Saint Christopher's Inn

About Saint Christopher's Inn

Saint Christopher's Inn is a men's sober living operator in Garrison, New York, running certified recovery housing in Putnam County. A ministry of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement at Graymoor, it operates one of the largest men's residential addiction programs in the Hudson Valley alongside a transitional living house and farm.

A Franciscan Recovery Housing Provider Above the Hudson

The organization's stated mission is to integrate professional and compassionate treatment with Franciscan hospitality, providing physical, emotional and spiritual healing from addiction. In practice that means an operator that admits men in crisis, including men with nowhere else to go, and holds them for as long as the work takes. The Graymoor property has been the base of this ministry for over a century, and the recovery work is the current form of a mission that has been running there in one shape or another since the friars arrived.

Two Recovery Homes on One Property

Men's recovery housing under this operator runs in two stages:

• St. Christopher's Inn at 21 Franciscan Way in Garrison, certified for one hundred forty-two beds, providing residential addiction treatment with stays from six months to over a year.
• San Damiano House and Farm, also at Graymoor in Garrison, an eighteen-bed transitional living residence opened in 2017 for men who have completed a component of treatment at the Inn.

A man can move from acute need to transitional living without changing organizations, changing counties or explaining himself to anyone new.

Services Behind These Men's Sober Homes

The operator provides residential treatment, medication-assisted treatment, creative therapies, family involvement programming, smoking cessation, vocational services and telehealth. The vocational side extends onto the San Damiano farm, where residents grow organic produce, herbs and flowers sold at a weekly farmers market, and pick up skills in farming and retail along the way. Acceptance of medication for opioid use disorder across the continuum is a substantial thing for a resident whose prescription would otherwise put his housing at risk.

Three State Authorizations for One Sober Living Operator

The New York State Office of Addiction Services and Supports certifies the treatment programs. The State Department of Health licenses the medical clinic. The Department of Social Services licenses the shelter. Three separate regulators covering treatment, medicine and emergency housing on one campus is rare, and it explains how the Inn can take in a man who arrives sick, unhoused and untreated all at once. New York requires no certification of recovery residences at all, and this guide to certifying with OASAS in New York explains what the state's tracks cover.

Who These Hudson Valley Recovery Residences Are For

The Inn serves men in crisis with substance use disorders, including men arriving from New York City, the Hudson Valley and further afield. The transitional house serves men who have completed part of that treatment and need several months of graduated independence before living on their own. A man needing hospital-level medical care belongs in a hospital first, and the Inn's on-site clinic handles a good deal short of that.

Reaching This Putnam County Sober Living Operator

Admissions run through the organization. The questions worth asking: how a man moves from the Inn to San Damiano and what qualifies him, how long each stage typically lasts, how medication-assisted treatment is handled across both houses, what vocational training is available, how families in the city arrange visits, and how a concern escalates past a program director to the state. An operator running three separately regulated services should answer each without difficulty.