A new residential treatment facility in Santa Clara County will provide people with a safe place to heal and recover.

County officials announced the opening of 1072-1082 Vermont St. in San Jose, known as Vermont House, at a Thursday news conference. The two houses can hold up to 15 people who have a mental illness or dual diagnosis that includes a substance use disorder. A typical stay will last six months to a year, with leeway for extensions. Residents will have their own room.

An on-site coordinator will help with cooking meals, shopping, coordinating Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous meetings and other daily activities. In addition, each individual will have a treatment plan tailored to their needs, including psychiatric service and case management to help place residents into permanent housing or facilitate reunification with family. Nonprofit Community Solutions will oversee the program.

“Our built environments matter,” County Supervisor Susan Ellenberg said. “When residents walk through here, my anticipation and hope is that they immediately feel at home, that they feel well taken care of.”

Vermont House’s newly-opened residential treatment facility will provide mental health supportive services for individuals coming through the Santa Clara County Behavioral Court system to help them stabilize and reenter society. Photo by Joyce Chu.

San Jose bought the property in 2009 to house veterans. Nonprofit housing provider Abode Services, which was overseeing the site at that time, started vacating veterans last year when officials began discussing the sale. Some were relocated to permanent housing. The county acquired the property in January and paid the city $310,000 with a California Health Facilities Financing Authority grant. It spent about $150,000 to renovate it.

Residents can be referred through Judge Stephen Manley’s Behavioral Health Court, which pairs close judicial oversight with intensive supervision and treatment services in lieu of jail. They may also be referred by behavioral health agencies, Rachel Montoya, president of Community Solutions, told San José Spotlight.

Transitional housing has allowed Mark, who was formerly homeless, to gain stability. After getting arrested for lighting a fire to keep himself warm outside, he went through the behavioral health court and was connected to a transitional housing program run by Community Solutions. He’s now looking for an apartment of his own. Mark did not want to use his last name to protect his privacy.

“They’ve done a lot for me,” he said at the news conference. “It’s helped me with getting back into my AA meetings.”

Residential treatment centers are one of the first steps in the continuum of care process for people with a mental illness diagnosis or substance use disorders. It’s the county’s approach to helping people in their journey back to normalcy. The county has been working to add more mental health beds after Ellenberg and Supervisor Otto Lee declared a mental health crisis in 2022 due to the lack of treatment facilities. They called for more investments and a coordinated response. Since then, the county has added 208 beds, including 53 acute in-patient psychiatric beds at for-profit San Jose Behavioral Health.

The county has 1,268 beds for various levels of treatment: 374 beds in locked facilities for acute need, 322 beds in skilled nursing facilities and mental health rehabilitation centers, 378 beds in residential adult facilities for people with mental health issues and 194 beds for people detoxing from substance use. The county’s goal is to have about 1,600 beds by the end of 2030.

Montoya said they want to provide a safe place for people to recover and transition into permanent housing.

“We have to make sure that this feels like a home, because going from incarceration to a house, we don’t want it to feel like going from jail to jail,” Montoya said. “This is their home. This is where they should feel safe. They should be able to relax. They should be able to take care of themselves.”

Contact Joyce Chu at [email protected] or @joyce_speaks on X.