No one gets a second chance, although a member can ask a house's residents to vote him back in after he's clean again. Residents don't tolerate disruptive behavior -whether fighting or threats. Many people come to the house just out of a treatment program for their addiction. They may have a history of lost jobs, arrests for drunken driving and wrecked credit histories - the sort of problems that make renting an apartment or finding good jobs difficult. Alcoholism does not discriminate, Dugan said.
Residents come from all backgrounds.
A lot of it is learning to get along with different personalities. Frajola, with his Patagonia shirt and tidy haircut, looks like the restaurant owner he once was. Earlier this week, he sat in the living room of Kennewick Oxford House, catching the cigarettes tossed by Tim Gunderson. Gunderson, a former autobody worker with a Fu Manchu mustache and shoulder-length hair, wears a torn Hard Rock Cafe shirt that bares the dragon and other tattoos up his arms and across his chest. Frajola and Gunderson are welcome to stay at the Oxford House as long as they want.