Craig will be home to two additional Oxford Houses by the end of January, bringing the town’s total to three.

Oxford House Elk Mountain, a sober-living home for men, opened in 2022 after local health care leaders expressed the need for sober-living options in the community. Earlier this month, it was joined by Oxford House Silmarwen. While Elk Mountain provides a sober-living home for men, Silmarwen is reserved for women in recovery, as well as their children.

Due to the success of Elk Mountain, another home for men, Oxford Home New Vision, is set to begin service.

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Oxford House outreach worker Sean Lawrence shared that a fundamental component of its model is the ability for members to live in the homes indefinitely, so long as they maintain their sobriety. While the practice helps create stability in a home, it can also necessitate the opening of additional homes.

Lawrence said it became apparent earlier this fall that an additional house would be beneficial to the Craig community.

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Applicants for Oxford House membership must be sober at the time of application. They must also complete an interview with the current house members, where they will need to secure an 80% approval vote to move in.

When a member joins Oxford House, they are responsible for paying their share equally of the expenses of the home, including rent and estimated utilities. Members also work as a collective to keep the house running, as there are no house managers or support staff on site.

Members hold weekly house business meetings, and the various occupants hold different positions within the home — such as president, treasurer, secretary and coordinator.

“Our model is completely self-run, self-supporting and peer-led,” Lawrence said.

Everything operates on a democratic process, complete with “old school” parliamentary procedure, house votes, and shared expenses and workloads. There is also zero tolerance within the home for any drug or alcohol use. While random UAs can be administered, Lawrence said it’s typically obvious when a member has resumed using.

As with everything else, the matter is put to a house vote and if a member is ousted, they are typically required to vacate the home within 24 hours.

“We want to set up the house for success,” Lawrence said. “And it’s a pretty simple program — stay sober, get a job, work, help us run the house, keep the peace, keep the place clean and you can stay here as long as you want.”

If the houses seem to run a bit like a fraternity, that’s not entirely coincidental.

Oxford House started in 1975, when a county-run halfway house in Silver Spring, Maryland was set to close due to dwindling funds. The residents were searching for a way to keep the house going and approached the homeowner (himself a recovering alcoholic), who suggested that they run it themselves.

Using a member’s former college fraternity as inspiration, the group eschewed the on-site cook, counselor and house-manager in favor of taking the reins themselves.

“When they started it, nobody thought that they were going to be successful — no way a bunch of alcoholics can keep each other sober,” Lawrence said.

But they proved the skeptics wrong. And almost five decades later, Oxford House is still going strong.

There are currently 125 Oxford Houses in Colorado and over 3,700 nationwide. They can also be found internationally in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden and Ghana.

“In a lot of ways, Oxford House kind of set the bar for what recovery living is now,” Lawrence said. “The people who live in the home, it really is their home. Eventually what happens is these houses become family homes with a family that’s in recovery. We’re not related by blood, but we have a common bond.”

Lawrence noted that there are still vacancies at Silmarwen and New Vision. Application forms and additional information can be found at OxfordVacancies.com.