For the last eight years, John Jensen has had a place to call his own. It’s not much — a private room with a shared bathroom down the hall and a dining room a few floors down offering three hot meals a day. But it is Jensen’s place, a room he can decorate any way he wants, and a building that provides a community of other men with similar backgrounds and a staff offering support for what has become the defining struggle of Jensen’s life: alcohol use disorder, something that got particularly difficult when Jensen was in his 40s and facing bouts of debilitating anxiety and depression.
Jensen, a tall, thoughtful man with a gentle demeanor and a head of neatly combed hair, is a resident of the Glenwood, a managed alcohol program run by Catholic Charities Twin Cities, where men like Jensen — people with histories of severe alcohol use disorder, failed treatment and housing struggles — live with limited restrictions on their alcohol use. For many, the program is a lifeline.
Jensen likes his space and he’s worked hard to make it his own. “It’s a decent-sized room,” he said with a hint of pride in his voice. “Obviously I can lock it. We have keys. And I can decorate it. I call it my ‘global village.’ When staff comes to do room inspections, they’re like, ‘Boy, John. You have such a nice room.’ It’s always clean. I figure, I’ve got to live in it.”
Jensen explained that he tried for years to quit drinking. “I’ve been to treatment many, many, many times and that clearly does not work,” he said. Now that he’s found a safe and stable place to live, his drinking has actually slowed. “To be honest, I still drink, but I don’t drink every day — and not near in the quantities I used to,” he said.
Jensen hadn’t had a place to call his own for years before he came to the Glenwood. His drinking and his mental health struggles made it hard for him to hold down a job, and it felt impossible to find enough money for rent.
Jensen’s older brother worked for a company that serviced vending machines at the Glenwood, and eventually he came to believe that it could be a good place for him. “Basically, I didn’t have anywhere to live,” Jensen said. “I was going from relatives to friends, relatives to friends, getting into trouble. I lived in my car for a time. So my brother said, ‘I think I know a place where you can go.’”
Since moving to the Glenwood, Jensen said, “I’ve become more outgoing. I used to tend to isolate myself, which never ended up good. Here, it’s up to me. I can stay in my room and I don’t need to deal with people if I don’t want to. But if I want to, you know, there’s plenty of people around.”
Before the pandemic, filmmaker Benjamin May created “Wet House,” a film documenting the lives of residents of the Glenwood. (The term “wet house” has historically been used for residences like the Glenwood, but is generally not the preferred term for those who live or work in these kinds of programs.)
In celebration of the Glenwood’s 30-year anniversary, there will be a screening of “Wet House” at 5:30 p.m. on May 2 at the Pillsbury Auditorium at Mia, followed by a panel discussion featuring the filmmaker. Tickets are available here.
May, who also works as a radiologist, got the idea for “Wet House” after encountering some Glenwood residents when he was working in a Minneapolis emergency room. When he learned about the program’s focus on harm-reduction and managed alcohol use, May was intrigued and began visiting the Glenwood, a simple brick building nestled on Catholic Charities’ Minneapolis campus, just a few blocks from downtown.
May got to know a group of Glenwood residents and spent time filming them and learning more about their lives. He also learned about the program’s managed-use approach to alcohol, and came to see it as a good option for people like Jensen. Not everyone understands the managed alcohol approach, May said. It can be controversial with those who prefer an abstinence-based approach to treatment.
“I think there is a small minority of people who have a hard time wrapping their head around it,” May said. “All of these guys who live there have the opportunity to get sober if they want to. The option is definitely there for them. But these people have been through detox and treatment 10, 30, 40 times. They aren’t going to stop drinking. This is a good approach — maybe the only approach — for them.”
May said Glenwood residents were excited to participate in the film and have already seen it at screenings offered in the building. “There was a little bit of trepidation at first, but once they got comfortable they were looking forward to it,” he said. “They felt validated to be able to tell their story.”
Having this opportunity is important for the men who live in these programs, said Emilia Lewin-Karras, Catholic Charities Twin Cities director of supportive housing. These are people who’ve faced hard times, she said, men who often feel like the rest of the world has given up on them.
“I think the message of the film is that everybody deserves dignity, everyone has a story,” Lewin-Karras said. “Not everyone is going to stop drinking. Abstinence is not going to work for everyone. Catholic Charities created a place like this to give a sense of grace and dignity to this population, and the film does that too.”
Emphasizing client choice
Lewin-Karras explained that the Glenwood, and later the St. Anthony Residence, a similar program based in St. Paul, were created after “Hennepin and Ramsey counties saw a need to be serving this population in a really different way.” Too many men with alcohol use disorder were ending up on the streets, in detox and in ERs. And so, she said: “They established a contract with Catholic Charities.”
