Steps House, Inc.

About Steps House, Inc.

Steps House, Inc. is a sober living operator in Knoxville, Tennessee, providing recovery housing in Knox County. It holds eight addresses in the city, clustered in South Knoxville and along the North Knoxville corridors, and it runs both coed and women's houses.

A Knoxville Recovery Housing Provider

This is a housing organization working in one city. The houses supply an address, a household and peer accountability, and clinical care comes from providers elsewhere in Knox County. Residents keep their own prescribers, counselors and meetings. What an operator of this size actually offers a resident is local decision-making and more than one room: admissions, transfers and discharge are handled by people in Knoxville, and a placement that turns out wrong can often be fixed inside the same program.

Sober Houses in South and North Knoxville

The addresses listed with this operator are:

• 1004 Valley Avenue, Knoxville, coed.
• 1029 Valley Avenue, Knoxville, coed.
• 1033 Valley Avenue, Knoxville, coed.
• 915 Valley Avenue, Knoxville, coed.
• Codger Hall, on Sevier Avenue in Knoxville, coed.
• Lippencott Street, Knoxville, for women.
• Chicago Avenue, Knoxville, for women.
• North Central Street, Knoxville, for women.

Five sit in South Knoxville, four of them on a single Valley Avenue block and one on the Sevier Avenue strip across the river from downtown. The other three are in North Knoxville on and near the Broadway and North Central corridors. The clustering is the operator's most useful feature: changing houses inside the program usually leaves a resident's job, bus route and home meeting unchanged.

Women's and Coed Sober Homes Under One Operator

Three of the eight houses serve women only and five are coed. Keeping the split at the house level means the rules, bathrooms and house meetings in a women's residence are written for one population, while the coed houses carry a separate set of expectations about assignment and conduct. A woman applying here is considered for three addresses across two sides of the city, which is more choice than most single-house operators in East Tennessee can offer. Anyone applying should name the side of the city that works for their job and their family.

How Tennessee Certifies Recovery Housing

Tennessee requires recovery residences to be certified, and the state recognizes two certifying bodies: the Tennessee Alliance of Recovery Residences, the state affiliate of the National Alliance for Recovery Residences, and Recovery is the New High. The two keep separate lists, so a house certified by one will not appear on the other's directory. Certification binds a residence to a published code of ethics, written disclosure of fees and rules before move-in, a written relapse and discharge policy, and a complaint process outside the house. Asking an operator which body certifies its houses, and asking for the documentation, is the single most useful question in a Tennessee search.

Questions to Ask This Sober Living Operator

Operator-level questions differ from questions about a particular address. How long has the organization housed people in Knoxville. Does it take referrals from treatment providers, the courts or the county. How are fees and deposits documented, and does a deposit follow a resident who transfers between houses. How does a complaint escalate past the house manager, and to whom. What is the policy on medication for opioid use disorder across the whole program. An operator running eight houses in one county should have all of those answers ready in writing.