How to Start a Sober Living Home

What to Do (and What to Avoid) in Starting a Sober Home

Undertaking the goal of establishing a sober living home is a worthy endeavor, poised to make a significant impact on the lives of individuals navigating the delicate path of addiction recovery. While certainly an honorable venture, there’s no concrete way of learning how to start a sober living home.

Depending on your locality, licensing requirements, and other dynamics, establishing a sober living home is no easy feat. But this is where our help can play such a pivotal part in your success!

By learning how to start a sober living home, you’re doing a small segment of the market a great justice – allowing them to successfully navigate one of the most difficult parts of recovery – the big transition back into the real world.

Keep reading to get our resource-packed guidance on this important form of business venture, and remember you can reach out to our experts at Ads Up Marketing at any time for a complimentary consultation for your treatment center or sober living facilities!

Getting a Solid Foundation When Starting a Recovery Residence

Before learning how to start a sober living home, you should know there are a few significant areas you need to focus your efforts on. In this article, we’ll cover the legal complexities, the ins and outs of property acquisition and renovation, and the all-important policies, procedures, and compliance that are required from your staff.

It’s also crucial to emphasize the importance of crafting a detailed business plan that outlines the sober living home’s objectives, strategies, and financial projections.

This plan should include elements such as company description, service description, market analysis, strategy, and identifying similar operations in the area, along with financial statements, market research data, and resumes of key team members to attract potential investors and partners.

The Importance of Sober Living Homes to the Recovery Community

Sober living homes are often one of the most overlooked facets of addiction recovery. Too often clients exit inpatient treatment before gaining their footing in the real world, only to fall victim to the harsh realities of relapse.

A sober living home serves as the connection between inpatient treatment and the final move back to your normal life, offering a supportive environment for individuals to overcome the challenges of drug and alcohol addiction.

What Is the Role and Function of a Sober Living Home?

So, what is the role of a sober living home for behavioral health clients who take advantage of these programs? A sober living home places clients directly out of inpatient rehab and into a more relaxed, but still structured environment.

Clients can take on a regular job and live on their own accord to come and go as they please (within certain hours). However, clients are still expected to adhere to several rules:

• They must actively remain in some type of counseling or meeting
• Maintain a proactive approach to recovery
• Avoid any drinking or substance abuse at all costs and submit to random drug screening
• Follow the house rules that ensure a safe and supportive environment for everyone, including drug testing requirements to ensure sobriety

Failure to satisfy these rules puts a client at risk for immediate ejection from the sober living home. Naturally, opening a sober living house comes with strict oversight from state and federal agencies. This means everything must be done in strict accordance with all guidelines, in addition to the other elements of opening a recovery residence facility.

Let’s review these next as go over a step-by-step framework for opening a successful sober living home.

How to Open a Sober Living Home: The Research and Planning Phase

Before moving forward with the actual opening of sober living homes, prospective owners must go through a significant research and planning phase. This means not only creating an outline for establishing the daily routine and modus operandi but also becoming intimately acquainted with zoning laws and local regulations for opening sober living homes.

It’s crucial to research zoning laws to ensure compliance with local regulations, understand the potential challenges from neighbors and community members, and the implications of Federal Fair Housing laws and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Get to Know Local Laws on Sober Living Residences

First thing first, it’s important that you have a feel for the need of the local demand for sober living homes. Maybe you noticed a marked absence of such resources in your community. On first thought, you might think that this could be a great opportunity.

However, there may be a lack of sober living homes for a reason. It’s possible that there isn’t that large of a market, or local regulations were too difficult to satisfy. Ensure that there’s a need and you have a winning model before moving forward.

Understanding Zoning is Crucial for Sober Living House Owners

After ensuring your endeavor could potentially be successful, you can go more in-depth regarding the zoning laws and other legalities. Some neighborhoods don’t allow sober living homes – in some areas, they have to be a certain distance away from schools or other locations.

However, it’s important to note that federal fair housing laws provide significant support for the establishment of sober living homes, offering protection against local zoning restrictions that might otherwise impede their development.

This legal framework ensures that individuals in recovery are afforded the necessary accommodations, aligning with the broader objectives of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Find out the specifics before you begin looking into real estate.

Again, starting a sober living home comes with its requirements in this regard, and has a different set of real estate needs than starting an addiction treatment facility itself.

Understanding the Demographics of Your Potential Clients

At this point, you should be fairly confident in the fact that your sober living facility is a real possibility and there’s a distinct need. Next, identify the needs of your target demographic and the largest group of potential clients you’d be marketing toward. What are the needs of this demographic?

What specialty services would you need to provide? Some facilities include transportation services – will you have onsite security? Think of what stage of recovery your clients are in and what you need to give you the best odds of success.

Sober Living Regulations and Legal Considerations

After nailing down the background information for sober living homes, owners must obtain all the necessary documentation and paperwork before looking for property. You’ll need to check with your local county or city building and find out what types of permits are required to open a sober living house.

You can also get a list of local, state, and federal laws that any sober living home must abide by. This will include all regulatory compliance and inspection information – all the particulars and technical items to get the project up and running.

It’s never a bad idea to get an attorney solely for this type of endeavor. By having a professional you can contact at all times and help you navigate the process, you lower the chances of snagging yourself in a potential legal setback or overlooking any important literature regarding local, state, and federal law. If you’ve made it this far, you can potentially start looking for a property.

