Agency runs group sober houses in Nashua

The lifestyle of a homeless alcoholic drove David Cull straight to sobriety 21 years ago.

For the past several years, Cull, 50, has offered other recovering addicts and alcoholics a smoother path. Cull runs two group sober houses in the city through the agency he founded, Soul Purpose Living.

The agency’s two homes, the Hope House for men, off East Dunstable Road, and the Faith House for women, near Broad Street, are both single-family houses in residential neighborhoods west of the F.E. Everett Turnpike. Cull asked that the exact locations of the houses not be published, to help keep residents secure from old acquaintances of darker days.

“The idea is to integrate ourselves back into society,” Cull said. “We’re not bad people. We’re just people who, because of addiction, have done some bad things.”

“People with substance abuse, they made mistakes and they hit the wrong road, they don’t need to pay that price forever,” he said.

Cull has been running sober houses in Nashua since 2002, operating as Soul Purpose Living since 2004, he said. Soul Purpose runs two of the state’s five official organized group homes for recovering addicts, and the only one for women.

The state could stand to have more, said Joseph Harding, director of drug and alcohol abuse prevention for the Department of Health and Human Services. Addicts need stable, safe housing to aid their recovery, he said.

“Housing is an important issue . . .

particularly for people who are in early recovery. A lot of times they’ve lost their jobs, and burned whatever bridges they had,” Harding said. “They need decent housing to help them get back on their feet . . . and it’s important for people in recovery to have good supports in place.”

There is no state oversight for sober houses, Harding said. Unlike addiction treatment centers and counselors, they aren’t licensed and don’t work under contract with the state, Harding said.

“We don’t regulate them,” Harding said. “I’m not sure if it’s either a good thing or a bad thing. I think it’s important that our treatment providers are regulated and that we hold them to high standards.”

Sober houses don’t provide any formal treatment, however, just support. Recovering addicts need plenty of that, Harding said.

“I think it can be a very good thing,” he said, “but like anything else, something can be good or bad depending on how it’s run.”

Providing structure

Soul Purpose Living has financial and organizational problems as an agency, but the group homes themselves appear well-run. The houses are tidy, and residents seem enthusiastic about the program. The many rules are posted prominently.

Cull relies on house managers at each residence to help him manage the houses, he said. Faith House has room for nine women and is currently full, while Hope House has room for 11 men and currently houses seven, he said.

To be eligible for consideration, residents must have a criminal record clear of any violent crimes, including sexual assaults, and have completed a 30-day inpatient treatment program or a treatment program in jail or prison.

“The treatment programs give them the tools, and then they come here,” Cull said.

Soul Purpose doesn’t offer any treatment itself, but residents are required to attend Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings daily for the first 90 days and at least four times a week thereafter. They also must submit to random drug and alcohol tests and abide by an 11 p.m. curfew, Cull said.

The houses have a simple “three-strikes and you’re out” policy for violations, Cull said, and residents who relapse into drinking or drugging are dismissed immediately.

“There’s structure here. There’s rules,” Cull said, adding later, “You need a lot of structure when you’re trying to reclaim lives.”

Soul Purpose collects $135 weekly rent from each resident, and residents work to support themselves. Residents all are required to pitch in with household chores and to attend group, family-style meetings to hash out any issues or conflicts.

“This is a family atmosphere. These people are family. We need to treat each other accordingly, just like any family,” Cull said.

Cull and the house managers evaluate new residents and suggest various programs to help with any particular needs. Cull attends monthly meetings of the Greater Nashua Continuum of Care, a network of area social service agencies, to keep in touch with other providers who can help residents.

Residents who have suffered from domestic violence can work with counselors at Bridges Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Support. People with other mental health issues can get help through Community Council. The Nashua Pastoral Care Center offers household finance classes, and the Nashua Soup Kitchen teaches job search skills.

Cull expects residents to stay at least six months, and at most two years, he said.

“We don’t want them to stay here two years. We have to look at where they’re coming from and how they’re doing, and just like a mother bird, we have to push them out of the nest,” he said.

Cull estimates that some 250 people have come and gone through Soul Purpose houses over the last several years.

“Out of that, we probably have about a 70 percent success rate,” Cull said, defining success as simply staying sober while staying in the house.

Group living is an important element of the program, Cull said. People with more experience in clean living can mentor newer residents, and they all encourage each other.

“Everyone here wants help,” Hope House resident Michael Donlon said. “Everyone here is supportive.”

