Jan 14, 2017 6 min read

WAYNESBURG – A little more than a year after the Bird Sisters Oxford House opened in Waynesburg, changes appear to be on the horizon for the sober living facility.

The home designed to offer a safe living space for recovering drug addicts and alcoholics opened on Richhill Street in January 2015, and for a year, was managed by the Community Recovery Committee of Steps Inside, a Waynesburg nonprofit rehabilitation program.

The committee voted last Monday to transition its fiscal responsibility of the home to the owner of the house, Annette Phillips. As of Feb. 1, the future of the house will be in her hands and the “founding mothers,” including Lynn Bird and Bonnie Fisher.

“It’s going to remain the Bird Sisters recovery house for women,” Phillips said. “God’s blessed me with the ability to help this community. I know there are a lot more women in this community who need this house.”

Bob Terry, a leader of the committee, said the financial responsibility became too much for the committee to handle alone and the board of directors for Steps Inside did not want to take over responsibility either.

“We have done our best, but we can’t fund it anymore,” he said during last week’s meeting.

The house had been funded primarily through donations, but that’s not how it was intended to work. Terry said the Oxford House model requires residents pay their own rent and the plan was to fill the house with at least six residents so that it would be self-sufficient.

But they couldn’t keep it filled.

“It’s been 13 months and we haven’t gotten to that point,” he said. “We have tried our best to make this an Oxford House, and we all agree this is a much-needed resource that we need to preserve.”

They’ve been operating under a provisional charter with Oxford House Inc. In order to get the full charter, they would need to submit financial records of at least six residents making rent and utility payments over the course of three months, but there was too much turnover at the house during its first year. In contrast, the Cumberland Oxford House for men has operated at or near full capacity since it opened in Waynesburg more than two years ago.

Phillips said she wants to maintain the Oxford House model at Bird Sisters, which has a zero-tolerance policy for drugs and alcohol, residents must pay rent and other expenses and each person has to participate in the democratic process of running the house.

Currently, the house has two women living there – Robin Clarke, 48, of Virginia, and Donna Sullivan, 59, of Brownsville.

Clarke said she struggled with alcohol addiction since she was 8 years old. Last summer, she was on the streets looking for a place to stay. She said she called 20 different sober living facilities.

“The Bird Sisters house was the only one that answered their phone,” she said. “I didn’t have any money. I had nothing.”

She moved in at the end of August.

“I absolutely love this house,” she said. “These women put up with a lot from me, but I think living here has calmed me down a whole bunch. One of the girls used to say ‘This house talks’ and it lets you know when something’s amiss, but right now, it’s calm.”

Sullivan said her addiction to pain pills and heroin started nine years ago. She moved into the house in May.

“It’s a nice house, in a nice area,” she said.

Most importantly, she said the house has kept her sober.

Fisher, the facilitator of the house, said there are eight more applicants for the house, two of whom will be released from jail soon. They will also hold an open house from noon to 7 p.m. Friday to showcase the home and try to bring in more women.

“We’re really pushing the recruitment and trying to get some girls in there,” she said. “They support each other and are more focused on their recovery and that’s what we want. Even if we have one person that’s been a success, it’s worth it.”

Lisa Hughes, 36, of Waynesburg, was one of those success stories. She moved into the house just after it opened last January after an 11-year battle with addiction.

Hughes said she started abusing her pain medication at the age of 24, after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Her doctors were prescribing her about 100 pills a week during her treatment.

“When I was put on it, I really didn’t know much about drugs,” she said.

She abused pills for four years, before one day, switching to heroin, which was her drug of choice for the next seven years.

After three rehabilitation stays, several relapses, theft charges and a two-year custody battle for her 11-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter, Hughes began outpatient treatment at the end of 2015, and moved into the Bird Sisters House Jan. 28, 2016.

“This house showed me how to have responsibilities and to be reliable and to be accountable for things,” she said. “There was a set of rules that I had to follow and, if I didn’t have those rules, who knows where I would’ve been. This house is something that this town needs.”

She stayed there six months before she was able to move out on her own and get her children back.

“To have my kids back in my arms and to be able to tell them every night that I love them,” Hughes said. “I wouldn’t trade that for anything. Relapse is not an option for me.”

Fisher said that in the future, the founding mothers of the house will look into what clearances they will need for some women to bring their children to live at the house, since that has been a deterrent for some inquiring women. She did not know how soon children might be allowed to live with their mothers at the house.

“I got a call recently from a woman who just got out of rehab and had a 6-month-old baby and she didn’t want to lose the baby,” Fisher said. “We have to check with other women and children houses to see what we have to do.”