Acquiring the Property and Renovation

Choosing an acceptable location means making the decision based on accessibility and distance to important community resources. It’s always good practice to find a property that’s in a nicer area of town. You can still work within certain budget constraints, but you don’t want your sober living home in the middle of a neighborhood known for drugs and violence.

Concerning potential clients living at the facility, you must remember that most of these individuals will be without steady transportation.

Finding a facility within walking distance of important necessities like a grocery store, a library, a post office, and other important establishments is ideal. However, if you’re in an area that’s a bit more spread out, you’ll at least want to find a property that’s within short distance from the city bus transportation route. These can also be helpful elements when planning promotions, particularly for Google My Business and local SEO.

Remember, most of your clients will still need to attend appointments and meetings, so having a way to get around is imperative.

Assessing the Location

You’ll need to assess your prospective sober living home for several elements, including safety, space, and functionality. The building will operate under different codes than a normal residence, so you’ll need things like handicapped entrances and emergency exits.

In addition, the layout of the home may include an office for a house manager, along with a separate restroom for urine testing.

Ensure that the house and property are designed in a way that allows for important renovations and the transformation into a sober living home.

Establishing Policies and Procedures

After creating a physical vision and blueprint for your sober living home, it’s time to move on to the next step. Sober living homes must have a clear outline of policies and procedures. These procedures are in place for the residents as well as any administrative staff who work at these recovery residences.

Each client should receive a rulebook that clearly outlines the code of conduct and expectations for residents. This information should also be visibly posted in a common area of the home.

Creating a Routine to Set the Stage for Recovery Success

There may be more freedom for your clients, but they should still adhere to a structured daily routine to get them back into the normal swing of life. Rules in your sober living home should outline the following:

• Splitting house chores among residents. Each resident should have an equal part of the house chores, including keeping their room neat and clean and cleaning the common areas.
• Food. There should be ample space for everyone in the home and each resident should have their own section of the refrigerator/freezer and their own cabinet in the kitchen.
• Hours. What are your expectations for curfew? A sober living home should have a curfew no later than 9 or 10:00 PM, with violators subject to immediate urine testing.
• Daily routine. What does their day consist of? Each resident at a sober living home should either be actively engaged in some type of volunteer program or holding down a regular job – or at least actively searching for employment. Their days should be tracked to ensure they’re spending their time fulfilling obligations to get their lives back on track.

To support residents in their recovery journey, it’s crucial to seek local recovery resources, such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, as well as SMART Recovery options, and to make meeting attendance a mandatory part of the resident policy handbook to address drug and alcohol issues.

Staff and Management: Making the Right Choices

When you have your own sober living home, it’s important to promote a sober lifestyle at all times. This means hiring a well-qualified staff that boosts the positive morale of your clients. At the same time, they should know when to not cross the boundary of becoming overly friendly with the residents.

Your staff usually won’t consist of many individuals – a sober living home successfully operates with very few paid employees. You’ll likely have a manager, security, and maybe an in-house counselor, although this isn’t mandatory. Management must be well-versed in addiction recovery, crisis intervention, and conflict resolution.

They’ll need to be a mediator, a psychiatrist, and a substance abuse counselor, all in one! Your manager must be an individual who has a high level of mental endurance, as running a sober living home is no easy feat.

The house manager should constantly promote a safe and supportive environment, ensuring successful client recovery is the number one priority (aside from safety). You should also expect the house manager to have resources available and information regarding community programs and share this information with residents at the sober housing facility.

The manager is essentially the go-to for everything in the house – as stated above, it’s a hectic job that requires the individual to be on call 24/7. You’ll need to be very selective when hiring for this position.

Marketing Efforts for Sober Living Facilities

After getting all the most important frameworks in place for your sober living home, you can begin marketing efforts aimed at building a reputable sober living home to attract residents. This includes utilizing social media platforms, collaborating with healthcare providers, participating in community events, and forming partnerships.

You should start first by building strong relationships with local substance abuse treatment centers, mental health therapists, healthcare providers suited to your clients, and recovery organizations in the community.

Engaging with community members is crucial in gaining their trust and establishing a positive reputation for your sober living home.

Sober Living Homes and Building Community Relationships

These are the places from which your residents will likely come from. When you own a sober living home, building strong connections within the local community is key. You’ll need to be efficient at networking and establishing new relationships with other recovery-based establishments in the area.

Discussing your sober living residence with the local police is never a bad idea. Give them an idea of who you are and what type of house you’re operating. Naturally, many officers may be skeptical regarding these facilities. Historically, other sober living homes have a history of negative publicity.

Ensure them none of this is an issue as you operate a safe and supportive environment. However, it’s never a bad idea to ask them for an additional patrol at night just for the security of the community and clients.

Owning a Sober Living Home and Managing Finances

Finally, having efficient financial management is critical when you start a sober living home. You’ll want an accountant who is adept at operating the books for a sober housing owner, ensuring that you operate legally and file your taxes properly. Determining how many residents the sober living home can accommodate is essential for effective financial planning.

Revenue cycle management can also be a concern if your clients are covering sober living services using health insurance benefits.

By the same token, there are also different breaks you might qualify for because of your particular business – they can help with all of these areas. In some cases, you can also get grant funding for opening your facility

Get Our Support to Open a Sober Living Home

If you have additional questions about marketing for your sober living home or any type of strategy questions, Ads Up Marketing is your go-to source when you need the help of an expert.

Contact us today, and we’ll help you pave the most efficient path to establishing a powerful and positive brand image and giving your facility the attention it deserves.