Respite House, a Valparaiso halfway house for addicts in recovery, is at capacity and has a waiting list of 73 applicants waiting for beds, its officials said.
As the number of opioid deaths in Porter County continues to climb, representatives from Respite House and local officials unveiled plans for a second facility in Valparaiso’s Hilltop neighborhood.
The preliminary meeting, held Thursday at the Porter County Sheriff’s Department, was meant to offer details about the halfway house, which still has to go through site review and other steps with the city of Valparaiso, and gauge neighbors’ concerns.
“It’s important to come together as a community to address the disease of addiction,” Mitch Peters, president of the Respite House board, said.
For their part, neighbors wondered why a halfway house was planned for an already-struggling area, what the impact might be on a nearby childcare facility, and why the meeting wasn’t being held in Hilltop so more residents could hear about the plan.
“How is this program going to make the Hilltop neighborhood, which is already a challenged and overwhelmed neighborhood, better?” asked Jennifer Wright, executive director of Hilltop Neighborhood House, a non-profit that offers childcare, a food pantry and other services.
She wondered how she would convince the parents of toddlers in her programs, which help support the food pantry, to continue to drop their children off if they were concerned about the halfway house, though she said she wasn’t arguing over the need for the house.
Peters, who answered questions from several of the 40 or so people who attended the meeting, said the current facility opened in 2009 at 1408 Chicago St. A rehab of an existing building, the house, which at the time received county funding, houses 16 people. It’s one of two halfway houses for men in Valparaiso.
Project Neighbors had two lots for sale in the 300 block of Union Street, Peters said, so Respite House officials were able to purchase them at below fair market value.
The location is close to downtown, where many of the house’s clients would work, and is within walking distance to Recovery Connection and Alice’s House, both of which offer 12-step meetings for recovering addicts, Peters said.
The clientele, Peters and other Respite House representatives said, are not violent or sex offenders and many have convictions for theft, drug possession, or hypodermic needle possession. Some enter the program through court order, while others come in off the street or after going through drug rehab, but all must be substance-free to participate.
Peters hopes to complete the bi-level house by the end of 2019 and said the estimated cost is about $500,000, which would include funds from donors and a bank loan.
Sheriff David Reynolds said a check with the Valparaiso Police Department showed police have never been called to the Respite House location on Chicago Street, and Porter County Coroner Chuck Harris noted there was a 60 percent increase in heroin-related deaths last year.
“We need this, whether it’s in Hilltop or any other place in Valparaiso,” he said. “We need more of these.”
Wright said she wasn’t apprehensive about the people who would be living in the house but about the reaction from parents of children in Hilltop Neighborhood House’s programs, because they might be ill informed.
Kevin Pazour, who lives in the Hilltop neighborhood, said many residents there don’t have transportation, and would be more likely to attend a meeting about Respite House’s plans if it was held where they live, something Peters said he could arrange for next month.
“I think a lot of people would want to hear exactly what you’re saying, and you would want to hear what they’re saying, too,” Pazour said.
Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
