Running a NARR-Aligned Sober Living House: The Operator Playbook

Not legal or certification advice — this describes a common operational model, not a substitute for your own state affiliate's actual certification standards or your attorney's guidance. Check the in-app Compliance Reference for state-specific detail, and treat NARR/your state affiliate's own materials as the authority on certification requirements themselves.

What NARR affiliation actually means, operationally

NARR-affiliated houses commit to a recognized standard of operation — generally organized around resident rights, life-skills development, peer support, and a safe, structured living environment — rather than being certified as a clinical or medical provider. That distinction matters for how you run the house day to day: your job is structure, accountability, and a safe environment, not treatment. Most states have their own affiliate (Florida's is FARR, for example) with its own specific standards on top of the national ones — the Compliance Reference in this app tracks what's been researched so far, state by state, but always verify current requirements directly with your own affiliate before an actual audit.

The resident lifecycle, stage by stage

A resident's actual path through your program touches nearly every part of this software. Seeing it as one continuous record — not a set of disconnected tools — is the difference between reconstructing a story under pressure later and already having it written down.

• Lead. Someone inquires, a referral source refers them, or they find you directly. The Leads pipeline tracks where they are in that conversation and which referral source gets credit — useful both operationally and, over time, for seeing which referral relationships are actually worth investing in (Reports has a referral-source performance view for exactly this).
• Intake. See the "Intake & Move-in — First 72 Hours" template in this same Resources section for the specific checklist. The Required Move-in Documents feature and e-signature keep this consistent instead of improvised each time.
• Active residency. This is the bulk of the stay, and the bulk of what this software tracks: curfew check-ins, chore completion, meeting attendance, drug testing, work orders for anything that breaks, incident reports when something goes wrong, and goals the resident sets for themselves. None of this is about judging how someone is doing internally — it's a documented, factual record of what actually happened, which protects the resident and the program equally when a question comes up later.
• Discharge or graduation. See the "Documenting a Relapse or Serious Rule Violation" template for the discharge side specifically. A planned, successful completion deserves the same documentation discipline as a discharge does — a clear record of goals met, and a clean financial close-out through Billing.
• Alumni. Once someone's status moves to alumni, they can opt into the Alumni directory — entirely their own choice, never set on their behalf — and stay loosely connected to the house community. See "Building House Culture & Peer Accountability" in this section for more on why that connection is worth investing in.

Staffing the house

However many people you employ, someone needs to own each of these areas: day-to-day resident accountability (check-ins, chores, testing), incident response and documentation, the physical property (inspections, work orders), and the money (billing, collections). In a small house, one person often wears all of these hats; in a larger operation, they're split across a team, tracked in Team. Whoever is closest to the residents day to day is your house manager — see the "Onboarding a New House Manager" template for bringing that person up to speed, and "Training Your House Staff" for the people who join under them.

Keep required certifications (CPR/First Aid, and anything else your program or state requires) current in Staff Credentials — the Readiness page pulls this into your overall compliance picture automatically, so a lapsed certification shows up before an audit does, not during one.

The weekly operating rhythm

A house that's actually well-run tends to have a rhythm, not just a rulebook. A reasonable baseline: chore verification and curfew check-ins happen daily without exception; drug testing follows your program's own randomization approach; a house meeting happens at a fixed, predictable time every week; staff log shift notes so the next shift isn't starting cold; and someone reviews the week as a whole — the Weekly resident review digest (on a resident's page) and the Leadership digest (an org-wide weekly roll-up) both exist specifically so that review doesn't depend on someone remembering to piece it together manually.

Staying audit-ready continuously, not reactively

The Readiness page is built to be checked regularly, not opened for the first time when an audit is scheduled. It pulls together the same facts an auditor would ask about — current certifications, required documents on file, recent incident documentation — into one place. Pair it with the Compliance Reference for the underlying state and federal requirements themselves. Treating readiness as a standing weekly glance rather than a pre-audit scramble is the single highest-leverage habit in this whole playbook.

This is a starting model, not a finished policy

Every house is different — size, structure, staffing level, and state requirements all push the details in different directions. Use this as a map of how the pieces connect, not a rulebook to copy verbatim. It's meant to be read alongside the shorter templates already in this Resources section, which go deeper on specific pieces of what's outlined here.