Sober Living Companion is a program of Empower Next Project, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) non-profit (EIN 39-3580172). The resident app is free, forever. What homes pay for memberships helps fund rent assistance and free transitional counseling for people in early recovery — read our mission.
Residents pay from their own phone. Partial payments are tracked. You see every balance in one place — and you stop being the person who has to ask.
If you run a sober living home, you already know the ritual. It's the 3rd. Four people haven't paid. You send a message to the house thread — carefully worded, because you don't want to shame anyone — and then you wait. Someone replies "I paid you Friday." Someone else goes quiet. A third person tells you in the kitchen that they'll have it Thursday, and you write it on a sticky note that you will lose.
The cost of this isn't administrative. It's relational. The moment you become the person who asks about money, you stop being the person someone tells the truth to. A resident who owes you $400 and knows you know it will avoid you in the hallway — and skip the conversation where they might have mentioned they're struggling. Rent is quietly the most common source of conflict in a house, and it's conflict between exactly the two people who most need to trust each other.
Cash makes it worse. Cash with no receipt is a disagreement waiting to happen, and these disagreements are usually honest ones — not fraud, just two people with two different memories and nothing written down. "I gave you $200 on the 5th." Maybe they did. You genuinely don't remember. Now you're choosing between eating the money or calling someone in early recovery a liar.
And then there's the thing spreadsheets handle worst of all: people in early recovery frequently cannot pay a full month at once. They're 40 days sober, working a new job, getting paid weekly, and paying you in pieces — $150 now, $200 next Friday, the rest when it comes. That's not a red flag. That's normal, and it's often a sign someone is trying hard. But a spreadsheet with a "Paid?" column has one honest answer for that person, and the answer is "No." It flattens genuine effort into a blank cell.
Deliberately simple. Here is the whole of it, with nothing dressed up.
Every resident in a participating home gets the Sober Living Companion app free, on iPhone or Android. Paying rent or a membership fee is a few taps inside the app they already use for their sober-day counter and their meeting check-ins. No one has to find you, catch you, or come to the office.
Residents pay with a credit or debit card, Cash App, Zelle or Venmo — whichever they actually use — or through your own payment link if you already collect online. Cash and check payments are recorded in a tap, so every payment lands on the same balance. That matters more than it sounds: people in early recovery often don't have a traditional banking relationship, and Cash App, Venmo or cash may be the only way they move money.
This is the part operators tell us matters. If rent is $800, due on the 1st, and a resident pays $300, the app records $300 paid and $500 remaining — and both of you see the same number. Paying in pieces stops being an off-the-books arrangement in your head and becomes a visible, shared, honest record of progress.
The operator dashboard shows payment status for every resident, and across multiple houses if you run more than one. Who's current, who's partway, who hasn't started — on one screen, without a group text and without asking a house manager to check.
An illustration of a tracked partial payment — the same balance the resident sees in their app and you see on your dashboard.
What we don't claim: there are no automated late fees, no dunning, no ACH, no invoicing and no accounting integrations (payments export to CSV and a QuickBooks-friendly format). What exists: payment by card, Cash App, Zelle, Venmo, cash, check or your own payment link; optional monthly auto-pay by card through your own Stripe account; push rent reminders to residents 3 days and 1 day before rent is due and on the due day; overdue alerts to your staff; emailed receipts you can send for any recorded payment; partial payments tracked; and a balance both sides can see.
Whether your house calls it rent, a program fee or a membership, a sober living payment works the same way for the resident: open the free app, pick the method they actually use, and the payment lands on the same balance you see.
Credit and debit card payments go to your home's own Stripe account and post to the resident's balance right away. A resident can turn on monthly card auto-pay, or text or email a secure card payment link to a parent or loved one who is helping with rent — the payment still credits the resident.
The app opens Cash App or Venmo to your home's handle. After sending, the resident taps one button to notify staff, and the payment shows as reported on the balance until a manager confirms it arrived.
The app shows your home's Zelle contact. The resident sends it from their own banking app, then taps "I sent it via Zelle" so staff get a notice and confirm it once it lands.
Already collecting through another platform? Add that link and residents pay there, then tap "I paid" so the payment is recorded on their balance once you confirm it.
Cash and check still work. Staff record them in a tap, and a resident who hands over cash can tap "I paid cash" to notify their manager — so the payment is written down somewhere other than a sticky note.
For any confirmed or recorded payment, whatever the method, staff can email the resident a receipt branded to your home (it goes to the email on their profile). The running balance stays in the resident's app either way.
