The TRUTH About Starting Sober Living Homes - Top 10 FAQs

Hey, welcome back to the channel. Today we are talking about the top 10 questions people ask me about sober living home. So we're covering like kind of from A to Z, frequently asked questions, the top 10 that I get asked the most often. And by the end of this video, if you've like never heard of sober living before, if it's a new concept for you, you're going to have a great understanding of what it is. You're going to understand the ins and outs, kind of the common misconceptions. But also you should be able to just kind of clearly define in your mind what sober living is, why it's important, why it's underserved right now as far as supply across the United States, but also why it's a huge opportunity for people, for real estate investors who want to help people make a change in their lives, but also make a decent income and have it be sustainable at the same time. So let's get into it. So question number one, what the heck is a sober living home? From my perspective, I tend to explain that a sober living home is really drug and alcohol free transitional housing. So it doesn't always mean that somebody's coming out of a history of substance abuse, it doesn't mean that they're coming out of a treatment program, but it does mean that they are choosing to abstain from drugs and alcohol while they are living inside of the home. So this is an active choice. I think when answering the question of what is a sober living home, you have to also talk about what a sober living home isn't. And it's not a halfway house. It's not something that's court ordered for people to be in. It is a choice that people actively make to abstain from drugs and alcohol. And so whether or not they had a history of substance abuse, no one inside of the home can use drugs or alcohol while living there. They are subject to rules, subject to drug testing. It's a structured environment, it's monitored. And so this is going to get people the accountability they need if it is something that they're struggling with or otherwise it'll be just affordable housing with structure and rules and something that's going to cost a lot less than let's say an apartment. And for most people it is a place to land and rebuild and like work and save and all that stuff without the stress of potentially like maybe they're coming from living in their car. We've had that happen before of senior citizens. Lots of elderly people unfortunately have been living in their cars. Because they can't afford on a fixed income a traditional apartment or they were living with family, family moved away or passed away, now they're on their own and this gives them a place to land. And then we come around, around them and can help them find apartments, apply for, for different income based housing options that they maybe didn't know about. And I have staff that does this. But again, essentially sober living is structured, accountable, affordable, shared living that is transitional, it's temporary, it's not intended to be permanent or forever, but it can be somewhere around one to two years because it can truly take that long for some people to rebuild their lives, show enough income, fix their credit to be able to on to permanent housing. Now for those who are coming from a substance abuse background, what this means is it is a structured, basically it's not as intense as an intensive rehab. And so they should have already graduated a program and spent something like 90 days in a treatment program if they do have a history of substance abuse. So it's not going to be that intense, but it's also going to be more structured than renting a space on your own. So that's why this tends to be kind of that middle ground, that next step between going from like full on 247 in a residential facility and being fully on your own with no accountability like this. Is that that stepping stone to help them get to the next step and ease back into all of the stressors and the things of daily life and be able to handle it with structure and accountability and support. Question number two, who can live in a sober living home? There's a wide variety, there's a good amount of people that can live in sober living homes. From the very beginning I always wanted to make a place for single parents because I was raised by a single mom. And I remember what it was like and like we were never homeless but man, did it feel like we got close because people were bringing us food. I remember playing with my toys and then the lights went off because my mom couldn't pay the bills and the power bill wasn't paid. So literally lights just shut off. So I remember what it felt like living in an unstable or you know, just an environment where we didn't have everything that we needed on our own and we needed that additional help and support. So I always wanted to provide a place so that should other families be in that situation, they had someplace they could land and they wouldn't be homeless. This is kind of an extension of something that I used to do called safe families. For children where within our church we started a ministry where we could proactively house kids so that they would not go into the foster system. So if somebody needed a little bit of respite, if, you know, a single parent or parents needed some time to be able to work, get a bed, get whatever they needed before like a CPS inspection to make sure that they could pass, we would be that safe space for the kids to live so that we could avoid them going into the foster system in the first place. So the same thing kind of applies to this type of housing. It's a preventative measure. We want to give people housing structure and make sure that they're not on the street or couch surfing or whatever. So I think of sober living homes as a place for people to just land when they need some support and need some help until they move on to permanent housing. We always tell people from the very beginning this should be the last place you live before you move into your own apartment or your own space. So that that's essentially what we do. But again, we are essentially considered a level two or level three type of home. Most of my homes now we're level three because we have staff and supportive services. But when