Oxford Houses of Wyoming   

The first Oxford House was established in 1975 in Silver Spring, Maryland.  From the beginning the group rejected ownership of any property and continues to rent – not purchase – single-family houses in good neighborhoods to establish new Oxford Houses. In the years between 1975 and 1988, eighteen Houses were established by and for recovering individuals.  The principles of replication and guidelines for running a group home for recovering alcoholics and substance abusers embodied in the Oxford House Manual had become institutionalized in the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area and in 1987 a house for ten men was rented in Bethlehem, PA.

In 1988, Congress enacted P.L. 100-690, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act. This Act included a provision that required all states to establish a revolving loan fund to provide start-up funds for groups wishing to open sober living environments based on the Oxford House model.  The mandate was changed to a permissive provision in 1990 and is now codified as 42 USC 300x-25.  To determine if a particular state has a current recovery home revolving loan fund, click the Single State Director List and contact the agency. Such loans of $4,000 pay the first month's rent and security deposit and thereby accelerate the rate at which individual recovering people can find affordable housing.  Repayment is made monthly for 24 months so that others can benefit from the same kind of loan.

The availability of start-up loans for groups of six or more recovering individuals to rent an ordinary single-family house to start an Oxford House was a necessary but not sufficient incentive for expanding the small network of Oxford Houses.  It immediately became clear that it is necessary to teach residents in new self-run, self-supported Oxford Houses the system of operations that had made the early Oxford Houses successful.  Therefore, Oxford House World Services was established in 1989 to train experienced Oxford House residents to be teachers of the system of operations spelled out in the Oxford House Manual©.  Many states provided grants to cover the expenses of World Services to train and supervise “outreach workers” to carry their expertise to newly recovering individuals to start and maintain self-run, self-supported recovery homes. The combination of state grants, individual contributions and foundation grants permitted the establishment of an effective World Services Office within a short period of time.  From the outset, the World Services Office developed expertise in four specific areas:
•    Training and supervision of outreach workers
•    Management of revolving loan fund
•    Legal protection of civil rights under the Federal Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act
•    Development of an infra-structure to enable all Oxford Houses to work together to assure applied research, orderly expansion and quality control

A number of states including Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Missouri, Illinois, Washington, Oregon and Hawaii entered into grant agreements with Oxford House World Service to introduce Oxford Houses to their respective states.  

By 1991, when the CBS program “60 Minutes” did a favorable ten-minute segment about Oxford House, there were 256 Oxford Houses throughout the country.  The immediate effect of this program was to increase interest and demand for more Oxford Houses.

In the seven years between 1989 and 1996 the accomplishments of Oxford House World Services included:
•    Website: www.oxfordhouse.org established

•    An increase in houses from 18 to over 600

•    An increase in states served from 3 to 41

•    An increase in total recovery beds from 145 to over 4,954

•    Women's Houses increased from 3 to 110

•    Women's Houses that accept women with children increased from 1 to 18

•    Communities served increased from 3 to 253

•    Average rate of relapse maintained at less than 20% of all residents.

Moreover, Oxford House World Services supervised legal actions throughout the country to resolve civil rights with respect to zoning restrictions and the NIMBY problem.  In 1995, the United States Supreme Court considered the rights of recovering individuals to rent houses in areas zoned for single-family residence.  In its decision in City of Edmonds, WA v. Oxford House, Inc. 514 US 725 (May 15, 1995), the U.S. Supreme Court found that recovering alcoholics and drug addicts are protected under the Federal Fair Housing Act as handicapped individuals and local governments must make reasonable accommodations in their local zoning law restrictions.  This case laid the foundation for a number of other cases where courts have prohibited discrimination against recovering individuals living together for the purpose of becoming comfortable enough in sobriety to avoid relapse.

2009: Over 1,300 Oxford Houses exist around the world. Houses now exist in The United States, Australia, and Canada.