In August, Inside Investigator reported on an incident that occurred at DeMalia’s House of Hope, a sober home located in Plainfield, in which police declined to evict a woman accused of threatening with a knife. Director Andrew DeMalia told Inside Investigator at the time that the “system is broken,” and noted his own negative experiences navigating recovery resources as a former opioid addict.
“There’s a lot of marginalization, a lot of minimizing symptoms and stress that these patients are experiencing,” he said. “Patients would be left in agony without any support, just ignored by nursing staff, vulgarities including slurs, racial terms, insulting, diminishing terms.”
After the story’s publication, two former clients of DeMalia’s contacted Inside Investigator to share their experiences while living at the house. Both independently corroborated each other’s allegations of verbal and medical abuse of clients and said they were coerced into giving DeMalia their EBT cards, saying he would deny new or prospective clients the ability to stay if they refused to grant authorization.
“I would just see little things with him, and all I could think of was fraud, fraud, fraud,” said Maria, one of two former clients who spoke to Inside Investigator.
DeMalia vehemently denied his use of clients’ EBT cards and claimed that “99% of the complaints” made against him and his policies are “against what a typical sober home’s rules and policies would be.” DeMalia shared a written list of his policies for Inside Investigator to review.
Maria originally moved into DeMalia’s house in February 2026. Before she moved in, Maria said that DeMalia made her agree to give him her EBT card.
“He just said it to me over the phone,” said Maria. “I had to agree to that in order to move in.”
While none of the previous sober homes Maria had been to had asked her to do this, she said she wasn’t aware that it was illegal until another resident moved in and informed her. When asked the purpose of the policy, DeMalia reportedly told clients it was simply because he did the shopping for the house. Maria said she was fine with the arrangement until after her first month’s stay, when he allegedly accused her of being “addicted to coffee,” and refused to buy her her preferred Keurig pods, making her use reusable ones instead.
“That really pissed me off because, you know, it’s $30 and it’s what I like, and I don’t even have a say in using my own food stamps,” said Maria. “He can buy what he wants for his own self off of my food stamps, but I can’t.”
Maria and Chris Denham, another former client of DeMalia’s, each accused him of routinely using their cards to buy groceries for himself as well as his clients. Denham said DeMalia would routinely use clients’ EBT cards to buy about 20 “$6-a-pop” yogurts, as well as ten containers of premade Starbucks coffee, which “cost 12 bucks,” on each grocery run. If true, per Connecticut General Statutes § 17b-97, this could constitute EBT fraud.
“He was buying $6 things of yogurt, you know, expensive stuff for himself, off my food stamps,” said Maria. “We get shitty stuff, and he gets all the most expensive stuff.”
In July, the two said DeMalia confronted another client, who could not be reached for this story, for ordering a grocery delivery for himself, Maria, and Denham using his own EBT card. DeMalia allegedly threatened to kick the client out of the house over it before ultimately deciding to let him stay, so long as he agreed to pay DeMalia an additional $150 in cash.
“He went into [the client’s] room; he’s screaming at him up and down, and yin and yang, ‘Get the fuck out!’ and ‘You don’t like it, get out!'” said Maria. “‘I do the shopping here! It’s my house,’ and I mean, and [the client] was just like, ‘Dude, it’s illegal for you to have a food stamp card. That’s all I’m saying.'”
Shortly after the incident, DeMalia called a house meeting to discuss it. A recording of the meeting was provided to Inside Investigator, which confirmed both DeMalia’s use of residents’ EBT cards and the demand for repayment.
“The house itself needs to know that this is not acceptable,” said DeMalia. “I don’t know what you bought; I’m curious to look at the receipts. I don’t know where the $200 or $300 went, but I am going to need you to sign a contract, and part of that contract is going to state that you agree to reimburse the house $150 by July 21, or you will be moving out.”
On the recording, Maria said the incident made her think, “maybe I should ask for my food stamp card back,” but that she didn’t. DeMalia finished her sentence, interjecting that she didn’t ask because “she knew it would be wrong.” Maria told Inside Investigator the real reason is because she didn’t want to be left looking for another place to live.
“If I don’t let him use my food stamps, then I have to get out of the house,” said Maria. “I have nowhere else to go.”
Maria said she saw eight residents leave over the course of her five-month stay, “all on bad terms.” DeMalia allegedly rejected prospective clients if they didn’t agree to turn over their EBT cards, kicked out new clients if they didn’t comply with DeMalia’s request for their EBT cards, and helped Denham and another client sign up for EBT cards. Maria said that DeMalia demanded an additional $300 a month from one client who didn’t have an EBT card.
On two separate occasions, Maria said she checked the mailbox and found EBT cards with “people’s names on them that were never there.”
DeMalia, not knowing about the recording, denied every allegation regarding his use of clients’ EBT cards or that he conditioned their ability to stay on them on handing their cards over to him. He did say that he has helped clients sign up for “many state benefits,”such as Medicaid, disability or food stamps, but said only the clients use these benefits.
“I’ve never used a client’s food stamp card to purchase personal items, and I’ve never set rules or guidelines around what clients can eat,” said DeMalia. “Maybe suggestions around those who have modified diets, like pre-diabetics, [those with] diabetes, and allergies. But besides that, no, that’s not true.”