we first started, we were level two, meaning structured, monitored rules, House manager. It wasn't just peer led, it wasn't just people like agreeing to live together. It was a true structured environment for people to be able to rebuild their lives and move on. And thankfully today about 80% of our people move on to permanent housing when they leave our houses. That being said, we have housed veterans, the elderly, we have housed single parents, so moms and dads inside of our homes. We have male homes and we have female homes. We never mix gender, but we have housed a wide variety of people, people with medical issues, people who simply need affordable housing, people who have some mild mental health diagnoses. Nothing that would qualify them for like an adult residential facility. So they're not on disability, they don't need 24, 7 care, they're relatively independent, but they just needed some additional support. So that's what we offered. How long can someone stay in a sober living home? This question is up to the operator of the sober living home. But I would say in general it's going to be somewh around nine to 18 months. And I say that wide range because we have people who have moved in and as little as three months gotten their own place or moved back in with family reunified, things like that. We also have people who have been with us for well over two years. So it tends to be a range and I'd say that nine to 18 months, it usually falls somewhere in there. But I don't want to say, you know, strictly a year because it does vary. Housing is a very nuanced thing. It's very individualized. We're talking about people's lives. But I would say that we have very low turnover because we run a structured, monitored program. We have cameras, we have, you know, additional help so that they can go out and get. Since we hire that staff and have housing navigation as part of what we do, I'd say the average time frame has definitely gone down because we're able to get people into apartments and housing a lot faster. But at the same time, we still have people who have been with us for over two years and we're totally fine with that. It's not meant to be permanent. They're still looking for their own place, they're still rebuilding and they don't plan on being with us forever. But we are open to whatever timeline they're on in their own life to be able to make that switch themselves. Another question. What are some of the rules? Is there a curfew? What are those things like? So yes, we have a curfew. Our curfew is 11 o' clock on weekdays, midnight on weekends. And we have a lot of rules. Most of the rules are common sense. It's around how to be a good roommate, how to clean up after yourself, how to make sure that if you, you know, are doing laundry that you're only doing it kind of on an assigned day or week. You know, you're not constantly washing stuff and hogging the washer and dryer, things like that. So there's curfews, there's chores. So people inside of our homes contribute back to the home by doing chores on a schedule and doing them at least once a week. Sometimes that could be yard work on Saturdays. That could be, you know, somebody who's assigned to clean and mop the kitchen. That's typically going to be every night, but, you know, everyone is doing chores. And then of course we do random drug test. So we test when people move in. We also test randomly. And again, this is just to keep people honest and accountable because this is a drug and alcohol free space. What does it cost to live in a sober living home is another question we get. Sober living homes vary in cost and it's, it's very hyperlocal. So it's going to be a higher cost, typically on the Coast. So in California or in Florida, in New York it's going to cost more simply because the cost of housing in general is more expensive. Whereas in, like Indiana it might cost, or Ohio, 600, 650amonth on average is what we tend to see. And so based on the cost of housing, based on what affordable actually looks like in that area. For example, it's not uncommon in Los Angeles, metro LA to see $1500 kind of on the low end because 3 to $4000 is average rent. And so that's why it tends to vary based on the area you're in. But there's also programs, local organizations and nonprofits, county programs, state programs, depending on where you are, that have grant funds in order to actually fund and pay for people to be in sober living homes. So if you're looking for a home, you can certainly look into different avenues and resources like that. And if you're a sober living operator, I always recommend reaching out to local organizations to see what help there is because they can also provide case management for the people they're sending to your program or in their program that they're sending to your housing. But they tend to have some funding available as well in some cases. Sometimes treatment programs might also provide scholarships to people in their program to make sure that they have housing and continue to attend the outpatient program that they're in. And so you might be able to reach out to you as a sober living owner, you might be able to reach out to treatment programs locally, see if that's something that they offer, talk to the business development person, see if they have a way of doing that again. In la there's something called recovery bridge housing. So as long as somebody is in outpatient treatment that can fund up to six months of housing in a sober living environment. So those are different options and things that you might want to look into depending on the area you're in and just kind of checking and seeing what's available out there. Another question, are sober living homes are regulated or licensed? Sober living homes are licensed in some states there, there absolutely are a few states that require licenses. Arizona, Utah, New Jersey to some extent. And Pennsylvania at this point has a kind of a licensing, optional licensing process. If you want to get referrals from state licensing licensed programs like treatment centers instead of just a state certification. Certifications are also optional across most of the United States. These are not state licenses, but these are certifications through the national alliance of Recovery Residences, which