Founders Opening New Dormitory for Men

New property includes 23 rooms with 40 beds for men in Yellow Springs 

(West Hall, a former Antioch College dormitory located at 114 E. North College St., Yellow Springs, will now house men who are walking into long-term recovery from Emerge Recovery & Trade Initiative. The property will offer 40 additional beds for men this spring. The property went up for sale  last year and was purchased and renovated this year by the founders of Emerge). 

 YELLOW SPRINGS — With recovery housing filling up quickly at Emerge Recovery & Trade Initiative over the past six months, the organization’s founders knew they were going to have to do something quickly this year to continue meeting the demand for housing needs. 

“We knew we were going to run out of space quickly as our program capacity is capped at fifty,” said Chris Adams, co-founder of Emerge. “We purchased this building in January for the next phase of housing. It was already set up as dorms, which made it a perfect fit for what we needed including the correct zoning and fire suppression. This was the perfect match. We could not have planned this better.” 

After opening the men’s recovery housing program last June, Adams said they knew additional housing could be a challenge.

““The beautiful part is that this is only eight minutes away from our main campus,” he said. “The men can be transported back to our main campus for outpatient programming, peer support services, workforce skills, service work and mentoring.”

Adams said the purchase was made by all three founders and renovations are being completed this spring.

“This will house 40 men,” Adams said. “It has 23 rooms. An adjacent property is included which could be used for building additional housing or recreation space.” 

After purchasing the property, the founders said they added approximately $150,000 to $200,000 in upgrades. 

“We used our own people from Emerge for painting, plumbing and flooring installation,” Adams said. “They completed 70 to 80 percent of the work.” Both Five Star Home Services and Van Martin Roofing have modeled second-chance employment over the past decade. 

“Housing is a roadblock across the United States right now — especially for people in recovery because of their backgrounds,” Adams said. “Not everyone adopts a second-chance philosophy. This property was God bringing us to where we needed to be at the right time. It is a great repurposing of this former dormitory. The bedrooms already have built-in closets. It was already a dormitory, so it was literally a perfect match – a  God thing. We couldn’t have planned it better.” 

In preparation for the move, Ohio Recovery Housing visited the potential site and provided guidance and confirmation that the physical space requirements for accreditation could be met without any structural changes. 

“OHR has served as a great resource in helping us move forward with this expansion,” said Rachel Huffman, CEO of Emerge. 

The property, located at 114 E. North College Street, will be named Emerge Springs and is slated to open this summer.