Sunshine Sober Living provides structured sober living for women aged twenty-one and older at 5650 Donna Avenue in Tarzana, roughly fifteen minutes from Canoga Park. The house is substance-free and rule-bound, and residents keep their jobs, their families, their therapists and their outpatient care while they rebuild a stable daily life.
Women calling from Canoga Park tend to raise three things in the first five minutes: whether it is safe, whether they can still see their children, and what it costs. Those are reasonable questions and they get direct answers. This is a district where most households rent and budgets are already tight, so the money question is never an afterthought.
Sunshine Sober Living is family-owned, has served the recovery community since 2019, and Wendy Goldberg directs admissions herself. Women aged twenty-one and older are welcome, including those managing co-occurring conditions. The general picture for this district sits on its own page, and the men’s side of the house is described separately for families weighing both at once.
The Sunday Surrender NA meeting at Canoga Park Presbyterian Church, 22103 Vanowen Street, is the anchor many women from this district build the rest of their week around.
A locked front door, a bed that is hers, and rules that apply to everyone equally. Women’s sober living in Canoga Park usually comes down to the difference between an address that can be planned around and a run of short stays among people who are not sober. Sunshine Sober Living is recovery housing rather than treatment: no clinical program runs inside the house, and clinical needs go to licensed California providers. The women’s program in broader terms sets out the standard.
The house is not a facility and does not feel like one. It is a residential home on a quiet Tarzana street, two blocks from the Tarzana Recreation Center and fifteen to twenty-two minutes away on surface streets. Residents cook, shop, keep their own phones and see their own doctors. What separates it from an ordinary rental is the accountability attached to the room: testing, curfew, chores, a house meeting and occupied days.
Safety in recovery housing is mostly procedural rather than dramatic. Everyone in the residence is a screened resident and not a walk-in. There is a curfew and a sign-out. Guests are not casual. Belongings are checked on arrival, because a substance-free house has to be substance-free in fact and not only in policy. A woman leaving a situation she does not want followed to her can raise that with admissions before intake rather than after.
Privacy is treated as a practical matter too. What a resident chooses to disclose to housemates is her decision, and what she tells an employer is nobody else’s business. The reasons families choose this house include the fact that it is small and family-owned rather than institutional, and that the people answering the phone are the same people running the program.
Canoga Park Presbyterian Church at 22103 Vanowen Street hosts the Sunday Surrender NA meeting, which appears on the San Fernando Valley NA west end meeting list. It is a straightforward room for someone who has been away from the fellowships for a while, and Vanowen Street is served by Metro Lines 164 and 165. Building a week around one dependable meeting is worth more than sampling six and settling on none.
Residents are expected to be in meetings, with a sponsor in time and a home group after that. Which fellowship and which room stays the resident’s choice; the house simply checks that it happened. Women who want a women-only room usually find one within a few miles and get help working out how to reach it around a shift pattern.
Most women coming from Canoga Park carry obligations that do not pause. A pickup at Canoga Park High School on Topanga Canyon Boulevard, a shift at Westfield Topanga, a class, a court date, a parent who depends on them. Women’s sober living in Canoga Park has to fit around all of that or it does not work at all. Recovery housing is built for precisely this: residents stay connected to family, work and school instead of disappearing for a month.
The logistics get worked out person by person. Metro Line 162 runs the length of Sherman Way, past the Canoga Park Branch Library at 20939 Sherman Way, and the Lanark Recreation Center and Lanark Pool at 21816 Lanark Street is the kind of place a Saturday afternoon with children can happen without a bar attached. The weekly structure is firm about curfew and not at all indifferent to a custody schedule.
Sunshine Sober Living houses women with co-occurring conditions and does not treat them, which is a distinction worth stating out loud. Therapy, psychiatry and medication management stay with the licensed clinicians a resident already has, or with providers admissions can refer her to. Where a woman needs a clinical program running alongside her housing, intensive outpatient treatment takes place during the day and residents attend it from the house.
