One step closer to opening ‘Oxford House’ in Moscow

When Annaleah Vallee left the Nez Perce County jail in 2018, she would begin yet another of several attempts at sobriety.

At 25, Vallee was addicted to methamphetamine and pills after being introduced to drugs at around 15 years old, she said. Between ages 10 and 18, the Lapwai resident bounced in and out of foster care and Nez Perce children’s homes.

“It was pretty much always around from childhood, the lifestyle itself,” she said. “It’s from the time that I was a kid. And so as I got older, I see people using and drinking and stuff. It was nothing to me. To me, it was familiarity, I guess you could say.”

When she left jail, Vallee was desperate to get clean, she said. She had a son who was 7 when she was arrested, and had painfully recalled him seeing reports about her and trying to understand.

“I could just hear the hurt in (my son’s) voice, having to see and hear about his Mom,” she said. “For years, I did my best to try and cover my tracks. ... So everything just kind of came to a head when I got my last charges.”

When she got out of jail, Vallee enrolled in outpatient treatment. During her time going, she told the women in one of her groups that she had nowhere to stay, and one of them offered an opening at her house in Lewiston.

That house, Vallee would learn, was an Oxford house — a type of sober group living.

Unlike other sober houses, which are run by one overseer, Oxford houses are maintained entirely by the people living there. New members have to be voted in with at least 80% approval by current residents, and are given duties and expected to contribute financially for upkeep. Those living in an Oxford house can also be voted out if they’re found to be, or suspected of, using drugs.

Vallee stayed in the Oxford house for a year and a half, and is three years and four months sober. She has regular visitations with her son, who lives with his grandparents. She’s also Idaho’s state outreach worker for Oxford House, which she credits for helping her reach long term sobriety.

“(The difference with Oxford House is) you might be able to fool and manipulate one person, but your entire household as a whole, if you’re having behaviors of relapse or ... just bad behavior in general, the girls are gonna call you out on it,” she said. “They’re seeing you at three o’clock in the morning, underneath your hood, throughout the morning, cleaning out your car.”

There are currently three Oxford houses in Idaho — all in Lewiston — with a fourth planned to open in May. There is also an Oxford house across the state line in Clarkston. Now, organizers in Moscow are hoping to add a fifth in Idaho, and give more people an opportunity like Vallee’s, said Darrell Kiem, director of the Latah Recovery Center.

The recovery center first started looking into sober housing a year ago, Kiem said. They received $200,000 from the Latah County Commissioners in February to purchase a house, and approached the Moscow City Council for an additional $200,000 at their April 4 meeting.

That decision was tabled because of a $25,000 limit on grants to nonprofits, with plans to revise the language.

Though the center’s board is still hopeful about still getting funds from the city, Kiem said, they decided they couldn’t wait any longer. This week, an offer of $450,000 for a property in northeast Moscow was accepted.

“We decided to take a leap of faith and put an offer on the place that we’ve been trying to get,” he said. “We’re taking out a mortgage and dipping into our reserves to make it happen and hoping that the city comes through with at least some money so that we can replenish our reserves a little bit, maybe set some of that money aside for working on that on the house.”

The center’s board hopes to close on the deal for the home, which is off Mountain View Road, by May, Kiem said. If they’re successful, the property could be ready for residents as soon as June. The house itself is expected to accommodate eight to 10 people.

That would likely start with a men’s facility, with plans for a women’s Oxford house in the future, he said.

Advocates for Oxford House say the model has created unprecedented success rates for long-term sobriety. In Idaho, Oxford houses have an 87% abstinence rate, said Stacie Hatfield, the Washington and Idaho senior outreach coordinator.

Research from National Institute on Drug Abuse found similar results in Oxford Houses throughout the country, with a rate of 86.5% sobriety for participants in Oxford House, and 81.5% for those who had left an Oxford house.

So far, Kiem said he hasn’t gotten any unsolicited feedback from the community. Sometimes, residents can be skeptical of sober housing, Hatfield said, but she considers Oxford houses to be an asset to the community.

“Sometimes that can be another deterrent, is landlords not wanting to rent to us, you know, drug addicts and alcoholics in recovery. Because they don’t hear the word ‘in recovery’ part,” she said.

Although there’s stigma around recovery, Hatfield says the people in Oxford houses tend to make good neighbors, and are often quieter than large families with children.

“Every single case that I have had — and I’ve been doing this for 14 years — is that (I say), ‘Give the guys a chance. … Here’s my card, here’s my number, you can call me at any hour at any time, if anything goes sour, or sideways,’ ” she said. “Three months later, I get the call saying that they’re wonderful guys, and they are baking them cookies and baking them bread and the guys are mowing their lawn and shoveling their sidewalk. We don’t always get the feedback from the neighbors. But when (we do) it’s never gone to a sour point for me.”

Sun may be contacted at rsun@lmtribune.com or on Twitter at @Rachel_M_Sun. This report is made possible by the Lewis-Clark Valley Healthcare Foundation in partnership with Northwest Public Broadcasting, the Lewiston Tribune and the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.