Transitional housing for people in recovery breaks ground in Bennington
BENNINGTON — A new transitional housing facility for those in recovery from addiction, which its co-founders say will help fill the community’s need, is slated to open in town next year.
A ground-breaking ceremony was held Friday for Bridge Street Recovery at 608 Francestown Road, the former location of the long-gone Highland Inn across from the Crotched Mountain ski resort.
The 40-bed residential care and transitional housing facility will provide both emergency and long-term care to New Hampshire residents recovering from addiction.
Friends and Massachusetts residents John Christian and Stephen Bryan co-founded the facility, and have varying degrees of experience in substance-use treatment.
Christian has worked for recovery programs for more than 25 years, including with many clients from New Hampshire, while Bryan is a real estate developer who oversaw several addiction treatment center projects.
Bryan said he has vacationed in the Peterborough area since he was a kid, and in speaking with his local friends, realized the need for a treatment center that anyone in the state can access.
“I discovered that there was an unbelievable issue around substance abuse and overdose deaths ... and the state really had little or nothing to offer,” he said.
New Hampshire’s number of fatal overdoses skyrocketed starting in 2013 and 2014 as part of a nationwide epidemic. Fatal overdoses peaked in 2017, with a confirmed total of 490.
In 2018, New Hampshire ranked third highest in the country for opioid-related deaths per capita, according to the National Institute for Drug Abuse, but that same year was reported to have the second-lowest level of access to substance-use treatment.
And while last year marked the second year in a row that the number of drug deaths dropped, experts say the COVID-19 pandemic could cause numbers to increase yet again.
Bridge Street Recovery — which is both privately and publicly funded — will be for adults who are at least 30 days into sobriety and need help transitioning back into everyday life.
The facility will accept any form of insurance, including state Medicaid, according to spokeswoman Kellie Koch.
Christian said the transitional housing clients will have the option to attend treatment at the facility six days a week if needed, such as substance-use counseling. They will also have full access to treatment staff of varying specialties, ranging from clinicians to peer recovery workers.
Additionally, clients will be given job counseling and get help finding permanent housing.
Stays at Bridge Street Recovery can range from 30 days to six months, Christian noted, depending on the client’s needs.
Gov. Chris Sununu was in attendance at Friday’s ground-breaking, as both co-founders said he was instrumental in securing the facility’s funding.
Looking forward, Christian and Bryan are also opening a detox facility under the same name in Peterborough. The hope is to have it open by the end of 2021.
The 64-bed facility will be for people who are just coming off substances, may be going into withdrawal and need a more intense form of treatment, Christian explained.
The idea is to have clients start in Peterborough and then come to Bennington to continue their recovery process.
“This ... is one step on the path to meeting the needs of our community here in New Hampshire,” Bryan said in a news release on the facility, “and providing access to care for those struggling with addiction.”