Hope House Ministries' tough love means rebirth, recovery for former addicts this Easter

James Bunster grew up in a well-off family in Smithtown, attended St. Anthony’s High School and went on to the University at Albany.

But his life unraveled.

Bunster became addicted to drugs and fell into a 10-year spiral that hit bottom when he ended up homeless and living under a bridge in Florida.

This Easter, though, he is celebrating his own spiritual and personal rebirth, thanks to a strict, no-nonsense, and unusually lengthy rehabilitation program in Port Jefferson marking its 45th anniversary and run by a Catholic priest.

Hope House Ministries has helped turn around the lives of several thousand men like Bunster, who went on to graduate from St. Joseph's College in Patchogue and Touro Law School, where he was valedictorian, and land a six-figure job at an elite law firm in Manhattan. Other graduates of Hope House have become doctors, social workers and teachers. Several formed a musical group that performed at Carnegie Hall.

From hopeless to Hope House

Hope House is "a phenomenal place," said Bunster, 35. The program "has given me the opportunity to completely change my life."

A decade ago, "I was homeless, strung out on drugs," he said. "I lied and stole from every single person. I alienated every single person that was close to me."

In 2025, Bunster continued, "I'm a business owner, I'm married, I own my home, I have two children. I'm someone in the community that can be looked up to."

Hope House is the brainchild of the Rev. Frank Pizzarelli, a charismatic Roman Catholic priest who, with his shock of white, shoulder-length hair and sandals, is a striking figure known to thousands of people on Long Island and beyond.

A licensed clinical social worker who also teaches at three colleges, Pizzarelli has come up with a novel formula for treating drug addicts that has seen unusual success in a field littered with failures. Addicts must stay in the program for at least a year to 18 months. At most drug rehabilitation programs, there is a 28-day limit because, unlike Hope House, they receive government or insurance company funding.

"We have a model that works," Pizzarelli said. "We don't commence guys or let them graduate if we don't think they're ready."

Residents are tested for drugs and alcohol on a regular basis and can be kicked out at staff discretion, he said.

Steve Chassman, executive director of the Long Island Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, called Pizzarelli and his team "heroic."

"Don't let the [priest’s] collar fool you," Chassman said. Pizzarelli is "an eminent clinician when it comes to mental health and substance abuse."

"Father Frank knows what good treatment looks like," he added. "You're addicted to the most powerful narcotics on the planet. Twenty-six, twenty-eight days" in rehabilitation "is not doing it."

Rigorous therapy

Pizzarelli’s program addresses the whole person, from psychological counseling to spiritual needs to job training and education, Chassman added.

At Hope House, the men live together in houses — including a former friary — and undergo a rigorous therapy schedule, have work assignments and prayer. All must attend Mass daily, even non-Catholics, who are encouraged to use the time to reflect on their own spirituality.

Beyond that, instead of an institutional feel, Hope House has a family environment — and many of the men bond like brothers, Pizzarelli said. Every Christmas season he takes the men skiing in Vermont, where they stay in a cabin.

On this Easter Sunday, after a sunrise Mass and a fire around an outdoor labyrinth at the friary, they will head to Savino’s Hideaway, a restaurant in Mount Sinai, where they will enjoy a feast. They also get a special Christmas dinner at Danford’s in Port Jefferson every year.

Hope House is free. The project has survived on millions of dollars donated by supporters over the decades. The money ranges from small monthly donations from longtime backers to large sums given by more affluent people, sometimes in the form of estates after they die. One woman left $1 million that helped Pizzarelli buy and repair the friary, he said.

Businesses are also generous: Mamma Lombardi's restaurant in Holbrook does not charge Hope House for its annual holiday party, which typically raises $500,000, he said. Hope House also obtains private grants with no strings attached that allow Pizzarelli to continue his model.

It is a model that he said has produced remarkable success. More than 90% of the men who go through it get their lives back on track, he said. The ones that don't generally fail to follow through on what they learned at Hope House, including continuing therapy.

Pizzarelli doesn't criticize other drug rehabilitation programs. He just thinks they don't treat addicts long enough to see significant change.

A tough task master, he demands the men in his program obey strict rules and do something to give back to society, according to Bunster and others. Bunster once was grounded for six months for going to a deli without authorization.

Pizzarelli has enrolled Bunster and hundreds of other Hope House residents at St. Joseph’s University in Patchogue, where the priest is a professor.

Bunster said it was something of a miracle he made it there.

After a privileged childhood on Long Island, he went to Albany for college in the early 2000s and started dabbling in painkillers. The summer before senior year, back home amid a crackdown on opioids, Bunster turned to heroin. His life quickly spun out of control.

Over the next decade he ended up going through 12 rehabilitation programs up and down the East Coast. None worked, and eventually his family felt compelled to tell him he had to leave their home in Smithtown.

His rock bottom

By the time Bunster ended up in Florida, he had hit bottom, living under the bridge. He called his parents in tears, "like, 'save me.' I really just had no idea what to do."

Eventually, they brought him to Father Frank. It was Bunster's 13th rehab program.

When told the required time he would have to remain there, Bunster recalled, he laughed to himself. He figured he would never stay.

But he did and soon was surprised.

"It's not this clinical, sterile setting," he said. "You're in a house, you have chores, you have essentially brothers by your side. It feels like you're at home. When you get in trouble, you don't get kicked out, you get grounded."

While Bunster was finishing his degree at St. Joseph’s, he also worked part time as a paralegal with Charles Russo, a lawyer and longtime board chair at Hope House Ministries. He said talks with Russo helped spur him to go to law school.

For his graduation speech at Touro as valedictorian, Bunster spoke about how Hope House changed his life. After graduation, he landed a $300,000-a-year job at a mergers and acquisitions law firm in Manhattan.

He has since come back to Long Island to raise his family, since the job was all-consuming, he said. His relationship with his parents and other relatives has healed, and he’s started a company that in part provides temporary workers in the medical field.

"It's all really because of Father Frank and what they're able to do ... at Hope House," Bunster said. He still visits regularly, in part to help show current residents what success looks like and to bond with them.

Poverty close to home

To mark the 45th anniversary of Hope House, Pizzarelli is celebrating Mass on Tuesday at the St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson, where his ministry first started on that same date with an opening Mass.

As a newly ordained young priest with the Monfort Missionaries in the late 1970s, Pizzarelli had wanted to serve the poor in Nicaragua.

Instead, his superior sent him to Port Jefferson to help run the Infant Jesus Roman Catholic Church. Pizzarelli soon discovered poverty on Long Island, and worse.

Serving also as a chaplain at nearby St. Charles Hospital, he witnessed horrific things "that no seminary course taught me," he said. On the Friday night after his first Thanksgiving in Port Jefferson, he was called to a home overlooking Long Island Sound where a 10-year-old boy had hanged himself in his bedroom.

"Three police officers had just cut him down," Pizzarelli said. "I looked at the rope burns on the kid's neck, and I was just overwhelmed. I'd never seen anything like that."

He soon started taking in local runaways, which led to the creation of Hope House Ministries and eventually the drug rehabilitation program. Hope House Ministries also has programs that address juvenile delinquency, high school dropouts, teen pregnancy, evictions, homelessness and domestic violence or sexual abuse.

Pizzarelli says he never thought he’d be in Port Jefferson for nearly a half-century. But as he celebrates what the faithful believe is the resurrection of Jesus Christ this Easter, he knows he found his life mission.

"I've always been a person of hope," he said. "I've always believed in the power of human change and transformation."