Sunshine Sober Living is a family-owned structured sober living residence in Tarzana, about seven miles west of Van Nuys along Victory Boulevard. It houses men and women aged 21 and older who are building long-term recovery while working, studying and attending meetings across the San Fernando Valley. Referrals to licensed treatment are arranged through admissions.
The house stands at 5650 Donna Avenue in Tarzana, a straight run west from Van Nuys Boulevard along Victory Boulevard. People calling from the 91401, 91405, 91406 and 91411 ZIP codes usually want the same thing: a substance-free address with rules, close enough to keep a job and a meeting schedule intact. The drive from Van Nuys takes under half an hour outside rush hour.
Sunshine Sober Living has served the recovery community since 2019 and is family-owned. Residents are men and women aged 21 and older, including people managing co-occurring conditions. Some arrive after residential treatment, some after a medically supervised detox arranged through admissions, and some from a relative’s apartment near Sherman Way where the situation had simply stopped working.
The San Fernando Valley AA Central Office at 16134 Sherman Way in Van Nuys runs a 24-hour helpline and keeps the directory of more than 700 Valley meetings, so a printed schedule is a short walk away.
Sober living is housing, not treatment. A resident rents a bed in a substance-free home, agrees to house rules, takes drug and alcohol tests, keeps a curfew and answers to a house manager. Nobody prescribes medication in a sober living house and nobody runs therapy groups inside one. Families searching for sober living in Van Nuys are often shown something quite different under the same two words.
SAMHSA describes recovery as a process of change supported by four dimensions: health, home, purpose and community. Home sits on that list for a reason. A bed in a house where nobody is using removes the largest daily variable a person faces in early recovery. The framework residents live inside fixes wake times, chores, curfew and meeting commitments, so the decisions that used to be hard are already settled before the day begins.
Residents are adults aged 21 and older who are committed to long-term recovery and able to share a home. That includes women and men carrying co-occurring anxiety, depression or trauma histories, provided they work with an outside therapist or prescriber. It includes people still attending intensive outpatient sessions several evenings a week, and people who finished a program months ago and found an apartment alone far too quiet.
The house is not right for anyone who needs medical withdrawal management, round-the-clock nursing or psychiatric stabilization. That person needs a licensed residential program first, and admissions makes the referral rather than leaving a family to cold-call facilities from a hospital corridor. Sunshine Sober Living works with licensed California treatment facilities and Joint Commission-accredited facilities.
The San Fernando Valley AA Central Office is at 16134 Sherman Way, inside Van Nuys. It is the intergroup office for the entire Valley rather than one district, which is why it stocks literature, staffs a 24-hour helpline and keeps the directory covering more than 700 meetings. Anyone can walk in during office hours and leave with a printed schedule and a number that is answered at three in the morning.
Residents keep their own home groups. Somebody who has spent a year at the same Wednesday night meeting on Sherman Way does not give it up because the bed is now in Tarzana. Rides get coordinated and attendance is checked. The case for living among other people in recovery rests on ordinary, checkable routine rather than on inspiration.
Employment here is institutional and industrial rather than white-collar. The Van Nuys Civic Center, with county and city government, the courthouses and the LAPD Valley Bureau, is the largest institutional employment cluster in the Valley outside CSUN, and The Plant shopping center at 7876 Van Nuys Boulevard, built on the former GM assembly site, holds much of the retail work. Residents keep those jobs.
Transit is usable in this part of the Valley. Metro Rapid 761 and Line 233 run the length of Van Nuys Boulevard, the G Line carries students east to Los Angeles Valley College, and Van Nuys station on Van Nuys Boulevard is served by the Metrolink Ventura County Line and by Amtrak. Travel between Tarzana and Van Nuys is quickest by car, and residents share rides most evenings.
The California Department of Health Care Services does not license, certify or investigate complaints against sober living or transitional living homes. What DHCS does license is any residence providing twenty-four-hour non-medical residential recovery or treatment services. The trigger is the service, not the address: detoxification, individual or group counseling sessions, education sessions, treatment planning or incidental medical services all require a license from the state.
Sunshine Sober Living is recovery housing. It provides a substance-free, structured place to live and refers out for anything that requires that license. Families comparing options should ask every home they call which side of the line it sits on, and what happens when a resident relapses. Reading about the housing step that follows rehab before the discharge date makes that phone call much shorter.
Mornings start early and beds get made. Residents leave for work, school or outpatient appointments, and evenings carry meetings, chores and house business. Weekends loosen but do not disappear. Guests, curfews and testing are governed by written rules that every resident reads before moving in, and in sober living near Van Nuys the house manager is the person who applies them evenly.
Men and women follow the same testing and curfew expectations, though the conversations inside the house differ. Both the women’s program and men’s recovery housing in the same area have their own pages, covering the meetings each group tends to use and what the first month asks of somebody who has just moved in.
A normal week in the Tarzana house includes:
The National Alliance for Recovery Residences sorts recovery housing into four levels, and knowing them makes any phone call about a bed clearer.
| Level | What it looks like | Who tends to need it |
|---|---|---|
| Level I | Peer-run housing, no paid staff, rules set and kept by residents | People with time behind them and steady outside support |
| Level II | Monitored housing with a house manager and structured rules | Most people leaving residential treatment or outpatient care |
| Level III | Supervised housing adding structured programming and credentialed staff | People needing daily programming as well as a sober address |
| Level IV | A clinical service provider with treatment delivered on site | People still requiring licensed clinical care around the clock |
Sunshine Sober Living provides structure and supervision rather than clinical treatment, and admissions will say so plainly on the phone.
From Van Nuys Boulevard at Victory Boulevard, head west on Victory Boulevard about five miles – straight through the Sepulveda Basin – to Reseda Boulevard, south on Reseda Boulevard about a mile to Burbank Boulevard, west on Burbank Boulevard, then north on Donna Avenue. The freeway alternative runs south on Van Nuys Boulevard to US-101 west and off at Reseda Boulevard. That is about 7 miles via Victory Boulevard, about 9 miles via US-101, roughly 18-25 minutes via Victory Boulevard, 15-25 minutes via the freeway off-peak and considerably longer at rush hour through the 405/101 interchange.
Sunshine Sober LivingYes, and most residents do. Work is treated as part of recovery rather than a distraction from it. Schedules are shared with the house manager so curfew, chores and meeting commitments fit around shifts, including early starts and overnight work. Residents commuting back toward the central Valley coordinate rides with each other, which keeps the cost of getting to a job down.
Meeting attendance is expected and checked, and twelve-step groups are the common route because they are free and everywhere in the San Fernando Valley. Residents who prefer another recovery pathway can raise that at intake. What is not negotiable is doing something regular with other people in recovery, in person, on a schedule somebody else can see.
The house responds rather than pretends. A relapse triggers an honest conversation about what level of care is now needed, which may mean returning to outpatient treatment or moving to a licensed residential facility. Because this residence is not a treatment provider and does not manage withdrawal, the next step gets arranged with providers who hold the right license.
Recovery housing and licensed treatment are billed differently, and coverage varies by plan and by the level of care involved. Sunshine Sober Living offers insurance verification through the site rather than guessing over the phone, and nobody here will promise a family that a plan will pay. Verification is free and takes only a short form.
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.
Van Nuys is a renter’s district, with about seventy-four per cent of households renting, and holding on to a stable, substance-free address alone is genuinely hard. A family answers the phone at Sunshine Sober Living on 866-216-9789. Ask what a week costs you in time, ask who runs the house, then start the intake when it feels right. Schedule a Confidential Assessment whenever you are ready.