I am writing on behalf of the Alamo Recovery Center, Inc., a residential recovery home in historic Petersburg, Virginia.  We are a small recovery home which serves eight residents including a house manager. We have operated our recovery residence for over 40 years and have established close relationships with the Tri-Cities recovery community as well as our regional correctional and community services board agencies.  We operate on an extremely limited budget and value our relationships with DBHDS, the Cameron Foundation, and the City of Petersburg’s Community Development Block Grant office, and our various donors in the community.

We were pleased and excited to see DBHDS considering amendments to the 12VAC35-260 regulations to expand the certification options for recovery residences.  The existing regulations requiring credentialing by VARR or Oxford House, Inc. were, candidly, significantly too costly (in the case of VARR), or not directly applicable to us (in the case of Oxford Houses), so as to effectively make the credentialing process impossible for a small residence like ours, and we imagine, for many other residences.

The amendments that have been proposed will allow recovery residences like ours to become credentialed directly through DBHDS rather than through the current VARR/Oxford House certification paths.  We believe that the proposed DBHDS application process is both meaningfully demanding and practically achievable. Furthermore, the DBHDS oversight proposed in the amended regulations is appropriate and manageable for a small facility like ours.

Accordingly, we commend DBHDS for preparing those amendments and support adoption of the amendments after the current public comment period has ended. The Board and staff of the Alamo look forward to applying for certification as soon as the new regulations are adopted.