Sunshine Sober Living is a family-owned structured sober living residence at 5650 Donna Avenue in Tarzana, California. The house serves men and women aged 21 and older who are committed to long-term recovery, offering a substance-free address in the West San Fernando Valley within reach of local meetings, outpatient care, work and school.
Tarzana is the home city. The house sits north of Burbank Boulevard, between Wilbur Avenue and Vanalden Avenue, two blocks from the Tarzana Recreation Center on Vanalden Avenue. Residents walk down to Ventura Boulevard for a job interview, a shift, a bank errand or a dental appointment, then come back to a quiet street of single-storey ranch houses and mature trees.
Sunshine Sober Living has served the recovery community since 2019 and is family-owned. Richard Goldberg founded it with Wendy Goldberg, who directs admissions, and Elliot Leonard runs the program day to day. Separate pages cover the men’s house in Tarzana and sober living for women here. This page is the overview of sober living in Tarzana that sits above them.
The Tarzana Speaker AA meeting at St. Innocent Orthodox Church, 5657 Lindley Avenue, is about a mile east of the house on Donna Avenue.
Sober living in Tarzana means a shared, substance-free home with house rules, an agreed daily rhythm and people who notice when someone goes quiet. Sunshine Sober Living is recovery housing. It is not a detox, not a rehab and not an intensive outpatient program. Where a resident needs one of those levels of care, admissions refers out to licensed California providers and Joint Commission-accredited facilities, and can arrange supervised withdrawal management or residential treatment.
SAMHSA’s working definition of recovery names four dimensions that hold a life together: health, home, purpose and community. Housing is not an extra in that framework, it is one of the four pillars. That is the plain argument for a bed on a residential Tarzana street instead of a couch or a motel on the boulevard. The address stays the same, and the week has a shape a person can plan around.
Residents are men and women aged 21 and older who are committed to long-term recovery, including people living with co-occurring conditions. Some arrive straight from residential treatment. Some have been sober for months but live somewhere that keeps undoing the work. Others are already in outpatient care nearby. For the two deeper angles, read what recovery housing on this street involves or the transitional living option nearby.
People who tend to do well here include:
North of Ventura Boulevard, where Donna Avenue runs, Tarzana is a flat 1950s and 1960s tract grid: single-storey ranch houses on generous lots, mature street trees, duplexes and small apartment buildings along the wider avenues. The Tarzana Recreation Center at 5655 Vanalden Avenue is two blocks away, and the Encino-Tarzana Branch Library at 18231 Ventura Boulevard is an errand on foot. South of the boulevard the land climbs toward El Caballero Country Club, and the Caballero Canyon trailhead at the end of Reseda Boulevard opens into Topanga State Park.
St. Innocent Orthodox Church at 5657 Lindley Avenue hosts the Tarzana Speaker AA meeting, listed by the San Fernando Valley AA Central Office, about a mile east of Donna Avenue. Tarzana Treatment Centers at 18646 Oxnard Street is the largest treatment provider in the neighborhood and a listed NA meeting location, roughly a mile from the house. Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center at 18321 Clark Street handles emergency and specialist care.
Proximity matters more than it looks. In an eighteen-month study of 245 sober living house residents, abstinence rose from 17 per cent at entry to 45.5 per cent at six months and 49.1 per cent at twelve, arrests fell from 41.9 per cent to 22 per cent, and 12-step involvement predicted nearly every outcome measured. A meeting a mile away gets attended. Admissions can also coordinate outpatient treatment referrals alongside a bed.
US-101, the Ventura Freeway, runs east to west across the north of the neighborhood, which puts most of the Valley within a short drive. Exit 23 is Reseda Boulevard, Exit 24 is Tampa Avenue and Exit 22 is White Oak Avenue, and I-405 is roughly five miles east. Residents with jobs in Warner Center or shifts at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center drive it daily. First-time visitors can follow the turn-by-turn route to Donna Avenue.
Residents without a car are not stranded. Metro G Line busway stations sit at Reseda, on Reseda Boulevard with a 442-space park-and-ride, and at Tampa Avenue, both roughly a mile and a half north on Victory Boulevard, and the G Line runs east to North Hollywood for the B Line subway. Metro Line 240 covers Ventura Boulevard and Reseda Boulevard, Metro Line 150 runs the length of Ventura Boulevard, and California State University Northridge is about seven miles north up Reseda Boulevard.
