About Kokoro
Three houses in the west San Fernando Valley, run by people who believe the physical environment someone recovers in is not a detail.
The name
Kokoro
In Japanese, kokoro is a single word for heart, mind and spirit — the idea being that they aren’t three separate things you can treat in isolation.
That’s a fair description of what goes wrong in early recovery. Someone gets physically sober and everything else is still in pieces: where they sleep, how they eat, whether anyone expects anything of them, whether their day has a shape. Fix the substance and leave the rest, and the rest comes back for you.
So we built houses that address the rest. Not as amenities — as the actual mechanism. A full-size bed rather than a bunk changes how someone sleeps, which changes everything downstream. A desk with a monitor changes whether a job search happens. A pool and an acre of land change whether someone spends their afternoon outside or in bed with the curtains shut.
Our story
How this started.
Kokoro wasn’t something we set out to create. It found us — through the people we met, the homes we built, and a door we spent years politely declining to walk through.
We started on the other side of this industry, as the developers. Through Clean Slate Homes, we built and renovated houses specifically for sober living operators across Los Angeles — beautiful, comfortable places where people could live with dignity while rebuilding. Over the years, operators kept asking us the same question: why don’t you run homes yourselves?
We always said no. Not because we weren’t interested — because we respected the work too much. Knowing how to build a great house is not the same as knowing how to run a great recovery community, and we weren’t willing to pretend otherwise. If we were ever going to take on that responsibility, it would only be with the right people beside us.
Then we met Christopher Shido, and the direction of everything changed. Chris taught us the operational side of sober living — the responsibilities, the structure, the standards, and above all what it takes to build an environment that actually supports someone in recovery. He serves today as Kokoro’s Head of Operations, and he is still teaching us. Along the way we were also fortunate to cross paths with Vince Frankie, a good friend whose experience and guidance helped us understand how to bring it all together. We’ll always be grateful to the people who pointed us in the right direction.
So Kokoro was never a business plan drawn up in a conference room. It grew out of relationships — our world of development, construction and quality homes, joined to people who understand recovery, operations and accountability. And we are still learning, on purpose; we think we always should be. Because the goal was never to give somebody a bed. It’s to give them a home — safe, structured, dignified — and the room to build the next chapter of their life in it.
The team
The people who actually run the houses.
Referring professionals want a name and a number, and families want to know who’s going to be there at two in the morning. Both are reasonable.
Goel Sohmekh
Came to recovery housing from the development side, building homes for sober living operators across LA before running them. First point of contact for placements, families and partners.
Christopher Shido
The operational backbone of Kokoro — the structure, the standards, and the day-to-day of what genuinely supports people in recovery. The reason we felt ready to run homes at all. Add certifications if any — RADT, CADC, CATC
Name
Which house, background, credentials
Standards
What we hold ourselves to.
CCAPP certification
In progress / certified — add certification number and expiry once issued. CCAPP is California’s NARR affiliate and the only recovery-residence certification the state’s Department of Health Care Services recognises. Certification means an on-site peer inspection, a signed code of ethics, written policies and annual review. Almost no operator in this valley displays one.
NARR national standards
We operate to the National Alliance for Recovery Residences Level II standard — monitored, with a compensated house manager, written policy and procedure, and clinical services accessed in the community. Confirm level
SAMHSA best practices
Our policies are built against SAMHSA’s Best Practices for Recovery Housing (2023), particularly on overdose prevention, guest rights, and the clear separation between recovery housing and residential treatment.
Sober Living Network
Join the LA County Coalition ($395/yr, includes annual property inspection) and list it here — cheap, real, and a useful credential if a neighbour ever complains.
No paid referrals, in either direction
We do not pay anyone to send us guests and we do not accept payment for sending guests anywhere. In Southern California this needs saying out loud.
Our housing partner
Clean Slate Homes
Our properties come from Clean Slate Homes, which develops and renovates residential real estate specifically for recovery housing operators across Los Angeles County.
It’s a clean division of labour and it’s the reason the houses look the way they do: Clean Slate does the buildings, we run the houses. Neither of us is trying to do the other’s job.
Come look at it yourself.
The houses make the argument better than this page does.