At the start of the year, the basement of a dark blue Gunnison-area home in the northwest corner of town was practically barren, threaded with exposed wire and a fatigued carpet. Just six months later, the space has been transformed, offering new rooms for Gunnison’s sober living home residents.
The city’s first sober living home, which offers a supportive environment for those seeking sobriety from drugs and alcohol, opened at the start of 2024. Since then, the home has added capacity with new bedrooms, and owners continue to renovate the space. The home’s financial model, using rents to pay the mortgage, is proving successful. Now, nonprofit owner Gunnison Sanctuary Housing is considering another sober living home for women in coming years.
The home is the result of years of work by local advocates and couple Mary Beth and Scott Kelley, who lost their son to an overdose in 2019. The couple owns the home under the nonprofit, but day-to-day operation is taken up by Oxford House, a sober living organization that manages homes across the Western Slope.
“I expected a little bit of negative pushback, you know, from being in a family neighborhood and we've got none of that,” Mary Beth said. “All the neighbors have been super friendly and nice and supportive.”
Although it can accommodate up to eight men, numbers have hovered closer to six. At six residents, each gets their own space instead of having a roommate, which might be preferable, Mary Beth said. So far, the home’s residents have arrived through programs that deal with addiction treatment, such as Front Range Clinic, Gunnison Valley Health (GVH) Behavioral Health or Gunnison County Detention Center’s jail-based behavioral services.
Occupancy has been fluid over the summer, as some residents have reached a point in their sobriety where they are able to live more independently, while others aren’t alway the right fit for the home, said former Oxford House outreach worker Phil Bohannon. He still lives in the home, but now works as a peer support specialist at GVH.
Oxford House requests that residents actively work on their recovery, which could mean attending AA or NA meetings, mindfulness in recovery or getting involved with local churches. As Oxford Homes are “democratically run,” each resident takes on a different role, which includes managing rent, coordinating chores, facilitating meetings with the regional chapter and interviewing potential roommates. When new roommates go up for a vote, 80% of the current residents have to agree in order for that person to be admitted. After a 30-day trial period, they become a permanent member of the home.
“As long as somebody is actually working on their recovery, that's what the sole purpose of living in the house is,” he said.
As men have moved in and out, the Kelley couple, with help from friends and other community collaborators, have slowly remodeled the home. This summer, they renovated the basement area to include an additional three bedrooms and a sitting area with a TV and couch. Crews laid synthetic hardwood, put in drywall, added egress windows and painted the walls, now spruced with local art.
“We got so much, and some of it had a special story behind it … and some of it was just beautiful,” she said.
Clean Lines Painting, run by Carleen White, painted the home at its out-of-pocket cost, turning the “ugly dark blue house" a shade of dark gray. A former resident, now moved on to live with his son, landscaped the front of the home, adding rock features, sapling aspens, a French drain and seeding grass with Gunni Gold compost.
The couple raised over $120,000 to purchase the house. So far, the concept of using resident’s rent to cover the debt on the home has proven successful, she said. But unexpected maintenance on the home has kept the pair fundraising through the year. Sanctuary is looking to expand usable space in the kitchen, install a new bathroom and eventually, open a sober living home for women in Gunnison or Crested Butte.
The nonprofit’s board has considered using rent money to buy another home for women, Kelley said. However, that’s only an option once the debt on the current home is paid off in full.
New avenue for crowdsourcing
Sanctuary is seeking a little over $10,000 for a new bathroom to be installed in the basement before winter’s end. To garner the funds, Sanctuary is using the Community Foundation of the Gunnison Valley’s new program, “The Gunnison Valley Giving Connection.”
The program allows nonprofits’ supporters to donate the program year-round with contributions as small as a few dollars. Unlike the Foundation’s typical grant cycles, fundraisers on the Giving Connection can be anyone in the community needing charitable support. So far, Sanctuary is joined by organizers pushing for a new senior center in Crested Butte, and Gunnison Middle School Leadership Club students looking to travel to Brighton, Colorado for a conference in November.
Users of the Giving Connection benefit from being on a locally-recognized platform, said Director of Philanthropy Jessica Wurtz. It offers a slight advantage to Gunnison Valley-based organizations, who might get lost in the donation throng of national crowdfunding platforms like GoFundMe or Kickstarter. And, the foundation charges a 1.5% fee, lower than standard fees from national platforms.
“There was a run of people coming to us and [asking] can you fund this? Or do you know how this can be funded? And we said ‘No, not right now with the way that we function, but this would be something that the community might want to come together on,” Wurtz said.
For more information on the Giving Connection, visit cfgv.org or to learn more about Sanctuary, email Mary Beth at marybethkelley.cb@gmail.com.
(Abby Harrison can be contacted at 970.641.1414 or abby@gunnisontimes.com.)
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