Partial payments, rent reminders and the multi-house view are covered in how rent collection works; what payment processors charge is in pricing. Residents need only the free resident app and a home that uses Sober Living Companion.
Here's the argument, and it's the real reason we built it this way.
A person in early recovery has usually spent years being asked about things. Where were you. Did you use. Where did the money go. Being asked is the texture of the whole experience, and by the time someone lands in your house they have well-practiced defenses against it — deflection, avoidance, a story. Those defenses aren't aimed at you personally. They're just on.
So when you ask about rent, you're pulling a lever that was installed long before you met. The question, however kindly you ask it, lands as one more accusation in a long series. The honest thing to notice is that the asking is the problem, not the money.
Now change one variable. The resident opens their phone and sees: $300 of $800 paid, $500 remaining, due the 1st. Nobody told them. Nobody pulled them aside. The information is simply theirs, available at 11pm on a Tuesday when they're thinking about it and nobody is looking at them. They can act on it privately, on their own terms, from their own dignity rather than in response to pressure.
What that does to your job is not small. You stop being collections and go back to being support. The conversation shifts from "where's the rent" to "I noticed you're a bit behind — what's going on with work?" — which is an actual recovery conversation, the kind you got into this work to have. You're on the same side of the table, looking at the same number, instead of across from each other negotiating over whose memory is right.
It also gives you something a spreadsheet can't: visible partial credit. A resident who has paid $300 of $800 has done something, and the app says so. That person is not a blank cell. They're someone who is trying, and can see themselves trying — which is, in early recovery, not a trivial thing to be able to see.
Better software doesn't create money that isn't there. Some months a resident is simply short, and the tracking just makes visible what was already true.
That's why we're a non-profit rather than a payments company. Empower Next Project exists partly because people can't make rent — a single missed payment can put someone in early recovery back on the street and end their recovery outright. Rent assistance is one of our four programs, alongside the free resident app, free transitional counseling, and affordable tools for homes.
So if you can see on the dashboard that someone is about to lose their bed over a few hundred dollars, call us before you make that decision. There's no application form and no eligibility table — just a phone number and a person on the other end of it. Funds are limited and we can't help everyone, but calling early gives us the best chance.
Rent collection comes with everything else in the same $60/month: resident tracking, drug test (UA) logging, bed and occupancy management, overnight and multi-day passes, curfew GPS check-ins, meeting attendance, documents, e-signed agreements, multi-house dashboards, and CSV import if you're moving off other software.
See the whole thing on our sober living management software page.
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One honest footnote: payment processors charge their own fees on card and transfer payments. Those go to the processor, not to us, and we're not going to quote you a rate we don't set. The $60 is what we charge.
Residents pay from the Sober Living Companion app on their own phone. The app is free for every resident on iPhone and Android. Credit and debit cards (through your own Stripe account), Cash App, Zelle, Venmo and your own custom payment link are supported, and cash or check payments are recorded on the resident's balance in a tap.
Yes. A resident opens the free Sober Living Companion app on their phone and pays by card through the home's own Stripe account (with optional monthly auto-pay), or by Cash App, Zelle, Venmo or the home's own payment link. Each payment is recorded on the same balance the house sees; Cash App, Zelle, Venmo and payment-link payments show as reported until staff confirm them. Cash and check are still accepted and recorded by staff. There is no separate portal or login — just the app and a home that uses Sober Living Companion.
Yes. Partial payments are tracked against the balance. If rent is $800 and a resident pays $300, both the resident and the operator see $300 paid and $500 remaining. Payments in pieces are normal in early recovery, and the app is built to show progress rather than only pass or fail.
Only if the resident chooses. A resident can set up monthly auto-pay by card through your Stripe account; otherwise they pay when they choose. The app sends residents a push reminder 3 days and 1 day before rent is due and on the due day, and alerts your staff when rent is 1, 3 or 7 days overdue. There are no automated late fees.
Sober Living Companion is a flat $60 per month with unlimited residents, and the first month is free. The resident app is always free. Payment processors charge their own separate fees on card and transfer payments, which are set by the processor and not by us.
Yes. The operator dashboard shows payment status across residents and across houses, so you can see who is current and who is behind without opening a spreadsheet or texting a manager.
Call us at (916) 877-6237 or email info@empowernextproject.org. Sober Living Companion is a program of Empower Next Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and rent assistance for people in early recovery is one of our programs. There is no application form to fill out — talk to a person. Funds are limited and we can't help everyone, but calling early gives us the best chance.
Flat $60/month after that, unlimited residents, and it funds rent assistance and counseling for people in early recovery. See where the money goes.
