Most people who build recovery-housing software have never lived in a recovery house. Daniel Shepherd did. That difference is the whole reason Recovery House HQ exists.
Eleven years ago, Daniel walked into the Hickey House in Helen, Georgia, looking for a way out of addiction. He found one. The house — run by his longtime friend Daniel Irons — gave him the structure, accountability, and second chance that every good recovery residence is built to give. He never forgot what that felt like, or how much quiet, unglamorous work it takes behind the scenes to keep a house like that running.
He didn’t just get sober and move on. He stayed in the work.
From resident to counselor
Daniel started at the Mt. Sinai treatment center as a resident assistant — the person on the floor at all hours, learning the job from the ground up. He came up into counseling there, training at night under Dr. Byrd while finishing an online bachelor’s degree along the way. Every credential he earned unlocked the next one, in order, the hard way:
The credential ladder
- CAC I — Certified Addiction Counselor, level one
- Bachelor’s degree — which unlocked…
- CAC II — Certified Addiction Counselor, level two
- Master’s in mental health counseling
- On the licensure path now — the next step earned, like all the others
Along the way he has counseled at Mt. Sinai, Lanier Treatment Center, and Cornerstones Counseling. He has worked hand-in-hand with drug court for more than four and a half years — and still does. Last year he ran a six-month evidence-based group back at the Hickey House, where his own recovery began. The full circle isn’t a marketing line for Daniel; it’s just his week.
“I got sober in a recovery house. Now I build the software that runs them.”
Why he built Recovery House HQ
Spend enough years inside recovery residences and you see the same thing everywhere: extraordinary people doing life-changing work with duct-taped spreadsheets, group texts, and a filing cabinet. Rent gets tracked on paper. Drug screens live in a binder. When GARR or a court asks for documentation, someone loses a weekend pulling it together. The tools built for these houses were made by out-of-state software companies who’d never run a Saturday-night bed check.
So Daniel built the tool he wishes his house had had. Recovery House HQ runs the whole operation in one place — residents, rent, drug screens, passes, maintenance and vendors, grievances, consents, training records, and court dates — and keeps a house GARR/NARR standard-ready without the weekend scramble. An owner dashboard flags risk early, so a house manager can knock on the right door before a small slip becomes a relapse or an eviction. It’s built by someone who has stood in that hallway.
Built in Georgia, for Georgia houses
The other names in this space are good companies — and they’re all a plane ride away. Sobriety Hub is in Missouri. One Step and the Sober Living App are in California. Recovery House HQ is different on purpose: it’s made in Georgia, by a Georgia recovery professional, for the houses and certification standards Georgia operators actually answer to. When you call support, you get the founder — someone who knows what GARR expects and what a drug-court referral needs, because he lives it.
Recovery House HQ launches with you, not at you.
The national plan is $129 per month flat, including setup and staff training — a $250 value — with no per-resident charge. Eligible Georgia recovery residences may apply to have the first-year software fee waived.
Daniel’s bet is simple, and it’s the same bet every recovery house makes on every resident who walks through the door: when people get sober, they do big things. He’s proof. Recovery House HQ is what he built with his second chance — so the houses that give out second chances can spend less time on paperwork and more time on people.
Daniel Shepherd is the founder of Recovery House HQ. Reach him at recoveryhousehq.com or martin@dmsclinicalservices.com.