then has state affiliates in a lot of areas. Not every area like Nevada doesn't have one right now. I think some areas in the Northeast might not be covered currently, but there is a national certification. And no matter what, I do recommend at least adhering to the NARR Code of Ethics if you're running a sober living home, because it just ensures that you're going to run a really good program and that people are going to have better outcomes. You don't necessarily have to go through the certification process. In some states, it's going to be more required than others. Ohio is really big on certification through Ohio Recovery Housing. Washington State through Walker, which is the. I think it's the Washington alliance of Quality Recovery Residences. Texas has the Texas Recovery Oriented Housing Network. There's all these different organizations. Right. But they're all affiliates of nar, the national alliance of Recovery Residences. Those states in particular have actually made it a state requirement that if you're going to get any kind of referrals from treatment programs that are licensed, then you need to have that certification. And again, like in California, it's not required. We do have ccap, the California Consortium of Addiction Professionals and Programs. I think I said that. Right. And so they could certify homes, but it's not a state requirement, it's not a legal requirement. And that's. That's the case in most states right now. Now, are sober living homes regulated is probably a different nuanced question because you have to think like, just like anything else, you have to provide a quality product to consistently receive referrals and have people sent to you. If you run a very poor home with very poor outlet outcomes, quite often I hear of sober living operators who are just not good. Like they don't care about people, they aren't doing any kind of maintenance on the home. And in those cases, those homes tend to get blackballed by good case managers because they want their people to have success. They're not going to continue sending people to homes that don't do a good job, that constantly have, you know, huge maintenance issues or bed bugs or roaches or things like that. They want to send people to the homes where they know they're going to be cared for, taken care of, that they're going to have good outcomes, outcomes that they will move on to permanent housing in the future and not just relapse and end up, you know, the whole house ends up in trouble, essentially. And so there is self regulation in that sense because people who are sending folks to homes actually care and want to. Want to have good results for their people at the same Time. There are site visits, walkthroughs, evaluations. My county has a scoring program so they update that routinely. And so there is a good amount of regulation and people, people overseeing sober living homes, depending on where you are. And the best homes, like love those relationships and nurture them and want to make sure that they have good relationships with local organizations and case managers and that they're getting good outcomes so that they can continue to get referrals and work with people because that's going to ensure they can stay open. Quite often I'm getting calls from people across the country trying to start sober living homes and they haven't built those relationships and they're like, I've been open for three months, I got two beds filled and I got ate empty and this isn't okay. Like I'm gonna have to shut down. And so that's why we actually started our program, Sober Living Riches, because I was literally getting phone calls and voicemails from across the country of people saying, hey, can you help me? Still happens to this day because I was a real estate agent and my cell phone number is out there and so literally just got a voicemail from somebody saying, hey, I really need help, can you give me a call? Because I'm trying to get this thing going and it's just not working well. And so it does take good systems, good models, like the ability to actually run a good organization in order to be sustainable. As a sober living home. It's not difficult, but if you haven't done any of that work, if you haven't put any thought into it, it's very possible that you're not going to get a high level of referrals or just a lot of, you know, even word of mouth referrals to stay open, to keep the doors open. So definitely make sure that you're, you're doing that internally and living up to a high standard as you're running the home. If you're looking for a home, you definitely want to find a home that does live up to those standards, has monitoring, has supervision, has management, has structure and rules, because that's going to give you the best outcomes in your own life. And that's exactly what you're looking for when you're, you're choosing a sober living environment. So that takes us to how do you actually fill up a sober living home? Or if you are somebody looking for a sober living home that's a quality home, how do you ensure that it's a reputable home? So again, this goes back to Market research. If you're starting a home and you're trying to fill up, definitely connecting with local orientation organizations, case managers, treatment programs, behavioral health departments of local county organizations, that's where you'd probably want to start. And I mean, that's no surprise. I've talked about that before, but that's literally where you want to go first. Not necessarily NA or AA meetings. They can't endorse any particular home. You can find people who are in recovery, but that's not where I personally want to find people for my homes. But it's definitely a place to start. And, and we've certainly had referrals from people who ran NA or who sponsored certain people and knew that they were couch surfing and needed a place. And so then they, you know, once they found out about us, picked up the phone and said, hey, can you talk with this person? And you know, we had our intake conversation and they were a good fit. So they came in and then, you know, 12 months later moved out. So that can absolutely work. But I would say definitely start with market research. That's the first step on either side. And then if you're looking for quality sober living