What the Certified badge means

The National Alliance for Recovery Residences (NARR) publishes national quality standards for recovery housing. In most states, a NARR-affiliated certifying body — for example FARR in Florida, TROHN in Texas, or Ohio Recovery Housing — inspects and certifies individual residences against those standards, then lists certified homes on a public registry. We regularly check those public registries and mark a home as Certified when it appears on the registry for its state. We name the certifying body on each listing.

Certification programs typically review a residence’s safety and habitability, house policies, resident rights, staffing or peer-leadership model, and financial practices, at the level the certifying body assigns (NARR describes four levels of support). A certified home has been independently reviewed by people whose job is recovery-housing quality — a meaningfully higher bar than a listing that has only a phone number and an address.

A Certified badge is not a guarantee of outcomes, a medical endorsement, or a recommendation by Sober Living Central. Certification status can change; we refresh registry data regularly, but always confirm current status directly with the certifying body before making a decision. Homes without the badge are not necessarily uncertified — some operate in states without an active NARR affiliate, and some choose not to pursue certification.

If your residence is certified and we haven’t badged it — or you’ve been newly certified — contact us via the claim page and we’ll verify against your state registry and update your listing. Certification display is always free and is never conditioned on payment; it reflects the public registry, nothing else.