Over the years, the programs have gone through different ways of serving this vulnerable population without requiring them to stop drinking, Lewin-Karras said, though “we’ve continued to drive toward best practices as they are considered at that point in time.” In recent years, since “Wet House” was filmed, the programs have made the shift to a more managed approach where residents purchase their own alcohol that is then stored in a separate space. The men have access to their alcohol at certain times of the day and can take it to drink alone or with friends in their rooms or outside on the program’s patio.
In the past, residents’ liquor was stored in lockers near the building’s front door, and participants were not allowed to bring it into the building. The shift to the new approach was made to “get us back into alignment with that best-practice managed-alcohol model,” Lewin-Karras said. Now, she explained, “the model we’re following is still very much self-led. We are not putting restrictions on people and how much they can or cannot drink.”
Though it may seem counterintuitive, Lewin-Karras said that the personal freedom that comes from participation in managed-use alcohol programs sometimes has the effect of lowering residents’ alcohol use.
“One of the cool things about a managed alcohol program is that many people who move into these programs end up reducing their consumption and some stop altogether,” she said. “We do have a handful of people who live with us who were heavy drinkers when they moved and now have been effectively sober for the last number of years.”
She thinks that choice can sometimes lead to significant and lasting change. “We are never imposing a restriction or a harm-reduction plan on someone. We are trying to work with them to self-identify harm-reduction techniques that are going to meet their needs.”
Instead of requiring sobriety or even reducing use, Lewin-Karras said that staff at the Glenwood try to “emphasize safety, health and quality of life. I think we find often when we are talking through things with folks we end up at a place where folks are reconsidering their alcohol consumption. We never try to externally impose those goals on an individual. Folks need to be internally motivated to do that.”
Jensen appreciates the freedom this new approach provides. During the hours his alcohol is available, he said, “I come down, I get my drink. Now that the weather’s getting nicer, a lot of people go outside and drink on the patio — but you can drink with your friend in your room, too.”
Jensen thinks the fact that he’s drinking less these days has to do with “more social interaction. I used to isolate myself. Being depressed, which in hindsight alcohol is a depressant, I’d just go on these binges and benders. It was a mess. Now I don’t have to do that.”
‘We consider ourselves family’
In the beginning, Jensen wasn’t sure how he’d adjust to life at the Glenwood. Though he’d been living with relatives and friends for a few years, he thought he preferred being on his own. When he moved into the building, it took him a few weeks to get comfortable, but soon he realized that this living arrangement was a good fit.
“I like living with other guys,” Jensen said of his place at the Glenwood. “I’ve lived with roommates over the years and by myself over the years. I realize now that living by myself isn’t a good thing. The whole isolation thing is hard for me. Having people around definitely helps.”
At the Glenwood, Jensen seems comfortable and at ease. He jokes with staff and greets other residents warmly. And it’s not just having a room of his own and friends to hang out with that has made his life better: Jensen takes advantage of the many services offered in the building, including appointments with the building’s nurse for general health questions and medication management. He also goes to a clinic nearby for mental health support.
Help with his medications means Jensen’s been able to take them on a regular schedule and keep his symptoms under control. “Getting the medications I take right here really helps a lot,” he said. “Before I came here I didn’t have access to that kind of thing. I didn’t have access to medical insurance, either, and I do now.”
Lewin-Karras said that’s the point of programs like the Glenwood. Reliable supportive housing can help people with significant substance use disorders avoid some of the serious health impacts of a life lived in limbo, with nowhere consistent to sleep each night. She and her colleagues want residents like Jensen to see this place as their forever home — not a brief respite before they have to be on their own again.
“The goal is never to move them out,” she said. “We have a lot of people who decide to use our housing as a stepping stone to higher levels of independence, but some people live here as part of the community and want to be here for the rest of their lives. We have plenty of individuals who have been living with us for over 20 years.”
Jensen said he doesn’t have any plans to move out of the Glenwood. It feels like home. “At the beginning I was like, ‘OK. It’s a place to be.” I wasn’t out on the street, and that was an improvement. Now it’s like the guys on my floor, we consider ourselves family.”
Rooms are currently available at the Glenwood and St. Anthony Residence. To find out more, or to refer a loved one, contact Brandon Johnson at (612) 310-7013 or Brandon.Johnson@cctwincities.org.
Andy Steiner
Andy Steiner is a Twin Cities-based writer and editor. Before becoming a full-time freelancer, she worked as senior editor at Utne Reader and editor of the Minnesota Women’s Press. Email her at asteiner@minnpost.com.