home, talking to local case managers, talking to, again, those county resources, there's usually an access line. You can call and ask for a referral to a quality home. Now, there are places like NARR where there's a directory. So if there's a state NAR affiliate and somebody's gone through that certification process, you can find homes that way. And you know they're going to adhere to it because again, when you go through that process, they come out and inspect the home as well. And there's a grievance process for somebody doesn't follow their code of ethics. And now you have a way of like actually holding that home accountable. But I would also say in the states, in most of the states, it's not a requirement. You're just not going to see as many people on that list or are in the directory. And so you can still find quality homes by calling those local resources and just asking for referrals to a quality sober living home. Is investing in sober living homes financially viable? If you follow a specific process and start with market research and make sure that you have a waiting list and all of these things that we recommend and teach ahead of time, you absolutely can make it financially viable. And you won't end up being like the people who call us saying, hey, I can't fill up my house. You'd be more like, you know, Our students who started off with us from the very beginning saying, hey, I filled up in 30 days or filled up in 90 days. There are a lot of students who are doing that. In fact, we just had a student, Aaron, who filled up pretty quickly within 30 days and is rocking right now because they followed our process. We have another one, Dr. J, who within 90 days filled up her home for women and children's home. And it's, it's going great. We have another one, Stacy, who filled up her home within 90 days and has now for the last year been relatively full. At least 80 or 90% occupied the entire time. And so there are ways to do this that essentially guarantee great results and guarantee that you're going to run a home and you're not going to have a ton of issues because you're running it the right way and reempting a lot of those issues from ever having happening. Unlike my first six months where I had no idea what I was doing and we had a ton of issues because I just wanted to help people, but never had anyone teaching me, like the right way to do things. So we had to figure it out. But then once we figured it out, everything smoothed out and from then on, it's been a pretty smooth sailing operation for the last three years. So, yes, it can be financially viable. I literally took a home from 600amonth in cash flow, renting it out to just, you know, kind of house hacking, renting it out by the room to a couple of local air Force guys. And then as soon as they moved out, we converted it to sober living and within about 90 days went from 600amonth to 6,000amonth. Now we were already up and running. And so I had referrals coming in. I had all that stuff going because I had other homes already. But even that first home, like we filled it up pretty quickly. That my very first one within about 90 days, and it was like 2800amonth was market rent. And we were able to literally like 3 to 4x that within about 90 days because the need for this housing was so big. So again, if you start with. And I started this way, I started with local relationships and the head of our continuum of care, like the chair, introducing me to everyone. I needed to talk to you and saying, this is exactly what we need. Because I just called and said, hey, do you have any use for a single family home? And it was like, we absolutely do. This is what we need. This is why here's who you should talk with this talk to this person who's actually running one already in a different city. Talk to this person on city council. Like we got fully introduced by the chair of our housing first and continuum of care into this world. So that's how I started. That's how I recommend everyone starts go and go to those meetings, talk with the local organizations and they will tell you what the need is and where it is. And that way you can get started with the right relationships on the right foot and be fully financially viable from day one. What zoning, licensing and other considerations are there now? Nationally we have fair housing laws and the people inside of our homes are considered a disabled people. So substance use disorder is considered a mental health diagnosis. But there are other target populations underneath the federal Fair Housing act that include, you know, families of children, elders, senior, like seniors, elderly people, the veterans, and basically like the people we house. So pretty much everyone that lives inside of our homes are protected. Class and zoning regulations, land use restrictions, those things cannot prevent you from opening a sober living home. Now there are some states that have started licensing requirements or have certain requirements. Like I believe in Arizona, it's something like sober living home can't be within 500ft of another sober living home. I don't know why no one's fought that, because I do believe that is clearly a violation of fair housing law. And yet they make it work. And they have a ton more sober living homes because it's actually more obvious. Like they, they created a very public, very clear process. Whereas in other states, like most people, I'd say 90 plus percent of people don't even know sub living homes exist or what they are. They've never heard of them. And so you have, you know, less people who know what they are. There's less requirements around opening them because it's just considered housing. In fact, in California, literally, if you look in the definitions in California code, if you look at land use restrictions like California code 65008, they literally are not allowed to, to make restrictive ordinances against people with disabilities. In California, you actually have to. Every city has what's called affirmative action. They have to actively work to stop any kind of restrictions from people getting housing when they have disabilities. And so group home ordinances, things like that tend to not stand up in court for many reasons, not just federally, but also when it comes to the state specific