Ownership, status and conduct

Who we are

What we are, in regulatory terms

Aftermath Rehabilitation is a recovery residence: transitional sober housing. We provide housing and a structured, sober living environment. We do not provide treatment.

In California, a facility that provides any of detoxification, group sessions, individual sessions, educational sessions, or recovery and treatment planning in a residential setting must be licensed by the Department of Health Care Services under Health and Safety Code section 11834.01. We provide none of those, and we are therefore not a licensed treatment facility and do not hold ourselves out as one. Residents work with their own licensed providers.

That distinction is the whole point of this page. A residence that describes itself as a treatment facility without the license to be one is misleading people, and a residence that quietly starts providing treatment without a license is committing an offense.

Certifications and memberships

[LIST ANY, OR SAY "none at this time". Recovery residences in California may voluntarily certify through CCAPP or a NARR affiliate. Do not imply a certification that does not exist; it is verifiable and claiming one falsely is exactly what regulators look for.]

Local permissions

California law treats a residential facility serving six or fewer people as an ordinary residential use of property, which may not be subjected to conditional use permit or business license requirements that other family dwellings are not subject to. Our capacity is eight, so we do not rely on that provision. We meet whatever local zoning, permitting and occupancy requirements the City of Taft and Kern County apply to this property at this capacity, and the details are in the table above.

[CONFIRM WITH THE CITY OF TAFT AND WITH COUNSEL BEFORE THIS GOES LIVE: raising capacity from six to eight moves this home out of the six-or-fewer protection and may trigger a conditional use permit, a business license, or a fire clearance that was not previously required. Fill in the Local permissions table above with what actually applies, or take this paragraph down.]

Verify it yourself

• California business entity search: bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov
• DHCS publishes a searchable list of licensed and certified treatment facilities: dhcs.ca.gov. We will not be on it, because we are housing rather than treatment.
• SAMHSA's national treatment locator: findtreatment.gov

How we conduct ourselves

These are commitments, and they are here so you can hold us to them.

• No paying for residents, in either direction. We do not pay, and do not accept, any commission, kickback, bonus or thing of value for a referral. This is required of us by the federal Eliminating Kickbacks in Recovery Act (18 U.S.C. § 220), by the federal Anti-Kickback Statute where federal funds are involved, and by California Health and Safety Code section 11831.7.
• No false or misleading marketing. California Health and Safety Code section 11831.6 prohibits false or misleading statements about services, licenses, certifications and affiliations in this field. Nothing on this website may state or imply a service we do not provide or a status we do not hold. That is why the site says, repeatedly, that we are not a treatment center.
• No call aggregators or lead brokers. Our phone number goes to us. It is not sold, routed or shared with a third-party call center that sells calls to whoever is buying.
• No fake reviews and no invented statistics. There are no testimonials on this site. Any that are ever published will be from a real, identified person who gave written permission, with any material connection disclosed, as the FTC requires. Any success figure will state how it was measured, or it will not be published.
• All charges in writing before move-in, including rent, any deposit, and what happens to money already paid if a placement ends early.
• Nobody is discharged onto the street. If a placement ends, for any reason, we arrange somewhere and get the person there.

Fair housing

People in recovery from substance use disorder are protected under the federal Fair Housing Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. We do not refuse anybody housing because they take medication for opioid use disorder, because of their HIV or hepatitis status, because of a mental health diagnosis, or on the basis of any protected characteristic. See the nondiscrimination notice.

We state this plainly because neighborhood opposition to recovery residences is common, and residents should know where they stand.

Photography on this website

The exterior and yard photographs are of the actual home. The interior photographs are still stock images. The outside of the house, the back yard and the picnic table were photographed here. The living room, bedrooms, kitchen and bathroom shown on the site are licensed for commercial use from Unsplash and stand in for the real rooms while those photographs are taken. Every stock image is captioned as illustrative on the page it appears on.

No image on this site depicts a resident. The street number has been retouched out of the photographs of the home, because we do not publish the address.

We say so because a recovery residence showing somebody else's house as its own is exactly the sort of small dishonesty that makes people distrust this whole industry. This section will be updated as the remaining stock images are replaced.

Reporting a problem

If anything on this page turns out to be wrong, or if you believe we have breached one of the commitments above, tell us and tell an outside agency. Both routes are on the complaints page.