Serenity House

About The Hansen Foundation

The Hansen Foundation is a sober living operator based in Egg Harbor City, New Jersey, running a network of licensed recovery residences across Atlantic County. Jennifer Hansen, in recovery since 1996, founded the nonprofit in 2001 with a single house and has grown it into one of the larger sober living networks on the Jersey Shore, spanning Ventnor, Galloway, Absecon, Atlantic City and Somers Point.

A Nonprofit Recovery Housing Provider

The Foundation operates as a nonprofit, and Hansen has said publicly that the organization draws no profit from its houses and that she takes no salary from it. Fees cover the houses themselves, with no owner drawing a return from them, and the stated mission is to build a model for the first year of sobriety, the stretch after residential treatment ends when most people have nowhere structured to land.

Five Licensed Sober Homes in Ventnor

The largest cluster of Hansen houses sits in Ventnor, the barrier island city between Atlantic City and Margate, where five addresses hold current Department of Community Affairs licenses:

• 103 South Austin Avenue, license 0122-0017.
• 105 South Austin Avenue, license 0122-0011.
• 228 North Newark Avenue, license 0122-0020.
• 611 North Dorset Avenue, license 0122-0019.
• 1 South Marion Avenue, licenses 0122-0026 and 0122-0027, covering two units of the same building.

The Austin Avenue pair stands next door to each other on the same block. That concentration lets the Foundation run one staff and one set of house rules across the entire Ventnor cluster.

Recovery Homes in Galloway, Absecon, Atlantic City and Somers Point

The Foundation's oldest and best-known properties sit on a shared campus at 4 East Jimmie Leeds Road in Galloway Township: Serenity House for women and the Randy Scarborough House for men. A few miles east in Absecon, the Foundation runs Serenity Meadows on North Shore Road for women, along with a second licensed women's address nearby at 625 North Shore Road under license 0101-0007. Atlantic City holds a licensed house on South Tallahassee Avenue, and Somers Point, a short drive south of Absecon, holds a men's house on Braddock Drive under license 0121-0017.

Men's and Women's Sober Houses Kept Separate

Every Hansen Foundation residence with a published gender runs single-gender, and the organization keeps men and women in separate buildings even where two houses share a campus. Serenity House and the North Shore Road address serve women, the Randy Scarborough House and the Braddock Drive house serve men, and the Galloway campus keeps its two houses separate by gender. Gender has not yet been published for the newer Ventnor licenses.

Licensed Sober Living Under New Jersey's Class F Rule

New Jersey runs no certification program for recovery residences. What it requires instead is a license, and the Hansen Foundation holds a Department of Community Affairs license as a Class F Cooperative Sober Living Residence for each address in its network under N.J.A.C. 5:27. A state guide to New Jersey sober living licensing explains what that requires of an operator running this many addresses at once, and the state's own rooming and boarding house rules lay out the underlying standard.

One Application Across This Recovery Housing Network

Applications and referrals go through the Foundation directly, which handles intake for every house in its network. The organization also houses residents enrolled in Enlightened Recovery's partial hospitalization program, a working referral relationship with a treatment provider on top of its own self-referral intake. A resident who needs a different set of housemates, or a lighter or heavier degree of structure, can raise it with an organization that already runs the next address.

Recovery Housing Across Atlantic County's Shore and Mainland

The Foundation's office sits inland in Egg Harbor City, while its houses run along the barrier island shore in Ventnor and Atlantic City and the mainland communities of Galloway, Absecon and Somers Point. That spread puts residents within reach of Atlantic City's year-round hospitality and service jobs, AtlantiCare's hospitals in Atlantic City and Pomona, and Mays Landing, the county seat, where the county courts and Atlantic Cape Community College sit. Atlantic County carries one of the largest concentrations of licensed cooperative sober living residences in New Jersey, and the Hansen Foundation's network accounts for a meaningful share of it.