RED HOOK — A private Red Hook rehabilitation center will offer free drug and alcohol screenings for community members but will charge more than $50,000 for its full treatment program.
Urban Recovery House, the drug and alcohol treatment center that’s slated for 110 Beard St., will first offer non-medical assessments to examine a person’s history with addiction. Experts will then recommend a treatment program, which may either be at the Red Hook facility or at another rehabilitation center in the country.
“Drug addiction exists across every strata,” said Johan Sorensen, who will be the facility’s clinical director.
Sorensen and Michael Mosberg, the team behind Urban Recovery House, met with a small group of residents Wednesday night to discuss their center’s work and future Red Hook location.
The boutique 30-bed inpatient facility, in a 20,000-square-foot building with four stories and a parking area, will offer a 12-step abstinence program with detoxification, one-to-one therapy, group therapy, holistic treatments, music, yoga, acupuncture and other services.
Urban Recovery House will charge more than $50,000 for a 28-day treatment program at the facility, said Mosberg, adding that the price could change since the facility is 18 to 24 months away from its opening date.
When Red Hook first learned about Urban Recovery House in December, some residents feared the neighborhood, which Life magazine declared “the crack capital of America” in the 1990s, would relapse into its history of drug violence.
But after learning that the facility would not prescribe methadone to patients — a synthetic agent that can help injection drug users reduce or stop injecting, according to the Centers for Disease Control — locals were left with a “guarded optimism that [the facility] could work,” said John McGettrick, head of the Red Hook Civic Association.
Along with assessments, the Urban Recovery House team will organize educational sessions on substance abuse and addiction in community centers, schools and religious institutions in the neighborhood.
Mosberg and Sorensen said they planned to get catering and supplies from local businesses and also hire administrative, security, support, kitchen and maintenance staff from within the community.
“We could be a big benefit to the community,” Mosberg said.
Urban Recovery House is scheduled to meet with the New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services in April.
