South Dakota still has no NARR affiliate representing sober living residents, homes, or operators
South Dakota sober living homes are still waiting for NARR representation. The NARR website lists South Dakota as unaffiliated. If you’re interested in beginning the process of creating a NARR affiliate in the state, reach out to NARR to get started.
Sober living homes in South Dakota are struggling with haphazard city-by-city regulations without a unified voice. In Brookings, the city declined to support Oxford Home expansion, and in Lincoln, an extended debate over sober living is still underway.
State-wide regulation has, so far, not been forthcoming in South Dakota. In 2022, there was a bill introduced into the House, HB 1161, that would have created a registry for existing homes, but even that effort quickly stalled. There are no current legislative pushes to regulate sober living homes in South Dakota, but that may not always be the case.
What You Need to Know About Opening a Sober Living Home in South Dakota
With no state NARR affiliate, Recovery Housing Assistance Program steps in to strengthen North Dakota sober living
Like South Dakota, North Dakota is without a NARR affiliate. Without representation, we’ve learned that the sober living home community is vulnerable to restrictive, uneducated regulation driven by stigma and ignorance. When the sober living home community is not involved in the regulation process, the result is often a series of frustrating and clunky roadblocks designed to reduce the number of beds available to the recovery community at large. If you’re interested in learning more about what it would take to create a NARR affiliate, reaching out to NARR is a good place to start.
Institutional support for the sober living community in North Dakota is sparse, but North Dakota’s Recovery Housing Assistance Program is a bright spot. The program supports RHAP providers who want to increase the number of sober living beds in the state by forwarding public housing payments directly to sober living providers.
It’s also true that North Dakota was home to the National Sober Living Association, which issues memberships nation-wide, but that organization moved its headquarters to Montana in recent years.
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Alaska nonprofit receives large sober living grant despite lack of NARR affiliate in the state
Like the other states in this post, Alaska has no NARR affiliate representing sober living homes in the state. There are no voluntary or mandatory certification programs or state-managed directories for sober living homes in the state.
That said, all businesses, including sober living homes, must operate with a business license from the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development in Alaska.
State-sponsored grants are popular with large sober living home providers in Alaska, such as Gastineau Human Services, which recently received a $2 million grant to create a large sober affordable housing unit in the Lemon Creek area of Juneau.
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With no NARR affiliate representation, Wyoming’s idiosyncratic sober living home regulations persist
Wyoming has a very “independent” approach to sober living home regulation. Most states simply adopt the existing NARR standards and look to other existing regulations around the country for a blueprint. Wyoming approached regulation differently. Instead, Wyoming developed standards in-house and decided to keep its sober living home certification program within the Department of Health. If your home accepts public housing payments in Wyoming, then it must be certified. You can access all of the laws regarding the operation of sober living homes in the WDH’s Rules and Regulations for Substance Abuse Standards.
Still, there is no NARR affiliate in the state. NARR’s website has no record of any group working on the affiliation process in Wyoming. Reach out to NARR if you're interested in working with them.
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