Fred’s presentation was an enlightening one for me, especially since I’m interested in the barriers to housing for those in recovery. I learned many things from Fred’s talk, but one of the things I had no idea about was the information on funded houses. To my knowledge, prior to Fred’s presentation, recovery residences were only privately owned. This makes it hard for an organization like the National Alliance for Recovery Residences (NARR) and its local entities like the Pennsylvania Alliance for Recovery Residences (PARR) to set nationwide/statewide standards. Now with these funded residences, it seems as though it may be easier to enforce certain non-discriminatory standards. One example of this according to Fred was that three months ago, all the funded houses in Philadelphia must now accept all potential residents no matter what medication they’re on for medication-assisted treatment.

For the non-funded houses, it’s up to the owners to decide whether or not they would want to accept people on medication. For the most part, this has caused barriers for people on certain medication due to the stigma and lack of knowledge of MAT according to Fred and other speakers we’ve had in class.