Wendy Goldberg takes admissions calls. The first conversation is a confidential assessment: what has already been tried, what level of care fits, whether a bed here is the right recommendation at all, and what the household would look like for the person calling. If a higher level of care is the honest answer, that is what gets said.
Insurance verification runs through the Verify Insurance page on this site. It is a check rather than a promise, because coverage depends on the individual plan. Families who prefer to move at their own pace can complete the new client intake form first and talk afterward. Elliot Leonard, the Program Director, shapes the week once someone moves in.
These addresses come up most often in a week of sober living in Tarzana.
| Destination | Address and distance | What residents use it for |
|---|---|---|
| Tarzana Recreation Center | 5655 Vanalden Avenue, two blocks away | Walking, exercise and unstructured downtime |
| St. Innocent Orthodox Church | 5657 Lindley Avenue, about a mile east | The Tarzana Speaker AA meeting |
| Tarzana Treatment Centers | 18646 Oxnard Street, roughly a mile away | Outpatient care and a listed NA meeting location |
| Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center | 18321 Clark Street | Emergency care and specialist appointments |
| Metro G Line Reseda station | Reseda Boulevard, about 1.5 miles north on Victory Boulevard | Commuting east toward North Hollywood |
Everything on this list is a walk, a bike ride or a few minutes in the car.
Donna Avenue sits in the quiet residential grid just north of Burbank Boulevard, between Wilbur Avenue and Vanalden Avenue, two blocks from Tarzana Recreation Center. From US-101 the usual approach is Exit 23 (Reseda Boulevard), north on Reseda Boulevard to Burbank Boulevard, west on Burbank Boulevard, then north on Donna Avenue. That is about 1.5 miles from the Reseda Boulevard off-ramp, roughly 4-8 minutes from the freeway in normal traffic.
Sunshine Sober LivingResidents are men and women aged 21 and older. The house is family-owned and has served the recovery community since 2019, and it accepts adults committed to long-term recovery, including people managing co-occurring conditions alongside a substance use disorder. Admissions looks at readiness and fit for the household rather than at a number on an identification card.
Yes. Sunshine Sober Living is recovery housing rather than a clinical facility, so residents keep the outside providers they already trust and stay connected to family, work, school and 12-step meetings. Tarzana makes that straightforward, with medical and dental suites along the Ventura Boulevard corridor. Where someone arrives without a provider, admissions can arrange a referral to a licensed California facility.
Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center at 18321 Clark Street is the neighborhood hospital, and it anchors a strong medical-professional presence in Tarzana. Encino Hospital Medical Center at 16237 Ventura Boulevard and Kaiser Permanente Woodland Hills Medical Center at 5601 De Soto Avenue are the other two within easy reach. Tarzana Treatment Centers on Oxnard Street covers treatment rather than emergency medicine.
St. Innocent Orthodox Church at 5657 Lindley Avenue is about a mile east of Donna Avenue and hosts the Tarzana Speaker AA meeting listed by the San Fernando Valley AA Central Office. Tarzana Treatment Centers on Oxnard Street sits roughly a mile from the house and is a listed NA meeting location. Missing a meeting becomes a choice rather than a logistics problem.
Verification is available through the Verify Insurance page on this website, and it tells you what a specific plan will and will not do. Coverage always depends on the policy itself, and nothing is promised in advance. Admissions also works with licensed California treatment facilities and Joint Commission-accredited facilities, so a referral can be arranged where a plan points toward detox, rehabilitation or outpatient care.
What we run is recovery housing: a substance-free address with rules, accountability and peer support. Clinical treatment belongs with licensed providers, and admissions can arrange that referral. Nobody, including us, can guarantee how any individual recovery will go. If you or someone you love needs immediate help, the SAMHSA National Helpline is free and confidential on 1-800-662-4357, 24 hours a day.
If Tarzana is already your neighborhood, the house on Donna Avenue is a few minutes from wherever you are reading this. Call 866-216-9789 to schedule a confidential assessment, or write to the house directly and ask whatever you need to ask first. Wendy Goldberg answers admissions questions without pressure. Sunshine Sober Living is rated 4.7 out of 5 by local reviewers.