Lakewood Peer Recovery Center to Close as County Cuts Funding

Future Directions, a peer-run drop-in center that has served people with addiction and mental health conditions in Lakewood, Ohio, since 1989, will not operate next year after the county board that funds it zeroed out its grant. The organization received about $428,000 this year from the county's Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board, known as ADAMHS. In 2027 that figure will be zero.

"Unfortunately, as the ADAMHS Board was our primary funder, Future Directions does not have the capital to buy the building," executive director J.J. Commisso told Cleveland Scene. He said he is looking for funding partners — or another organization willing to purchase the building at 2070 W. 117th St. — so the center's peer support work can continue. About 4,000 people came through its doors in 2025.

The cuts reach well beyond one center

Future Directions is not alone. Nearly a dozen other small nonprofits geared toward recovery will also lose county funding as the ADAMHS Board works through its budget, including Oriana House and the East Cleveland Neighborhood Center. Some organizations, like the East Cleveland center, did not respond to a request for proposals for 2027 funding.

The board said the decisions were driven by the "current state of the system and the funding challenges facing behavioral health providers across the county," according to a statement it provided to Scene.

A board under its own financial strain

The ADAMHS Board has lost $8.5 million in funding over the past two years. Providers warned in February that further cuts would force them to scale back services and lay off staff, and that some programs would close outright. Part of the pressure traces to the board's commitment to a new downtown behavioral health crisis receiving center, which it offset by trimming what it pays other agencies.

Cuyahoga County is far from the only place where the money that pays for addiction and mental health services is tightening. Settlement dollars, Medicaid funding and local levies are all in flux, and providers that depend on a single public funder have little cushion when a contract disappears.

What a peer-run space does that a clinic does not

Peer-run centers work differently from clinics. They offer a low-demand place to spend time, connect with others in recovery and get informal help navigating the treatment system — without an appointment, an intake interview or a bill. The model rests on peer recovery specialists: people with lived experience of addiction or mental illness who are trained to support others, often for pay. Medication-assisted treatment and clinical care remain the backbone of substance use disorder treatment, but peer support is frequently the piece that keeps people connected to it.

For a person who has cycled through detox and short-term programs, a drop-in space can be the difference between staying engaged and disappearing from the system. Peer support is one part of a continuum that runs from detoxification to long-term recovery housing.

A levy on the November ballot

Whether more programs follow Future Directions out of the system may depend on voters. A health and human services levy on the November ballot would go a long way toward stabilizing the ADAMHS Board's funding and that of the organizations that rely on it. If it fails, the board has said, deeper cuts and harder decisions would follow.

Advocates across Ohio have watched the same arithmetic play out in other counties, where opioid settlement money and local tax support have been asked to cover services that shrinking public budgets no longer reach. For people in or seeking recovery, options still include medication-assisted treatment, outpatient programs and support for mental health conditions.