What recovery housing is

A shared home for people in recovery, with clear standards and real accountability. Not a hospital. Not a program you are locked into. A place to live.

Apply for housing How it works

The short version

A recovery residence is an ordinary house where everyone living there is working on recovery, and everyone has agreed to the same standards. People go to work. People go to meetings. People cook, clean, and get on each other's nerves the way housemates do. What makes it different from any other shared house is that the expectations are written down, everyone signed them, and they are applied the same way to everyone.

Why it exists

Most people do not lose their recovery because they ran out of willpower. They lose it because they ran out of stable places to sleep. The weeks after a recovery program, a hospital stay, or release from jail are the ones where everything is decided, and they are usually the weeks when a person has the least housing.

Recovery housing closes that gap. It gives someone an address, a routine, and a group of people who notice when things start to slip — early, while it is still a conversation rather than a crisis.

What is the same in every Smart Step home

House standards in writing, signed by every resident, versioned so nobody is held to a rule they never saw.
Random drug and alcohol screening.
Curfew and check-in, so the house knows everybody got home.
Chores and a share of the work of keeping a home running.
Required meetings and recovery support outside the house.
An occupancy agreement with Smart Step and a weekly program fee.
Staff who can enter any room for safety and standards reasons — this is shared housing, not a private apartment.

What it is not

Not medical care

Smart Step provides housing, structure, and peer support. We do not provide medical care, counselling, detox, or prescriptions. Residents keep their own doctors and their own recovery supports.

Not a lock-down

Residents are adults. They go to work, see their families, and can leave the program at any time. What they cannot do is stay while breaking the standards everyone else is keeping.

Not a halfway house you are sentenced to

Some residents come through a court or an agency, many do not. Either way, living here is voluntary and the standards are the same.

Not an apartment

Residents hold an occupancy agreement tied to being in the program, not a private right to a particular room. Beds and rooms can be reassigned.

Medication and recovery

Residents who take physician-prescribed medication as part of their recovery are welcome at Smart Step, and we do not turn people away on that basis. Medication is kept in the secure storage we provide and residents take it themselves.

Privacy

Who lives here, and what they are working through, is theirs to share. Smart Step does not report anything about a resident to a court, a supervising officer, or an agency unless that resident has signed a dated release saying we may — and every one of those releases can be withdrawn. Residents also agree not to disclose who they met in the house.

Is this the right fit?

The honest test: are you ready to live by standards you did not personally choose, in a house with people you did not personally pick, because it keeps you alive and moving? If yes, this works. If you need medical care first, tell us and we will say so. Apply or read the common questions.