While still continuing to provide food, shelter and life skills training to the area’s homeless, Project ECHO also plans to add a new initiative this year in an effort to fight addiction, a major cause of homelessness.

Just fewer than half of the residents at the ECHO shelter in Prince Frederick are recovering drug addicts or alcoholics and many find it hard to readjust in society and end up back in the shelter, Project ECHO Executive Director Trisha Gipson wrote in a letter. Even though the ECHO House is set up as a 90-day stability shelter, counseling residents in finding jobs, taking their medicine and going to Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, “what breaks your heart is after 90 days of sobriety and stability they leave upbeat and determined to live a happy and sober life only to relapse within three or four months,” she wrote.

Desiring to prevent this, Project ECHO plans to open two Oxford Houses in the county within the next year, one for men and one for women. Oxford House Inc. is a nonprofit that facilitates the creation of independent, self-run rooming houses for addicts, operating under a charter. The first house opened in 1975 in Montgomery County, and there are now more than 1,500 in the U.S. and internationally, though of 39 listed in Maryland there are none yet listed in Southern Maryland, according to the Oxford House website. Gipson said she saw a need for one in Calvert.

“Our board president has been contemplating the need and assessing the needs of our residents, especially males, and their ability to find affordable housing,” Gipson said. “We’ve seen relapsing over and over and over again, and it’s costing taxpayers a lot of money.

“We had a resident who was having a hard time staying sober. He was relapsing,” she continued. “It would happen when he left here, but when he was here he was fine because he had support here. The minute he left here he was lonely. He came to us — he was very desperate — and he asked for us to submit his name for an application to Oxford House. There are three in Annapolis.”

So Project ECHO decided to sponsor more local houses, one for women and one for men, the latter of which would be the pilot Oxford House. Project ECHO will find a willing landlord, find a drug-free neighborhood located on a county bus line and supply the initial funding to get the residents started. Then it will monitor the residents’ bookkeeping from there but “the key is to intervene as little as possible,” Gipson said. “Everybody deserves a second chance.”

Right now, ECHO staff have about six targeted prospects who would be ideal for Oxford House living, she said, adding that she hopes to have the first open by Thanksgiving.

Debbie Dungee, loan manager for Oxford House Inc., said recovering alcoholics and addicts can apply for house membership, and the rules of the house are that no occupants can drink or use drugs, the house must be run democratically with elected officers and everyone pays an equal share of the house’s rent and utility bills. They are also required to hold a business meeting each week to go over finances, each performs weekly chores and new members must attend AA and NA meetings. Unless they are students or on disability leave, all occupants must keep a steady job as well.

“You have to work in order to pay your share of the expense,” Dungee said. “For the most part, everyone is a working, taxpaying member of society.”

Typically, residents stay at the Oxford House for about 18 months, she said, though they are allowed to stay as long as they wish. The minimum number of occupants per house is six, though they can range up to 17 in some cases.

For neighbors who might be concerned about recovering addicts moving to an Oxford House next door, Dungee said, “I would tell them to knock on the door and say hello. Consider them neighbors as if another family is moving next door. Normally a lot of houses have open houses when they first open so they can introduce themselves.”

According to a recent study done by the nonprofit, most neighbors of Oxford Houses hold house residents in higher esteem than do citizens who do not live in the Oxford House neighborhood.

Dungee said she also encourages house residents to talk to local law enforcement if anyone in the house starts using drugs or alcohol and “is a threat to other members. It’s rare, but sometimes it’s necessary to call the local police.”

“You don’t have to worry about late night parties or rowdy neighbors,” Gipson said. “If they are caught using, they’re out of there.”

Relapsing isn’t common, according to numerous studies that have been done on the Oxford House system. One study performed by the National Institute of Drug Abuse followed 897 residents in 219 houses across the country for 27 months and found that only 13 percent of residents relapsed. The National Institute on Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse divided study subjects into an Oxford House group and a control group that assumed normal living conditions after rehab, and recorded a 2:1 ratio of Oxford House residents staying sober over individuals in the control group. In 2010, Oxford House Inc. found that only 4,332 members relapsed and were expelled from the program, out of 24,000 total occupants.

There is no sobriety requirement to get into an Oxford House, the website states, though most individuals become residents after going through a 28-day rehabilitation program or a five- or 10-day detoxification program. It also houses veterans. For more information about the Oxford House project, go to www.oxfordhouse.org.

To help with the new initiative and with its continued efforts, Project ECHO is asking for community support, since the organization remains in the red. In 2010, the ECHO House provided 12,309 bed nights and 18,453 warm meals, with volunteers putting in more than 6,200 hours combined and individuals, groups and churches donating meals and other supplies.

Donations can be made payable to Project ECHO Inc., 484 Main Street, P.O. Box 2764, Prince Frederick, MD 20678.

mrussell@somdnews.com