Mike Davis said he will know by Sunday whether a house he owns at Ferry Street and Sixth Avenue will become the sixth Oxford House in downtown Albany established to provide support to recovering alcoholics and drug users.

Neighbors and others in the downtown historic districts are apprehensive about the plan at 532 Ferry St. S.W., saying, among other things, they do not want to risk losing the single-family flavor of the historic downtown.

“The residents live in the homes on a temporary basis, and their actions are restricted so they do not become part of the community,” Jon Kenneke said in an e-mail to the Democrat-Herald. He said he has observed a variety of vehicles parked in front of other Oxford Houses along with an assortment of household furniture on the front porches.

Deborah Lusk, who has converted the property next door to a bed and breakfast, said “we have invested time and money into our home to make it a peaceful and a nice place for our guests. We were hoping for a family who would restore the house inside and out because at one time it was considered the grandest house in Albany.”

Oxford House does not need a conditional-use permit to operate even though at least eight people who are not related are scheduled to live in the 107-year-old Charles Pfeiffer house, said Anne Catlin a planner for the city.

“Oxford Houses have been protected by the Fair Housing Amendment Act of 1988 and upheld by several Supreme Court cases,” she said. “The residents are considered a family and are exempt from any zoning regulation that limits the number of unrelated individuals that can live in one house.”

Davis would lease his property to Oxford House, Inc., described as a democratically run, self-supporting, nonprofit organization charged with providing “safe” houses for people recovering from addictions.

“The goal is to keep people clean and sober, get them to pay their bills and get them to work and take part in a living structure where they do chores and share rent,” he said. “If people live in an Oxford House for 16 months, they have an 80 percent chance of staying clean and sober the rest of their lives.”

Davis, 46, who refers to himself as an investor/philanthropist, said the average stay in a house is about a year. There are houses that have all men, all women or women with children. Sex offenders are not allowed in the houses, he said.

“Some have been in prison and jail and others have not,” Davis said. “We have had doctors, pharmacists, lawyers and artists in the homes, and generally most have been in a treatment program first.”

Davis believes the city of Albany could “take a couple of more Oxford Houses if they are spread out enough.

“If people have driver’s licenses, we can put houses farther out of town,” he said. “We want to be a blessing and not a burden to the community. We are not a shelter or a flophouse. We take people in transition in their lives and turn them into taxpayers. We want to return them to what God intended them to be.”

The five in Albany are at 124 Seventh Ave. S.W., 118 Seventh Ave. S.W., 1810 Sixth Avenue S.E., 705 Montgomery Ave. S.E., and 818 First Ave. E. There are two Oxford Houses in Corvallis.

About the Pfeiffer house

Charles Pfeiffer of Pennsylvania moved to Albany to establish the Revere House Hotel in 1878. After he sold the hotel, he built his Queen Anne retirement home in 1900 at 532 Ferry St. S.W. He imported Eastern oak for detail work, and the tile for the fireplace was laid by an expert from California.

The house contains a two-story octagonal turret, ornate wood and fretwork, imported Italian brick, and leaded windows in the parlor. A brick-lined bathroom on the lower floor was once an ice room.