I am a gay male who ended up homeless due to meth addiction, and I am truly fortunate to be living in a home like this.

Growing up gay kept me from having a lot of the natural nurturing and bonding straight boys got from their fathers. And so much of the daily-life parenting that needed to happen didn’t. Did you feel like you weren’t handed the instruction manual to life? I know I did.

At Rainbow Hill not only is there a house manager (Steven Stewart), but the two owners (Joey Bachrach and Andrew Fox) are at the house daily. There is always a sober role model here because—as we know with early recovery—our thinking may not be the most reliable.

Joey, Andrew, and Steven actually want to get to know you. They express curiosity after your job or volunteering interview, congratulate you after you land the job, and help you make decisions around time and resource management so you don’t get burned out. We need to have fun and time for ourselves too. Maybe you’ve had a hard day and just need someone to tell you that it’s going to be okay, or today was your 60 days clean and sober and they hug you and tell you how proud they are of you.

In early recovery we’re learning to feel and deal with our emotions, and a natural instinct is to want to isolate. Well, when one of these three guys sits down with you in the morning to ask about your day ahead or at night to see how your day went, isolating is a little more challenging here than it is at other sober livings. Connection is a must when it comes to recovery, and it can be tough to interact a lot with others, but this place helps push you to do that. This isn’t the house to sit in your room all day with your headphones on staring at a phone or computer screen.

I’ve lived in several sober livings, and Rainbow Hill takes things to another level. Think of it more like a sober home and family. We host fun queer events, meetings, raise money as a team for the AIDS Walk LA, and even take road trips to interact with other LGBTQIA+ treatment centers and sober livings.

Think of this place as a House out of Pose. Yes, the house manager is the house uncle; and Joey and Andrew are the house mothers.

If you want to succeed in your sobriety and are very serious about it, then this is a place that will love you until you can love yourself.

I can truly say there isn’t another sober living in LA that is doing what Rainbow Hill is doing for cisgender and transgender men.

As a gay sober man, moving into Rainbow Hill Sober Living was the best choice I could have made for me and my sobriety!! Moving to LA from out of state can be a scary experience and I wanted to make sure that I stayed at a sober living house that was safe, homey, in a safe area, and where the people who ran the house cared about their residents. That's what you get at RHSL! This house is the first LGBT+ gay men's sober house in the LA area. Which really surprised me, seeing how many gay men are in recovery in LA.

But the owners are very involved in everyone's recovery journey, checking in on a regular basis, to make sure I was doing ok adjusting to the move and working on my sobriety.  The house is super cute amd spacious, its located in a very nice part of echo park with things to do within walking distance. You can tell the owners put a lot of heart into this house and it shows by how the house looks, feels and how they treat all the residents.  So if you're looking for a safe space to focus on your recovery and build a family in the process, check out Rainbow Hill Sober Living.