You want a roof over your head while you learn to live a clean and sober life?

Well, it turns out that isn't too hard to do if you're willing to comply with some pretty tough rules. A little-publicized housing movement is making available what one source estimated at hundreds of "beds" in the South County alone.

I interviewed two of the players in this movement, Eddie W. of Kent and Jim N. of Auburn. Both manage places named Recovery House, but they aren't affiliated. House rules are similar in both places. Bottom line: no booze or drugs or you're out the door without recourse. "Without recourse" because both houses are exempt from the Landlord-Tenant Act, so there's no appeal from an ouster decision.

Eddie was interviewed at Recovery House at 634 E. Titus in Kent. Jim met me at Recovery House at 302 4th St. NE in Auburn. Jim said his next-door-neighbor is also a Clean and Sober house. Jim is a graduate of Taylor House, a 100-bed, 11 building housing program in various South King cities. Diane M., who is also in recovery, is the manager. She said there are another four in Pierce County. Four of the South King places are for people with dual diagnosis. The structure is similar for all of them: zero tolerance, though Diane said she has been known to help someone work through a relapse. "And it's helped me a lot to be involved in this program," she said.

Despite the extensive rules, Eddie described his houses-he leases six of them with a total of 60 beds in the area-as "pretty laid back most of the time. All a person has to do is follow the rules and we're all happy. Basically, that means no use of alcohol or illicit drugs, no misuse of prescribed drugs, and working the 12-step program." The other house has the same core requirement, and both have random, involuntary drug testing.

Currently, the house on Titus is home to two women and six men. It's no free load. Rents-called" program fees"-- in his six houses vary from $356 to $500 a month, depending on size of the room and single or double occupancy. Jim's Recovery house is $290 double, $350 single. Both rent month-to-month, without a lease.

Tenants are recruited by word of mouth, by fliers posted in the A.A. clubs in the South County, referrals from social agencies and the Department of Corrections, and through meetings. "

"I've found that once a house is up and running, it basically runs itself," Eddie said. "Everyone cooks on his own unless they want to team up voluntarily. Everyone cleans up their own mess in the kitchen. Other house chores are on a rotating basis. I have a group of people here who make it work."

Eddie leases all six of his houses. "I'd like to own them, but the wreckage of my past...." Several of the houses are owned by a person who believes in helping drunks and addicts to build new lives.

Jim has lived in clean and sober housing since he first sobered up in 1997. He and a friend, Ricky K., started this one five years ago. Although most of the residents don't stay more than a year or so, Jim stays because "This place keeps me sober, and it gives depth to my recovery.

Both houses are tough on theft. "Suspicion is the worst roommate you can have," Jim said, so if there's any indication that that's going on, the issue is resolved immediately. Eddie feels the same way; people have to be caught red-handed to be evicted. "I decide. I don't want to evict anyone on hearsay."

Eddie maintains a surprising level of detachment in what must be an emotionally draining job at times. When I talked to him, he was dealing with a former resident who was evicted after getting drunk five times, and was begging him for another chance. He held firm with no apparent stress.

"I get a lot of satisfaction from this work," Eddie said, "even though I have to eat the rent sometimes. I quit my old job as a drug and alcohol counselor 'cause I got tired of working with people who were not willing to change. To come here, you must have a plan for changing your life."

And if you don't have a plan, both houses supply it with the list of written rules that every new recruit must sign. That means paying the "program fee" on time, no fighting or abuse of other residents, keeping living quarters and the common areas in good shape, attending weekly house meetings and, above all, using no alcohol or drugs and attending A.A. meetings without fail. Indoor smoking is banned and there are other limits, but you get the idea.

Jim came to sobriety after, he says, 16 years of trying. "It took me that long to get one year sober." He's a local product, born and raised in Auburn. He started drinking and using drugs while at Auburn High School. For six years, he lived in Washington, D.C., but came back here because he missed the open areas, "and I thought I'd be more healthy here. Life was already unmanageable." He worked at logging and other jobs till he became a tree surgeon, and somehow managed to hold that job through blackouts, binges, cocaine addiction and destruction of his pancreas.

When he was 60 feet up a tree with a chain saw and nursing a hangover, "maybe the guys underneath me on the ground were a little bit careful," but he managed to hang onto his job. Today, he's a free lance tree surgeon with a driver's license, a truck and car insurance.

It was after two trips to Cedar Hills and repeated hospital visits that a doctor told him that if he drank again, he might as well shoot himself because he'd be beyond recovery.

Through much of this period, he was thinking about sobriety, and even stayed sober for 3 years at one point, by smoking marijuana. He was married and had a child, but his wife divorced him after his third DUI.

Then one of those mysterious insights descended. "I was tired of leading a self-pitying life, blaming everyone else for my problems." He entered Cedar Hills on Aug. 10, 1997, and hasn't had a drink since.

Eddie also came from way back to where he is today. He was born in Hawaii, the eighth of the ten children of an army master sergeant. He began to drink on his 13th birthday, when he put down two bottles of Ripple and then "threw up for four hours." After that, he avoided the problem by not drinking Ripple.

After the family moved to Seattle, Eddie joined the army to party. "I thought that's what the army was all about," he explained. "I was always in trouble. I got my first DUI when I was 16." Twenty-one years later, after a lifetime of partying and boozing, he found himself living in a van that didn't work.

"Somehow, I decided that that was no way to live," Eddie said. Was that his epiphany? "I guess so, but there was no spiritual aspect. It was more a realization that life was no longer fun." So, on Sept. 20, 1995, he decided to give sobriety a two-year trial. First, he went into the 90-day treatment program at Cedar Hills. Then he signed up for massage therapy training, moved on to an A.A. degree at Highline Community College, and finally a bachelor's degree in chemical dependency at Central Washington University.

Nine months into this new life, he considered giving booze and drugs another chance in his life, but found he was too busy. "Events conspired to help me stay clean. I had no reason to go back to drugs and alcohol."

Eddie was a drug and alcohol counselor until he decided it would be more productive to provide housing to people more interested in sobriety. Again, events conspired to boost him in that direction. His then-wife insisted that he no longer provide housing in their home for a woman friend, so he decided to start a clean and sober house where she could stay. That has led to a whole new career in which he has "done well by doing good," even though he has to "eat the rent" at times.

His six clean and sober houses are a daily challenge, but he loves it.

"People took a chance on me and I want to do the same," Eddie said.

Interviewed and written by Dick S.