Recovery housing is housing with accountability.

Adults in or seeking recovery from substance use disorder, who want a structured, alcohol- and drug-free living environment with peer accountability — and who do not require clinical treatment or medical supervision in the home.

Recovery is fragile in the period immediately after treatment or incarceration. People leaving structured settings frequently return to environments where substance use is normalised, and the housing they can access independently is often not substance-free. A recovery residence provides stable, accountable housing so that an outside treatment plan has somewhere to work from.

• Treatment providers and detox or residential programmes discharging clients
• Recovery community organisations and peer networks
• Treatment courts, probation and parole officers
• Recovery residence operators and certified residence networks
• Self-referral, word of mouth within the recovery community, and alumni of other houses

Discharge planners and case managers inside treatment providers are the most common professional referrers, because they need somewhere safe for a client to go on the day they leave. Recovery community organisations refer by reputation. Courts and supervision officers refer where the housing satisfies their requirements. In every case the referrer is risking their own credibility on the operator, and they will ask what happens if the resident relapses.

Residents frequently pay privately from employment income, family support, or a combination. Some placements are funded through programmes, vouchers or agency contracts depending on the state and the funding stream, and some residents receive benefits that contribute toward housing costs. Funding sources and rates vary widely by state, and no operator should underwrite a house against a rate they have not confirmed in writing.

Recovery-focused housing with accountability: peer support, house meetings, a substance-free environment, documented expectations, and referral to outside treatment rather than the delivery of treatment. Operators do not provide detoxification, clinical counselling or licensed treatment unless a separately licensed entity actually provides those services.

• How your state classifies recovery housing, and whether any registry, certification or voluntary standard applies
• Whether the intended use is permitted at that specific address, including local land-use and any residential-use restriction
• Maximum occupancy and bedroom configuration under building, fire and local codes
• Whether your insurer will write a recovery residence, and on what terms
• Whether the lease or mortgage permits the intended use, and what disclosure the owner requires
• Your obligations around residents taking medication for opioid use disorder, which are governed by fair-housing and disability law rather than by house preference
• The documentation your intake, testing policies and house agreements need in your state

• Enough bedrooms to reach a viable bed count without overcrowding a house not designed for it
• Shared kitchen, living and bathroom capacity sized for the actual resident count, not the nominal one
• A location with access to transport, employment, treatment appointments and recovery meetings
• Durable finishes and a maintenance plan that reflects heavy shared use
• A house manager's room or a clear plan for where a house manager actually lives

• Revenue per occupied bed, which varies sharply by market and by funding source
• Occupancy, which is the single largest swing factor and is produced by referral relationships rather than by advertising
• Housing cost relative to achievable revenue — the constraint that most often kills otherwise good houses
• Staffing model: whether the house needs awake overnight coverage or a resident house manager
• Utilities, food if provided, transport and insurance, all of which scale with resident count