recovery housing

To reduce the risk of opioid overdose and death when reentering the community after incarceration, individuals with opioid use disorder who are incarcerated should have access to jail-provided medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) – methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone – and are promptly connected to services in the community upon release. Planning for reentry from jail is challenging under normal circumstances but is even more challenging when people are admitted and released within days.

In Texas, over the past several years there has been movement toward enacting strict requirements for re-entry housing for persons under community supervision (parole / probation), effectively restricting or eliminating affordable housing, including peer-based recovery housing. Assistance in requested for the development of a toolkit that would help advocates for re-entry housing, including recovery residences, to foster a more positive climate.

Criminal justice agencies, including drug courts, probation and parole, often want to partner with/for peer-based recovery housing, but their perspectives, policies and procedures often prevent that from happening. For example, restrictions prohibiting staff criminal justice backgrounds or restrictions around how long someone can stay in the residence, make such partnerships challenging, if not impossible.