What the house contributes to a hard week is not clinical. It is a routine, people who notice a change in someone’s face, and the plain absence of alcohol in the kitchen at nine in the evening. Those turn out not to be small things. Anything beyond that scope is referred out, and admissions works with licensed California facilities and Joint Commission-accredited providers to arrange it.
A 2023 study of 455 sober living house residents found that those who stayed at least six months had significantly more days abstinent, fewer psychiatric and depression symptoms, and lower odds of an ongoing substance use disorder or legal problems than residents who left earlier. Six months sounds like a long time to commit to when you are two weeks out of treatment. It is also the number that keeps turning up in the evidence.
SAMHSA’s recovery housing guidance points the same way, citing research in which recovery housing residents showed substance use of 31.3 percent against 64.8 percent in a usual-care comparison group, and recommending that housing be paired with evidence-based outpatient treatment rather than left to stand alone. Leaving sober living too early is the counterweight worth reading before anyone fixes a departure date.
It helps to be clear about which parts of a life the program takes on and which parts remain entirely a resident’s own.
| Area of life | What the house holds | What stays hers |
|---|---|---|
| Housing | A substance-free address, house rules and a curfew | Her room and her belongings |
| Health care | Referrals and a schedule that protects appointments | Her doctors, therapist and medication |
| Money and work | An expectation that daytime hours are occupied | Her job, her paycheck, her budget |
| Recovery | Attendance checked and meetings built into the week | Her fellowship, sponsor and home group |
Questions about what a stay costs are answered directly on the phone, and what sober living costs across Los Angeles gives the wider context.
The house is about 5.5 miles by surface streets, about 7 miles via US-101 from Canoga Park, roughly 15-22 minutes on surface streets, 13-20 minutes via the freeway. The full route, turn by turn, is on the directions page below.
Sunshine Sober LivingThe residence houses adults aged twenty-one and older, and family arrangements have to be discussed with admissions directly rather than assumed from a web page. What the program does support is a continuing relationship with children: visits, phone calls, school events and custody schedules are worked around the house routine wherever the timetable allows. Call 866-216-9789 and ask about the specific situation.
Sober living is housing rather than clinical treatment, so it is not billed the way a treatment episode is billed. Insurance more often applies to the outpatient or residential care a resident attends alongside the house. Verification is available through the insurance page on this site, and admissions will explain plainly what a policy is likely to reach and what it will not. Nobody promises in advance what a plan will pay.
Mutual-aid attendance is expected; the particular fellowship is not dictated. Some residents build a week around AA, some around NA, and some around other recovery meetings entirely. What the house asks is that the commitment is real, consistent and honestly reported. Rooms within reach include the Sunday Surrender meeting on Vanowen Street, which is a short ride from most of Canoga Park.
Readiness usually looks like several things arriving together: steady work or school, a sponsor and a home group, savings that cover a deposit, and a decided next address. The date is better set with the program director than alone during a good week. Leaving because everything currently feels fine is a different thing from leaving because a plan has been finished.
Sometimes. Residents are people committed to long-term recovery, and while some arrive from residential treatment, others come from an outpatient program or from a stretch of sobriety that is not holding where they currently live. Admissions asks about recent use and medical needs, and refers to a licensed provider for detox or residential care where housing alone is the wrong starting point.
Sunshine Sober Living provides structured recovery housing and transitional living. Medical detoxification, residential clinical treatment and other higher levels of care are provided by appropriately licensed treatment providers, and our admissions team can arrange a referral. Recovery is personal, and no sober living program can guarantee a particular outcome. 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.
Canoga Park to Tarzana is a short drive, and it is often the distance between a household that is pulling someone under and a house that is holding her up. Call 866-216-9789 to schedule a confidential assessment with Wendy Goldberg, or send the details through the contact page and admissions will call you back.