requirements, California's interest, interesting where I am, because we have 22 protected classes. So it is way more protective of people in their fair housing rights than, than federal law, which is considered like the Federal Fair Housing act is considered minimally protective, whereas feeha, the Fair Employment Housing act in California tends to be way more maximally protective. So there's like several laws that kind of COVID sober living homes and in similar homes, adult residential facilities, other types of group homes, transition age youth homes, like all kinds of homes you could think of where people are considered to be disabled or for example, under the age of 18, you're part of that target population. And so these are all reasons why this is a protected type of housing. And there shouldn't be any kind of zoning or licensing that gets in the way unless you're in some specific states. But even then we have students in Arizona, multiple who have gone through the licensing process and opened their homes. We have students in New Jersey, we have students in Pennsylvania, I think we have one student in Utah going through the process right now. And so it's, it's not difficult. We guide you through it. We literally have a guide step by step. But it's just something to know that, you know, there's typically not much that gets in the way of, of starting or running quality homes now terrible homes, there's a lot of other things, there's safety ordinances and things that people can use. But great, well run homes, you should be just fine. And then the last question, how do you handle day to day management and staffing? So when I first started, I literally walked to my first two homes and that was totally fine. After about 90 days of doing so, I realized I can just put cameras inside the common spaces and the ring camera, ring doorbell on the front and see who's coming and going. And I didn't need to be there all day every day because honestly, when I would stop by in the middle of the day, my people were gone. They were at work, they were at school, they were doing what they were supposed to do. They were focused on just rebuilding their lives, working, saving, doing what they need to do. And it was kind of a wasted trip because no one was home. So now I can see on the cameras like, okay, is somebody home? If I stop by, will I actually be able to talk to somebody? There's, you know, the 247 recording history. So I can see even if it was like an hour ago, someone just left, now no one's there. I can see when they come home. It's motion sensing, all that stuff. I get notifications. That's a really good way to make sure that you can manage it. It's also peace of mind, you know, when people are home, when they're coming when they're going. Keypads on the front door as well. So you can, you can literally log and track whose code was used, the time they came in, if it was before curfew, things like that. You can even make your code stop after curfew so that they have to ring the doorbell and let you know that they arrived late. And then there's a consequence for that. And so it's not difficult running your first home. I also was self employed. I didn't have like a 9 to 5 job where I had to clock in and clock out. And so it was much easier for me to manage. Now I have students all over the country, hundreds of them now who. And many of them have jobs and they're still able to, to run a home like this because of the tools and systems and everything that we just talked about. Cameras, keypads, codes, clear expectations upfront, all of those things. So it doesn't take that much. You can also hire or bring in a house manager as your very first person. So even when we have people reaching out and doing market research, we give our students a list of 50 or 60 contacts locally and we have them ask like, hey, who do you know who's a year plus clean like lived experience? They understand what people are going through when living in these homes would be a great addition as a house manager or you know, a resident leader who can just be your eyes and ears so that even if you can't be, you have somebody there who is. So that's a great way to get started. We've had many students be able to do that very well and have their first resident be somebody who literally just can run the home and follow the policies and procedures manual that we give them. So I would say that's the best way to handle management from the very beginning. Beginning and then as you grow or as you completely fill up, because they do produce a decent amount of cash flow, you can hire somebody to be, you know, an actual full time manager. So I have that as well. I have multiple staff. We provide a lot of different services today that we didn't have at the very beginning, but today we're doing multiple services. So it's not just sober living. We're doing medical respite. We're doing. We've even had what we call like a level two home where we had people who graduated from our sober living now essentially just recently rent by the room and have their own space and be able to still kind of have their own spot to land. But while they're looking for their own apartment, things like that. So a lot of times that would be single parents who moved out of our sober living homes into this home that was essentially for like families. And then they would move on to their own apartments or their own space after that. So there's multiple ways you can handle that, but I would definitely say you can bring on people over time. So now I have somebody who's a level two substance use counselor, ran outpatient locally, and she manages all of our locations on a day to day basis. But we also have, you know, housing navigators, case managers, other people who work with us. We're hiring CNAs right now because we're doing a lot of like medical respite work and people coming from the hospital. So it can grow to something much better and still be profitable and still help a lot of people. But initially it doesn't take a whole lot of time or energy to run a successful sober living home when you have the right structure in place. And there you have it. 10 to the most common questions, maybe even a bonus question in there that we get most often. 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