Free checklist
The Sober Living Startup Checklist
Recovery housing is housing with accountability. Everything that makes it work is decided before the first resident moves in — the policies, the documents, the rights, the escalation paths.
General education only, not legal advice and not clinical guidance. Recovery residence standards, fair-housing obligations and licensing requirements vary by state and locality.
What is in it
Six areas to close before you open.
Each item is something you can put in place this week. None of them require a licence, a lawyer's opinion, or a property — they are decisions about how your house operates.
Model and classification
- Confirm which housing model you are actually operating — and that it matches what you describe to everyone else
- Determine whether the services you provide trigger licensing in your state, and get it in writing
- Verify zoning and permitted use for the specific occupancy you intend
- Confirm the occupancy limit that applies under the applicable code
- Check egress, alarm, fire and safety requirements at your target resident count
- Review NARR-style levels of support and where your operation actually sits
House policies and documents
- Written house rules, in plain language, that a new resident can understand on day one
- Resident agreement reviewed by an attorney in your state
- Intake and screening process with documented criteria applied consistently
- Substance-testing policy written down, including when, how and by whom
- Grievance and appeal process for residents facing a house consequence
- Documented procedure for a resident who relapses — what happens, who is notified, in what order
- Move-out process, notice terms and how belongings are handled
Resident rights and duties
- Fair-housing obligations reviewed with counsel, including reasonable accommodation
- Medication policy that does not interfere with a resident's lawful prescriptions, including MOUD
- Privacy expectations stated clearly — what is monitored and what is not
- Camera policy, if any, disclosed in writing before move-in
- Search policy, if any, written and lawfully scoped
- How residents access outside treatment, medical care and legal representation
- What the house is explicitly not — not treatment, not detox, not clinical care
Staffing and the house manager
- Define the house manager role in writing — duties, hours, compensation, limits
- What the house manager is not authorised to do without the operator
- After-hours escalation path, published to residents
- Background-check approach for anyone with access to the house
- Emergency procedures: medical, overdose, mental health crisis, fire, and who calls whom
- Naloxone availability and training where appropriate for your population
- Maintenance reporting and response-time standards
Records and operations
- Resident file contents defined — what you keep, what you do not, and retention periods
- Confidentiality practices for records containing health or recovery information
- Move-in and move-out inspection documentation, with photographs
- House meeting schedule and documented attendance expectations
- Maintenance log and vendor list
- Rent and payment records, receipts and delinquency procedure
- Insurance in force and certificates on file before the first resident moves in
Referrals and community
- Referral sources identified and contacted before you have a vacancy
- What you tell a referral partner about the house, consistently, every time
- Written statement of what the house does and does not provide
- No referral compensation of any kind, in any form
- Coordination practice with outside clinical providers and case managers
- How you report back on a placement — including when it goes badly
- Nearby recovery community, meeting schedule and transport options mapped
The distinction that matters most
Recovery housing is not clinical treatment.
Most compliance problems in recovery housing come from an operator describing what they do in language that makes them sound like a treatment provider. Say what you are precisely.
- We provide structured, substance-free housing with peer accountability
- We do not provide detoxification, therapy, counselling or clinical treatment
- Clinical providers serve our residents from outside organizations
- We do not make medical or clinical determinations about residents
- We do not interfere with a resident's lawful prescriptions or MOUD
- Residents retain their rights as residents — this is housing, not custody
Do not market this as
- Treatment, detox or rehabilitation
- Clinical or licensed counselling
- Medical or nursing services
- A guarantee of sobriety or recovery outcomes
- A licensing loophole
The operator's real job
Running a house where people in early recovery can actually stabilise: consistent rules applied the same way to everyone, prompt maintenance, a house manager who is present, and a referral relationship that gets honest updates. That is the whole product.
Free download
Get the full Sober Living Startup Checklist
Every item across all six areas, in a printable format you can work through before you sign a lease.
Go deeper
A checklist gets you to open. A system keeps you open.
Group Home Secrets™ covers the operating system behind the checklist — house economics, occupancy, referral relationships, intake, screening and documentation.
Related reading
- Sober Living & Recovery Residences — the full model
- Co-Living Is Not Sober Living
- The Group Home Licensing Decision Tree
- 50 Organizations That Can Fill Your Group Home
- Returning-Citizen Housing
Where the control sits in this model
The house is the easy part. The pipeline is the business.
Recovery housing looks like a property business from the outside. It is not. A well-run house with no referral relationships sits empty — and an empty recovery residence still carries every fixed cost.
What most beginners assume
That finding a suitable house is the hard part, and that residents will follow once the house is open and advertised.
What that assumption costs
Months of carrying a lease on a house that is legally and physically ready, but has no discharge planner who knows it exists — and therefore no occupancy.
What you actually need to control
The relationship with the people who decide where a resident goes on the day they leave treatment. That relationship — not the property — is the asset.
The checklist covers both — the property and compliance foundation, and the referral and intake system that produces occupancy. Doing only the first is the most common and most expensive version of this mistake.
Important disclaimer
Acquire Group Homes™ provides education, consulting, business systems and real-estate strategy. It does not provide legal advice, medical advice, clinical treatment, licensing determinations, tax advice or Medicaid eligibility determinations. Requirements vary by property, population, services, city, county and state — nothing on this page states or implies that any model is automatically legal in any jurisdiction.
Operators must verify zoning, licensing, occupancy, building/fire code, fair-housing obligations, insurance, resident-rights requirements and other applicable laws with qualified professionals before acquiring or operating a property. We do not promise "no license required," guaranteed Medicaid payment, guaranteed government contracts, guaranteed occupancy, "eviction-proof" agreements, or that any structure avoids zoning or lender requirements.
Full disclaimers