Donlon, 23, came to Hope House after a stint in Farnum House in Manchester, which in turn followed several months in jail after he was arrested for dealing drugs to support his own habit.

“I really liked what it was about,” Donlon said. “You can’t just come here and pay rent and hang out. You have to be active in the program.

“They have halfway houses; this is like a three-quarters house,” Donlon said.

Too often, Cull said, treatment centers and housing for recovering addicts get shunted into the poorest neighborhoods, where crime and drugs are more common.

“Why shouldn’t they have a nice house, and take care of it?” Cull asked, adding later, “Living in a neighborhood really gives these people a sense of responsibility, ownership and taking care of things. That’s why I wanted the house out in a neighborhood. Why should we send all our ‘problems’ to places downtown?”

Both Soul Purpose homes are located on moderately busy streets in the midst of typically suburban neighborhoods. Neighbors in both areas opposed the homes when Cull went before the city zoning board last year. At the time, city zoning rules allowed no more than six unrelated persons in a single family house.

Cull applied for a variance to house up to nine persons in both houses, but the zoning board turned him down after a hearing April 12, 2005.

Several neighbors around each of the houses spoke against the variance request, complaining of noise, traffic and the overall effects of a group home in the midst of a single-family neighborhood. Minutes of the meeting, including their comments, are available along with this story on The Telegraph’s Web site.

“When we filed, everyone was against us. They were all against us,” Cull said of the neighborhood opposition. “I’ll take some of that blame. . . . They’re not educated. We hadn’t explained things to them.”

The zoning board agreed to reconsider its decision, but rather than go through another hearing, Cull said he arranged for lawyers from the federal Housing and Urban Development office to meet with city officials and settle the matter.

The city has since changed its zoning rules, to allow one person for every 300 square feet in a single-family residence, according to the city’s planning office, and both Soul Purpose houses fall within that rule. Cull hopes that the group’s efforts to keep up their property and run clean houses will help ease neighbors’ fears.

“I think their fears that they’re going to have drug addicts raid their houses and shoot them, I think might be gone,” he said.

Rocky road

Cull mostly grew up around New England, he said, and he’s lived in Nashua for several years.

“I’ve moved 35 times in three countries. My father was an alcoholic. . . . My whole family was alcoholics,” he said. “I went to college, and I drank all through college.”

Cull had a girlfriend and a daughter on his way down to rock bottom, he said. That came in 1985, when his girlfriend demanded that they talk about his problem. He agreed, and got drunk to fortify himself for the occasion.

“I made believe that I was OK, and I was sober,” Cull said. “As soon as she looked at me, she saw I was drunk.”

His girlfriend kicked Cull to the curb, and after wearing out his welcome with various friends and acquaintances, he found himself homeless in Lowell, Mass.

“I tried to live as a homeless person,” he said. “I ended up on the street for one week, and I said, ‘This is too much work.’ ”

“They know the soup schedules, the kitchen, the shelters, they shower at the YMCA. It’s a lot of work,” he said.

Cull checked himself into Lowell General Hospital for detoxification, and later moved from a holding facility to a halfway house, he said.

“Back in those days, you could just walk into detox,” he said. “Now, it’s a six-week waiting period. Four to six weeks.”

Cull eventually bounced back. He was married for four years in the 1990s, and worked as a steel worker until getting laid off in 2002. Cull bought the men’s house after his divorce, and it became an informal sober house, as he shared it with three and sometimes four other people he knew from AA, he said.

“We had a number of us that were staying sober living there,” he said.

Cull began working to formally manage the sober houses after being laid off from his job. He formed Soul Purpose Living, and he’s been struggling ever since to build a financial foundation for the agency.

“I just felt spiritually that I needed to do more,” he said, adding later, “When I felt like this is what I needed to do, it brought my spiritual level up.”

Cull started Soul Purpose along with a former partner as a for-profit property management company, and later reorganized the company as a nonprofit, he said. Cull credits a former business partner for the Soul Purpose name and credo: “The soul purpose in life is to help people.”

In the long run, Cull hopes that the group housing model can be applied to other areas, such as people with mental or physical disabilities, to help teach independent living skills.

“Once this program works, we can use this as a model for all the populations with needs,” Cull said.

“I see the possibilities of people who don’t have the luxuries that we have, the blessings that we have, and I see the possibilities that even the people who don’t have what we have, they can have what we have,” he said, “but it’s going to take work, resources and housing to do it.”

Nashua Telegraph