding the Third Circuit Court, the county jail, the probation offices, the hospitals of the Medical Center district and the DDOT and SMART routes that connect them. An operator with treatment, housing and behavioral health services inside that footprint can carry someone from release to a bed to outpatient care without a handoff to another agency.