“Did you hear what he said today?” one man in his 20s wearily asked another, who just shook his head.
Lots of people have been talking about Mr. Sheen, but perhaps not with the same insight as this group, all residents of Loft 107, a sober-living facility in an inconspicuous former warehouse in the heart of Brooklyn’s most self-consciously cool neighborhood.
Opened in 2009 by Joe Schrank, a 41-year-old social worker and longtime promoter of drug and alcohol recovery, the Loft, as it is known, is a high-end facility for people who have already gone through the isolation of rehabilitation and want an intermediate step back into their regular lives. For the duration of residents’ stay (there is a 30-day minimum, but some have remained for as long as a year), the Loft provides structure, community and random drug and alcohol testing to help keep recovering addicts on the wagon.
It’s also pretty plush.
Sprawling across three apartments on two floors that total 7,000 square feet, the light-filled space is furnished with sectional couches and club chairs from Restoration Hardware. Exposed brick walls are hung with framed Hatch Show Prints, rock-themed art and flat-screen TVs. The overall effect is of a spread in a shelter magazine or the set of a reality show.“It’s the‘Real Sober World,’ ” Mr. Schrank joked.
Wandering about were Churchill, a stately plump English bulldog, and Lucy, a sad-eyed Italian mastiff who barks at the slightest noise but tenderly nuzzles all visitors. In an open kitchen with restaurant-style appliances, daily meals prepared by Tina Campbell, a tough but kindly 56-year-old house manager, include homemade muffins in the morning and fried chicken or pasta for dinner, with fresh cakes andcookiesfor dessert. (Residents are reminded not to feed the dogs from the table.)
Hidden away from the communal spaces are 10 bedrooms. It costs $12,500 a month to occupy one alone; $8,500 to share with two others of the same sex. Each resident (the Loft can accommodate 17) is provided with a full-size bed dressed with a fluffy white duvet. The rooms are cleaned daily; towels are washed, folded and stacked, hotel-style, in the men’s and women’s bathrooms.
The Loft does not take insurance (there are no doctors or nurses on staff). And according to the New York State Office ofAlcoholismand Substance Abuse Services, sober-living facilities like the Loft need no license to operate. Residents must adhere to house rules, like leaving during the day to go to work or attend school or outpatient care (they are given aMetroCardand $20 cash for lunch), checking in with any of the five staff members— some of whom are also in recovery— daily by phone, attending two meetings a week, adhering to some form of physical fitness (there is ayogastudio in the building) and honoring a midnight curfew.
Beyond that, the residents’ time and movement are their own, no small gesture given that the Loft is a few doors down from two bars, and in a neighborhood where police found cocaine worth $1 million in November 2009.
MR. SCHRANK, himself a recovering alcoholic, has the soft features of a doctor in aNorman Rockwellpainting. He previously worked for three years at Promises, the rehabilitation center in Los Angeles and Malibu, Calif., that is best known for former residents likeBritney SpearsandLindsay Lohan.
“I kept thinking,‘Why do we have to send people to California or Arizona?’ ” he said.“Our lives are here.”
He characterized the recovery community in the West as“weirdly” nature-focused.“They’re much more upbeat than we are,” he said.“I think the byproduct of their upbeat energy is a real disingenuous, superficial reality that just doesn’t exist in New York. It doesn’t totally translate culturally. I’m attempting to take what’s good and translate it to an urban mentality.”
While after-care centers have sprouted up in rehab hubs like Minnesota (home of Hazelden, one of the country’s best-known drug and alcohol treatment centers), Southern California, Arizona and Florida, there are limited options in the New York City area.
But this is changing. Hazelden, a nonprofit group, has a 75-bed clinic in Chelsea and plans to open its own sober-living facility for college-age residents in TriBeCa this fall. Called Tribeca Twelve, it will house up to 30 people ages 18 to 29 in loft apartments featuring fireplaces, a roof deck and other amenities that Ann Bray, Hazelden’s vice president for strategic initiatives and general counsel, called“very, very cool,” like 12-foot ceilings and hardwood floors made of Brazilian cherry.
“We think this will be the hippest cool pad to hang out in,” Ms. Bray said. Tribeca Twelve will cost $5,500 a month, and Ms. Bray said that some residents may be able to cover part of the expense withstudent loans, since it will count as off-campus housing.
There is also the Addiction Institute of New York (formerly known as Smithers), which runs a 26-bed halfway house in Roosevelt Hospital on the West Side. On the lower end of the cost spectrum, Staten Island is home to a six-house 68-bed facility for men in recovery called Harrison House. A room costs from $350 to $550 a month; food— and frills— are not included. Like Loft 107, residents of Harrison House must follow house rules and submit to random urine tests. Unlike at the Loft, there are no high-end amenities. This is no accident, according to Michael Spence, the director of development and public relations for Harrison House and a certifiedsubstance abusecounselor.
“If it’s a very cushy-cushy place, it hinders a person’s ability to recover because it’s so comfortable,” he said, adding that if residents are“stripped down to nothing, they can build themselves up.”
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