📝 Planning for a New Home

Build your Team

Core Leadership

Who is the core leadership team?

House Mentor

Link to articles and summarize

Do we need a House Mentor? Details on this.what do you mean details on this?

CPA

Link to articles and summarize

Maintenance

Link to articles and summarize

This is already covered in Area Survey

This should be information on how to structure the outreach efforts.

⚠️ What is good outreach? Good outreach includes any activities that result in referral sources recommending their clients to apply to Vanderburgh House for sober living.

• What does VH do by default?

  • Vanderburgh House Website Home Page

  • Sober House Directory

  • HubSpot pre-loaded with companies, contacts, and referral sources

  • Staff Support
  • Training Resources

• What does the Operator do by default?

  • Provide all available outreach contacts

  • Once trained, all community outreach

• Does Vanderburgh House offer Outreach Services?

Vanderburgh House offers new home outreach services for a fee. Typically, this fee is $6,000, paid up-front upon engaging Vanderburgh House to do a new home outreach duty package.

• Who do I reach out to if I need help?

We have several staff members that are here to support you. This includes our Outreach/Communications Coordinator, our Intake Coordinator, and our Digital Marketing Coordinator. All three of these staff members can help you directly with Outreach. Please contact your designated Operations Manager first so they can pass you along to the best person available.

• Who does my outreach?

Think about your team. This can be all on you, or you can involve your House Mentor, Guests, and Affiliates. 

It’s important to understand what marketing practices can help your home in regard to reputation and resident interest. By now, you’ve already named your home, a business listing was created on Google, and your home is featured on the VH website.

What's next? Go to the Digital Marketing and Print Media articles to learn about a few other things that you should be prepared to do on your own for your sober house, as well as some of the things that we can help with along the way.

Certification Plan

The task for certifying a new home should fall jointly between Outreach and Operations. The certifying agency is often staffed and led by other sober house owners who could be very helpful for new homes.

• All of this information should be communicated to Operations.

Set your Home Policies

📞 Intake Policies

Chartered Operators can decide how involved they wish to be in the telephone screening process. There are several options, and this decision is entirely up to the Chartered Operator. There are no additional charges or discounts depending on which option you select.

Operators must carefully consider how to handle phone screens for new residents. Typically, we recommend having Vanderburgh House handle all telephone screens and new resident approvals. This enables all inquires to be responded to promptly and efficiently. There is no additional charge for Vanderburgh House handling phone screens.

If an Operators wants to handle their own screens, they will have a greater degree of control over the residents in the home, but at the same time will be required to be available at any point during the day to conduct screens or answer questions.

Conducting telephone screens takes up to 30 minutes per applicant, and ends up occupying a considerable amount of time if an Operator wishes to conduct these screens themselves. However, Vanderburgh House takes no responsibility for the quality of telephone screens done.

Chartered Operators should discuss these options with their Operations Manager and/or Intake Coordinator. Chartered Operators are free to change their mind at any time, as well.

🏢 Unity Recovery Housing (URH) Homes | All URH homes, including homes with Contract Operators, have their telephone screens completed by the Intake Team.

There are more intake policies to discuss, which can be covered over time. Start to think about how you would like to handle certain applicant circumstances. A short list is below.

1. Applicants with fewer than 30 days of sobriety

2. Applicants with history of violence

3. Applicants with limited funds when moving in

    

These scenarios come up from time to time, and we ask all Operators to be aware of them, and prepared when having to make decisions. Please discuss each of these scenarios with your Intake Coordinator so they can note your file based on your level of comfort given different situations.

Unity Recovery Housing homes, including homes with Contract Operators, are not subject to this section. This section applies only to Chartered Operators who independently own and operate their home(s).

Operators are required to keep proper accounting books. On a monthly basis, Operators are required to ensure each of the following:

1. All revenue items have been properly recorded

2. All expense items have been properly recorded

3. Bank account statements and/or expense/revenue documentation uploaded

4. Account reconciled in Buildium

Vanderburgh House can perform your required accounting duties at your request. Further, Vanderburgh House will do this work automatically if you, the Chartered Operator, fails to complete your required accounting work on time.

1. Scope of Work

   1. Vanderburgh House will enter revenue items, expense items, and perform the monthly bank account reconciliation

   2. Operator must still provide all supporting documentation, including complete bank statements, in order for this to take place

2. Cost for Services

   1. $100 per Operator, per month, plus

   2. $100 per home, per month

       

Using the House Policies poster as a guide, we ask you to look through the potential categories and develop a plan for your home. Certain policies include how to handle chores, when to schedule a weekly house meeting, trash and recycling policies, charges for air conditioners or space heaters, or other home policies. You can find this template document in the Files tab in 💻 Microsoft Teams. Locate the document in Operator Resources > Template Documents > House Forms.

Some Operators consider lawn mowing and snow care to be regular home chores and the responsibility of residents to do. Some Operators prefer to hire a landscaping company to perform regular lawn care services, and a snow removal company to perform regular snow removal. There is obviously an increased cost to hiring an outside contractor to perform services, but there would also be increased burden and liability for asking residents to participate in this work. Prior to opening a home, we ask all Operators to have a plan in place for this work.

Policy Decision:

1. Residents are responsible for lawn care/snow shoveling as part of their routine chores, or

2. Operator will hire out for these services or perform them personally

If residents desire an air conditioner, space heater, or other high-energy appliance, you are free to allow them to use the appliance within the bounds of your house policies. Typically, this will incur an additional fee charged weekly or monthly.