Maria left the home in July 2026, moving into another sober home, and Denham left last weekend to move in with his wife. Denham said that when he left, he was owed $380 for the days of the month he wasn’t spending at the house, but that DeMalia only paid him back $230.
“What he said to me was, ‘I have bills, and I was relying on your money for the bills,’ and blah, blah, blah,” said Denham. “He told me that he was taking $150 out of my money to cover for food for the week when I wasn’t even gonna be there.”
DeMalia allegedly tried to do the same to Maria, but said that because she had seen him do the same to a previous client, she refused to pay him a full month’s rent for her last month.
“He wanted to me give him a whole month’s rent,” said Maria. “I told him, I will pay you weekly, I will pay you daily, but I’m not giving you a whole month’s rent when I don’t know how long I will be here.”
While she was able to hold onto her rent, Maria accused DeMalia of spending $200 on her EBT card before she left, leaving her with only $100 for the month. Maria left on July 13th and said her card refills on the 7th of every month, meaning she had to wait almost a full month for it to recharge.
“Thankfully, my friends gave me some food, and thankfully, I had money in my account then that I could order food,” said Maria.
DeMalia said his house has a strict no-refunds policy, so any complaints regarding the return of prorated rents were not applicable.
“The program agreement specifically states there are no refunds,” said DeMalia. “So anyone claiming to have expected one and was denied one is lying, because they signed the agreement coming into the house, and they wouldn’t be allowed to stay here if they didn’t.”
Additionally, Maria accused DeMalia of holding onto the EBT card of a former female client whom he kicked out, saying the client’s mother had to come back “throwing a fit” to retrieve it.
DeMalia denied knowingly holding onto the client’s EBT card and said that anytime a client is discharged, they have a two-week period to come and retrieve property. Inside Investigator contacted the client’s mother, who is her conservator, who declined to comment for the story, stating she did not want to jeopardize an investigation currently being conducted into the matter.
Both Maria and Denham accused DeMalia of withholding, or attempting to withhold, residents’ medication. DeMalia told Inside Investigator that his home has a policy stating that he is in charge of administering any controlled substances that are provided to patients, but that clients are in charge of any other prescriptions. Connecticut laws surrounding sober homes are somewhat ambiguous; while some Connecticut sober homes have policies to deny clients who are prescribed controlled substances, Vanderburgh Sober Living, a Massachusetts-based foundation that has operated sober homes in Connecticut since 2021, states that control of medication may cross the line into licensed treatment.
Maria, who is prescribed gabapentin, said DeMalia asked her to give him the medication, but she refused because he was not a medical practitioner and gabapentin is not a controlled substance. Gabapentin is an anticonvulsant medication most commonly prescribed for neuropathic pain or epilepsy, though it is also prescribed for various off-label uses, ranging from alcohol and opioid withdrawal to sleep and anxiety disorders. It is psychoactive, meaning it can affect a patient’s mood or consciousness, and users can develop a physical or psychological dependence on it. While it is controlled in some states, it is not a controlled substance federally, nor is it in Connecticut.
Denham, who is disabled and uses an ostomy bag, said he’s prescribed oxycodone, a controlled substance, to take every eight hours. Denham said DeMalia would frequently be out of the house during periods in which Denham needed his medication, and that sometimes DeMalia even asked him to “try to wait longer” when requesting his dose as prescribed.
“He’s addicted to pain meds, because I know he took mine,” said Denham. “I know he took mine because I came up 10 short at the end of the month, and I was taking them how I was supposed to be taking them because he was distributing them. I was in pain a lot of the time, because a lot of times he wasn’t giving me my pain meds like they were supposed to be distributed.”
DeMalia denied taking Denham’s medication and said that while he is prescribed some medication, he didn’t “think it would be appropriate to comment” on what kinds, doses, or how often he takes them.
“Any controlled substance or narcotic needs to remain in my possession and are dispensed at certain times of the day,” said DeMalia. “They only have to ask for it, and if I’m here, it’s available to them, and if not, they just need to wait till I return to the house.”
Ultimately, Maria said she would “never recommend anybody” live there.
Denham, who had never lived in a sober house prior to his time with DeMalia, said he has “no plans” to do so again and that he has considered filing suit against him. Maria filed a complaint with CTARR (Connecticut Alliance of Recovery Residences), the private certifying body whose certificates the state requires sober homes to have before they’re listed on state websites. She said the complaint regarded “how he treats people” and his alleged misuse of charitable donations, and that she is considering filing a second complaint regarding the EBT misuse.
“I have to call them, or email them, and put in another grievance regarding the food stamp things, because the gentleman who I’ve been dealing with through them [CTARR], he said that’s fraud,” said Maria.
DeMalia said that most of the “rules and policies” his house abides by are “pretty typical and common of a sober house.”
“I just hope you have a somewhat understanding of who you were speaking with, and some of their own personal struggles, and look at the other rules and policies of other houses,” said DeMalia. “Clients don’t get to determine how much they pay to stay here; they don’t get to determine the rules, or when and where they give a urine test or breathalyzer; they don’t have control over how many pills they can take, whenever they would like, or have illicit substances or banned items delivered to the house.”
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