Living within an Oxford House provides both the opportunity and motivation for all residents to regularly attend AA and/or NA meetings. The example of Oxford House members going to AA or NA meetings on their own is contagious. It has been the experience of Oxford House that participation in AA and NA is extremely high in an environment where one individual can see another individual, with the same disease, reaping great benefits from AA and/or NA participation. The only members who will ever be asked to leave an Oxford House are those who return to drinking, using drugs, or have disruptive behavior, including the nonpayment of rent. No Oxford House can tolerate the use of alcohol or drugs by one of its members because that threatens the sobriety of all of the members. Neither can an Oxford House function if some do not pay their fair share of the costs.

There are over 3,500 Oxford Houses across the United States

Instead of being left to their own fates, Mr. Molloy and other residents decided to take over the house themselves, paying the expenses and utilities, cooking the meals and keeping watch over one another’s path to recovery. Oxford House set out for national expansion by hiring the first outreach workers to start opening houses in other states. Our network of houses is only as strong as the community support we receive and the involvement of current and former members. Before spreading the word, an individual Oxford House should make certain that it is sufficiently established to undertake public discussion of it goals and mission. The best sales pitch for spreading the word about Oxford House is simply the establishment of a sound Oxford House and a straightforward discussion of what it is, how it works and why it is needed. Oxford House, Inc. acts as the coordinating body for providing charters for the opening of new Oxford Houses.

• Third, an Oxford House must, in essence be a good member of the community by obeying the laws and paying its bills.
• This principle contrasts sharply with the principle of providing the alcoholic or drug addict with assistance for a limited time period in order to make room for a more recently recovering alcoholic or drug addict.
• The reason that each Oxford House is independent arises from the very practical consideration that those who are closest to a situation are best able to manage it.
• Every opportunity should be given to a member who needs professional help to see that he obtains it.

Business meetings

• Throughout its tradition, Oxford House has combined the concepts of self-support and responsibility with a fellowship having the common purpose of continued and comfortable sobriety.
• Modest rooms and living facilities can become luxurious suites when viewed from an environment of alcoholics working together for comfortable sobriety.
• A major part of the Oxford House philosophy is that dependency is best overcome through an acceptance of responsibility.
• Likewise, it is inconsistent with the Oxford House concept to have a requirement placed on members to utilize the services of psychiatrists, doctors, or even the program of Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous except in very special circumstances.

However, there is every reason to believe that recovering alcoholics and drug addicts can do for themselves that which society as a whole has no responsibility to do for them. Oxford House is built on the premise of expanding in order to meet the needs of recovering alcoholics and drug addicts. This principle contrasts sharply with the principle of providing the alcoholic or drug addict with assistance for a limited time period in order to make room for a more recently recovering alcoholic or drug addict. During early recovery for alcoholism and drug addiction, some members had to leave an institution in order to make room for an alcoholic or drug addict just beginning the recovery process. Other members were asked to leave half-way houses in order to make room for a recovering alcoholic or recovering drug addict who was ready to move into a half-way house. All too often, an abrupt transition from a protected environment to an environment which places considerable glamour on the use of alcohol and drugs causes a return to alcoholic drinking or addictive drug use.

Oxford House Manual: Chapter Manual: Sharing the Experience, Strength, and Hope of Oxford Houses for the Common Good

During the early 1990s dozens of communities sought to close Oxford Houses located in good neighborhoods because local zoning ordinances restricted the number of unrelated individuals that could live together in a single-family home. Individuals living in each of the Oxford Houses have also been responsible for starting many new groups of Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous having meetings near an Oxford House. This not only helps those individuals to become more involved in AA or NA, and thereby reap greater individual benefits, but also helps to build strong bonds between local AA and NA groups and Oxford House. Starting new Houses through the mutual assistance of existing Oxford Houses is a tradition because each House was started with the help of existing Houses and tends to pass on to others that which they received. Once more applications are received than there are beds available, the members of any Oxford House will begin to look around for another suitable house. When they find such a house they will bring it up with the other existing Houses and if there is a consensus they will attempt to find the start up money and members to fill the new house.

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Second, an Oxford House must follow the democratic principles in running the house. Third, an Oxford House must, in essence be a good member of the community by obeying the laws and paying its bills. Nearly all members of Oxford Twelve-step program House utilize the AA and/or NA program in order to obtain and keep a comfortable sobriety. However, an Oxford House relies primarily upon example for assuring a high percentage of AA and/or NA attendance from its members. As a general rule formal AA or NA meetings are not held in an Oxford House member who has maintained comfortable sobriety in an Oxford House makes it a practice to attend a lot of AA and/or NA meetings on a regular basis.

A tribute to our late co-founder and CEO, Paul Molloy

It also acts as the coordinating body to help individual houses to organize mutually supportive chapters. Through chapters individual houses are able to share their experience, strength and hope with each other to assure compliance with the Oxford House concept and its respected standardized system of operations. By running Oxford House on a democratic basis, members of Oxford oxford house House become able to accept the authority of the group because the group is a peer group. Each member has an equal voice in the group and each has an opportunity to relearn responsibility and to accept decisions once they are made. Equal Expense Shared (EES) is generally between 80 and 160 dollars a week and includes utilities.

However, the members of Oxford House have found only by being active in AA and/or NA have they found comfortable, long-term sobriety — for themselves and the Oxford House in which they live. A major part of the Oxford House philosophy is that dependency is best overcome through an acceptance of responsibility. In Oxford House, each member equally shares the responsibility for the running of the House and upholding the Oxford House tradition.

The reason that each Oxford House is independent arises from the very practical consideration that those who are closest to a situation are best able to manage it. If an Oxford House follows the democratic principles and traditions of Oxford House, Inc., it should have no difficulty in running smoothly. Those democratic principles will also enable the members of a particular Oxford House to take pride in their new found responsibility. For a couple of months in 1975, he found himself living on the streets and begging strangers for money before he entered a rehabilitation program. He moved to a county-run halfway house in Silver Spring, MD, to recover but soon learned that the facility was about to close. With passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, expansion of Oxford Houses exploded.