The Latino Oxford House

Leonard Jason, Director of the Center for Community Research

Oxford House and The Center for Community Research: A match that makes a difference

Three years ago, Lenny Jason’s research breathed new life into the Oxford House movement in Illinois.

In 1999, Illinois had stopped lending the $4000 required to set up an Oxford House — a self-help residence program for people recovering from substance abuse — even though the money is repaid as part of the program. A few years later, Leonard Jason, professor, Department of Psychology, and director of the Center for Community Research, used funding from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to study the efficacy of the Oxford House model in helping people beat their addictions and reenter the community.

When he published his findings in the American Journal of Public Health in 2006, the right people noticed.

“We followed people coming out of treatment — some going to an Oxford House, others not — and our findings were conclusive,” Jason recalls. “Nearly 70 percent of addicts transitioning through Oxford House were substance-free after two years, compared to 35 percent for the control group. Their income was $1,000/month compared to $500/month for the control group. And criminal activity was a lot lower among Oxford House alumni.”

A meeting with the Director of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Programs in Illinois reinstated funding.

Fast forward

Now, Jason is using part of $7 million in grants from the NIH to study a house for Latino men, the first of its kind. His research team is well-suited to the project at-hand, since everyone — dozens of graduate and undergraduate students — is bilingual and bicultural.
 
“The house will be culturally-modified and Spanish-speaking: Will that make a difference?” he asks. “Do variations — in language, décor, food, or family values — affect the success of the residents?”

The answers could have interesting implications.

“So far, Oxford Houses have been organized around basic male-female populations, sometimes with kids thrown in the mix. But if the Latino Oxford House is successful, this suggest that residents might benefit from having something in common above and beyond substance abuse,” says Jason.

“Maybe we need Oxford Houses for people with HIV, or veterans coming home from Iraq, or the deaf, or DePaul students. Maybe every university campus should have an Oxford House.”

Expanding the model

Leon Venable, director of Kalimba House Corporation, a not-for-profit enterprise under contract with the Department of Human Services to open up Oxford Houses in Illinois, has high hopes for the Latino House, which will open on October 1:

“A lot of Latino men go through substance abuse treatment, and then return to a bad environment. Oxford House offers a permanent living, and that can make all the difference. If the first Latino House is a success, we’ll open another this year.”

Venable also anticipates an expansion of the Oxford House model. “We’re planning a ‘family reunification’ house — another first-of-its-kind. We’ll put a husband, wife, and children, currently living in shelters but in recovery, into a single-family home and run it like an Oxford House. Eighty percent of the homeless in Cook County are families.  So, we are going to try to help them as well.”

In the Vincentian spirit

Jason points out that, if St. Vincent de Paul were in the United States today, he’d be working with the people served by the Oxford House movement — people without resources, people just wanting the “know how” to help themselves.

“When you realize that the 25,000 people living in Oxford Houses are paying their own way — that’s a model that works. That’s a model that answers the question, ‘How can we conquer tough, social problems without depending on expensive, unsustainable programs?’ I think Oxford House could be the future of how our country serves the marginalized and disenfranchised among us.”

Venable credits the Center for Community Research for the survival of the Oxford House movement in Illinois. “The book, Rescued Lives, put Oxford House on the map, not only in Illinois, but nationwide,” he says. “DePaul opened up doors that others wanted to close.”