Sober Living Reg/Cert Updates for NARR Affiliates in KS, MS, NM

Kentucky NARR affiliate, KYARR, begins mandatory certification program for sober living homes

This year, Kentucky issued a new statute requiring all sober living homes to be certified. The Kentucky Alliance of Recovery Residences (KYARR) is Kentucky’s NARR affiliate. Kentucky’s recovery housing certification landscape includes both KYARR as the NARR affiliate and a state government program within the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.

KYARR oversees the certification of sober living homes in Kentucky, with the exception of sober living homes that follow the Oxford model, also known as Oxford Homes, which have their own representative agency in the state - the Friends of Recovery Association. There are over 150 Oxford Homes in Kentucky, which is a very large number for a single state.

If you’re interested in discovering whether or not your organization needs to be certified in Kentucky, you can email the certifying body at kyrecoveryhousing@ky.gov or you can review the actual statute, which goes by this catchy title: Title 908, Chapter 1 Regulation 410.

For more on behavioral health business startup information in Kansas, see:

Kansas is a Great State to Open a Sober Living Home

Opening an Addiction Treatment Center in Kansas: Low Fees and a Relatively Easy Process

Medicaid Unwinding and State Behavioral Health in Nevada, Arkansas, Mississippi, Kansas, New Mexico, Nebraska, and Idaho

Kentucky NARR State Affiliate

Mississippi has no NARR affiliate or pending regulation for sober living homes

In 2024, there is still no NARR affiliate in Mississippi that advocates for sober living homes in the state. If you are interested in organizing one, you can contact NARR to get the process started.

There are also no certification requirements for most sober living homes in Mississippi, although there are a few types of behavioral health facilities that require certification. These are:

• Community based addiction treatment organizations

• Community mental health centers

• Organizations that receive funding from the Department of Mental Health

• Treatment organizations that accept Medicaid dollars

As you can see, none of the organizations are stand-alone sober living facilities. If they do offer recovery residence-type services, then they are offering those services in addition to clinical addiction treatment programming.

As we reported in 2023, there appears to be very little movement on regulation for sober living homes in Mississippi. This is still the case in 2024, despite a national trend towards increasing regulations for behavioral health facilities of all kinds.

In Mississippi, sober living homes face a high degree of NIMBY interference and they face that opposition without the benefit of a NARR affiliate to represent the collective interests of the recovery community. We see opposition to sober living homes in places like Meadow Lake, where a sober living home operator is suing the City of Tupelo for discriminatory housing practices the city holds for people in recovery from SUD. Homeowner covenants with homeowner’s associations in the neighborhood exclude sober living homes on the grounds that they are not “private residences.”

Elsewhere in Mississippi, sober living homes operators are pursuing large-scale projects, like the renovation of the Old Pontotoc Motel, which was recently transformed into a Christian recovery residence.

For more on sober living home strategy and management in Mississippi, see:

Pros and Cons of Opening an Addiction Treatment Center in Mississippi

How to Open a Sober Living Home in Mississippi

New Mexico sober living community still reeling from mutli-state scandal, no regulations or NARR affiliate on the immediate horizon

Despite recent scandals, sober living homes still do not need to be certified in New Mexico, according to a recovery housing PDF from the City of Albuquerque’s website. There is also no NARR affiliate in New Mexico, although interested sober living home operators may contact NARR directly to begin the process of opening one in the state.

Most of the recent news surrounding sober living homes in New Mexico focuses not on regulation or certification programs, but on a multi-state sober living home scandal that defrauded Medicaid for billions of dollars. This scheme essentially subjected somewhere between 5000 - 7000 Native Americans from a variety of Indigenous Nations - all of them suffering from SUD, many actively in a behavioral health crisis - to human trafficking and other abuses. Many of the Native Americans targeted in this scheme were picked up in New Mexico and subsequently moved to fraudulent homes in other states, including Arizona. In response, the Navajo Nation launched a “rescue mission” called Operation Rainbow Bridge to help return displaced and exploited Tribal Members to their homes.

Sober living home operators and addiction treatment providers in New Mexico may also enjoy:

Opening an Addiction Treatment Center in New Mexico? Here’s What You Need to Know.

FAQ on Opening a Sober Living Home in New Mexico

Medicaid Peer Support Services for Recovery Housing: Complete State-by-State Guide

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