Open Arms Rockland

About Open Arms Rockland

Open Arms Rockland is a sober living operator in Haverstraw, New York, in Rockland County, running two community residences in the village. One is a twelve bed women's house in a renovated Victorian and the other is an eighteen bed men's duplex, and residents in both may stay for up to a year.

A Rockland County Recovery Housing Provider

The organization works in one village and houses thirty people. That scale is a choice, and it shows up in how the housing operates. Both residences sit in the Village of Haverstraw, the densest and most walkable community in Rockland County, and the same staff cover both. A referral source dealing with this operator is dealing with people who can describe the actual bedroom a client would be moving into.

Two Community Recovery Residences in Haverstraw

The operator runs the following residences:

• A women's community residence with twelve beds, in a renovated Victorian house in the Village of Haverstraw.
• A men's community residence with eighteen beds, in a duplex in the Village of Haverstraw.

Thirty beds between two buildings a short distance apart, in one village, is the entire footprint. Both houses offer stays of up to a year.

A Year Long Model of Recovery Housing

Up to twelve months is longer than most recovery housing offers, and it defines what this operator is trying to do. Ninety days stabilizes someone. A year lets a resident hold a job through a full cycle of pay periods, complete a probation term, restore a driver's license, pay down arrears and save a deposit. Organizations that turn beds over every three months move more people through. This one is set up to move fewer people further.

Men's and Women's Sober Homes Kept Separate

The two residences are single gender and operate as separate households. Women apply to the Victorian and men to the duplex. Keeping the division at the building level means each house writes its rules, arranges its bedrooms and runs its meetings for one population, and a resident is never the only man or the only woman in the building.

Recovery Housing for the Lower Hudson Valley

New City is the seat of Rockland County and holds the courts and county offices. Montefiore Nyack Hospital serves the county from the south, and Rockland Community College is in Suffern. Haverstraw itself has the county's most usable transit, including the passenger ferry across the Hudson to Ossining that connects to Metro-North's Hudson line. New York does not require recovery residences to be certified, and both available programs are voluntary, as a guide to New York sober house certification explains. At the operator level, the questions worth asking are how long the organization has housed residents in Rockland County, how fees and any subsidies are documented, whether it takes referrals from the county and from treatment providers, and how a complaint moves past the house.