About SoberInKC

Who runs this

My name is Shane. I'm a Kansas City man in recovery, and I live in sober housing in this metro right now — before this place, I lived in sober housing up in Liberty. I work nights over in Olathe. I'm not a counselor, not a treatment provider, and not a salesman. I'm a guy who has stood exactly where you might be standing: phone in hand, trying to figure out which of these houses is real, what it costs, and whether they'll take me.

I know the questions that actually decide where you land, because they're the ones that decided where I landed: Can I be on my medication? What's the curfew? Is it weekly or monthly, and what do I need up front? Do I have to have a job? The big directories mostly can't answer any of that. Some of them can't even tell you if the house is still open.

Why I built it

Search "sober living Kansas City" and here's what you get: one national site claiming "290 verified homes" in its headline and "62+" in the text of the same page, with "beach" listed as an amenity for houses in Missouri. Another site lists a Kansas City home as open for business at two different addresses, while a third says it closed its doors. The one accurate list of accredited Missouri homes is a PDF that people pass around Facebook in photographs because there's no usable website.

People looking for sober housing are often looking on the worst week of their lives, or their family is looking for them. They deserve a page that only says what it can back up. So that's the rule here: if a fact is on this site, a real public source said it — the state's accredited-homes list, the operator's own website, or the home's own postings — and the page tells you when it was last checked. If no source says it, the listing says "call to confirm" instead of dressing up a guess.

How the money works — and the line I won't cross

Right now, this site makes no money. It costs me a domain name and my time.

If it ever earns anything, it will be one way only: a house or operator paying a flat monthly fee for a featured listing, clearly labeled as advertising — the same flat-fee model legitimate directories in this space already use. Same price whether a listing sends them one resident or a hundred.

Here is what will never happen on this site, and I want it in writing: nobody will ever pay me per person, per phone call, per lead, or per admission. Getting paid to steer a human being into a particular recovery home is not just sleazy — it's a federal crime under the Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act (EKRA, 18 U.S.C. § 220), and the Justice Department prosecutes it. Beyond the law, it's the whole call-center model that makes the big directories useless: whoever pays the most per head gets the phone calls. This site exists because that model is broken.

Also, in the interest of the same honesty: I don't list the house I live in, and I don't take anything from any house in exchange for its listing or its position in the directory. Operators appear because public sources say they exist — nothing more.

Corrections and updates

Houses open, close, move, and change their prices and rules. We check listings against public sources and stamp every page with the month it was last checked — but the freshest source for your house is you. If you run a home listed here and something's wrong, or you're an operator who isn't listed yet, the fastest fix is the home's own public information: keep your website or Facebook page current, and this directory will pick it up on its next check. If a listing here is flatly wrong — a closed house shown open, a wrong number — treat the "call to confirm" note as what it is: a warning, not an excuse. We'll correct confirmed errors.

One more thing

If you're reading this at 2 a.m. because you need a place — start with the directory, check the costs so you know what you're walking into, and make the call in the morning. Houses turn beds over every day. People do get in. I did.

— Shane, Kansas City