The Step House

About The Step House

The Step House is a sober living operator in Alamogordo, New Mexico, providing men's recovery housing in Otero County. It works in the county seat, in the Tularosa Basin of south central New Mexico.

An Otero County Recovery Housing Provider

Alamogordo is the county seat and the largest city in Otero County, and it holds the court, the hospital, the outpatient providers and nearly all of the county's employment. An operator working here is working where the obligations are. For a man on probation, in outpatient treatment, or trying to keep a job while he rebuilds, that concentration is the difference between making appointments and missing them. Recovery housing in the Tularosa Basin is scarce, and the operators that exist carry a caseload sized for a much larger network.

Assessing a Sober Living Operator in New Mexico

New Mexico has no certification, licensing or registration for recovery residences and no state affiliate of the National Alliance for Recovery Residences. There is no list to check an operator against and no complaint body above it. The evaluation has to be done directly, and four questions carry most of the weight:

1. How long has the operator run recovery housing in the area, and under what name.
2. Does it produce written house rules and a written fee schedule before anyone signs.
3. Does it take referrals from treatment providers, drug court or probation, and will it say which.
4. What is the policy after a relapse, and is any part of a deposit refunded.

An operator that answers all four without hesitation has already told you more than a register in another state would.

Men's Sober Living in South Central New Mexico

The regional picture is thin. Las Cruces, west over the San Augustin Pass, holds most of southern New Mexico's treatment capacity, and El Paso is further on. Someone who stays in Alamogordo does so because family, work and the court that supervises him are all here, and those three reasons account for most local placements. An operator in the county seat competes on structure and on how fast it can put a man in a bed.

Reaching This Alamogordo Sober Living Operator

Placement runs through the operator directly. Referrals from Otero County treatment providers, from the district court and from families are the usual routes in, and asking a case manager to make the call is often faster than calling alone. Anyone arranging a placement should confirm the current address and the current terms at the time of the inquiry, because small operators move houses and change rates more often than large ones do.