Vanderburgh Sober Living Rent & Startup Cost Index, 2026 Edition — Dataset

The Vanderburgh Sober Living Rent & Startup Cost Index estimates what a sober living bed rents for, what it costs to open a sober living home, and what the resulting home earns, in each of the 50 U.S. states. Every figure is modeled. The weekly per-bed rate is produced by an ordinary least squares regression of observed weekly bed rates on state median gross rent from the American Community Survey, fitted in 2025 against a market survey of 180 recovery residences across the United States and explaining 81 percent of the variance in those rates. One-time startup cost is modeled along two entry paths, purchasing the property and leasing it, each combining a path-specific capital component with four fixed cost bases indexed to state cost of living. Operating economics come from a reference pro forma for a Level II recovery residence with a uniform 14 beds and 18 percent vacancy in every state. Across the 50 states the modeled weekly rate spans $140 to $240, purchase-path startup spans $56,430 to $178,514, lease-path startup spans $13,458 to $28,495, monthly net income before labor spans $3,068 to $5,952, breakeven occupancy spans 34.1 to 49.3 percent, and annual cash-on-cash return spans 31.8 to 88.0 percent. Every constant is published so a reader can substitute their own financing terms, home size, or occupancy assumption and recompute. The published state figures are model outputs rather than measurements taken in that state. The full report is published at https://www.vanderburghhouse.com/research/rent-startup-cost-index-2026/.