According to our Vanderburgh House Policies:

“High Energy Appliances: Air conditioners and other high-energy use appliances are allowed only under certain circumstances. Residents may use their own air conditions provided the House Mentor has inspected and approved them. You must assess an additional charge to use these appliances as they consume a significant amount of electricity. Often, this charge is $10 per week per appliance. One resident must be responsible for paying for the unit even if the resident is in a multiple-occupancy room. In Buildium, go to the lease ledger of the responsible resident. Select “recurring charges” and “add a recurring charge” for “high-energy appliances fee income” in the amount of the fee and set the appropriate frequency. This will add charges to their ledger.”

Policy Decision:

1. Residents are not allowed to use air conditioners or space heaters (not recommended)

2. Residents may use air conditioners or space heaters at no additional charge (not recommended)

3. Residents may use air conditioners and space heaters according to the above policy

How will you handle parking? If there is not enough parking available, who gets to park on-site? Why?

The deliverable of this section is a completed Home Policies Poster. When complete, save this document as a PDF it both in Buildium and in the home channel files area.

DEVELOP YOUR RESOURCE DATABASE

• Review this.

• Prepare a list of local recovery resources, similar to the list in the above link.

• Provide this to your Outreach Coordinator or Operations Manager.

• What kinds of local resources are available to sober living residents?

  • Send to Marketing to create a "Recovery Resources in <location> blog post

  • Residents can be referred to this page for assistance in this community

  • We can offer a "perk" for community organizations to be listed, a nice thing to do for people who have assisted us

   

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures! We encourage you to keep an online journal of your home opening process, construction, build out, decorating, amenities, signage etc. You want to build momentum and create excitement about your new home. This will not only help with attracting customers but also new employees. Please provide those photos to us so we can feature them on social media and our websites!

At a minimum, we will need 14 high-resolution images of inside and outside of your home, including one feature image of the front of the home. Please provide these to us as full-color and unedited photos.

1. A description of your home (for examples, visit here.)

   A description of the recovery environment in your community (typically at the city or county-level).

2. A description of you, the Operator

3. A few paragraphs, in the style of a blog post, about the recovery environment in the community where your home is located.

4. Local recovery resources (for the blog post)

When we are opening a new home, we have weekly new home check-in meetings that all involved parties attend.

• Who to contact first?

• What to say?

• Goals to:

  • Set meetings?

  • Conduct tours?

  • Make presentations?

For any weekly review meeting calendar entries, please include a link to this section of this page in the body of the calendar entry.

1. Operations Manager or other leadership

2. Marketing Team leadership

3. Outreach Coordinator

4. Intake Coordinator (optional, but recommended)

    

• Weekly meeting at a set time

• 1 hour, up to 2 hours

• Teams meeting

   

1. Timeline update

2. Review progress expectations from previous week

3. Review outstanding tasks

4. Marketing update

5. Outreach update

6. Intake update

🏢 URH Homes | The budget for new URH homes is set internally by the team responsible for the home, following roughly the same steps as included here for Operators.

• Current occupancy

• Goal to breakeven point

• Goal to desired occupancy (90%+)

   

Breakeven occupancy is the number of residents where the estimated average revenue generated during the month covers all of the home's expenses during the month. This estimate can be calculated using the Sober House Financial Calculator.

• An estimated breakeven occupancy rate is prepared in the Sober House Financial Calculator

  • Locate it on the "Instructions & Assumptions" tab

• Will be displayed as "Number of Residents"

  • e.g. 14.6 out of 22 residents

     

Target Breakeven Occupancy: 4 months from open

Residents per Month

• Take the total residents required for breakeven

• Divide by 4 (if that is our target)

• The result will be our targeted residents-per-month required

Stable occupancy is a rate of occupancy at the assumed vacancy rate, also found in the Sober House Financial Calculator. Stable occupancy is generally between 80 to 86%.

Target Stable Occupancy: 6 months from open

Residents per Month

• Take the total residents required for breakeven

• Divide by 4 (if that is our target)

• The result will be our targeted residents-per-month required

• Take the higher of the two numbers calculated above

• This is your target required residents per month

• Timeline

• Month-over-month goals

To reach 3 or 4 requires significant investment of time and money.

Determine a budget for the project. What is an appropriate budget for the need? Bear in mind: if we can get to capacity a month sooner, it's worth a significant amount of money.

• How much time are you able to invest

• $6,000 is the standard budget

• New Home Outreach Package

• This usually takes the form of a New Home Outreach Project

• Allocate VH staff time and costs

• $6,000 for standard New Home Outreach Project

1. Recommended roughly $6,000

2. Staff resources

3. Travel costs

4. Events

• This pays for 240 hours of staff time

• Plus staff travel and lodging, etc.

• Performed over a 12-week period

  • Starting 6 weeks prior to opening

  • Ending 6 weeks after opening

Timeline (240 total hours)

• $3,200 is standard

• To be determined

• Search advertising

• Social media advertising

• Radio

• Other marketing spending

• $800 is standard

• Generic marketing materials

• Print marketing materials

• We recommend $800 for a new home, with a range of $500-1,000 for a new home

How are payments handled?

Ordering direct from VistaPrint?