Pay It Forward SA

Since 2010, Pay It Forward SA has been committed to helping individuals experiencing homelessness and in recovery from substance use disorders reclaim their lives and build a brighter, self-sufficient future.

We provide financial assistance to individuals entering sober living homes, connect them to vital resources, and offer on-site sober living accommodations that deliver the structure, accountability, and community needed to achieve lasting recovery. Through our holistic support approach, we empower individuals to build stable, meaningful lives in long-term recovery.

This year, we’re inviting you to help us pilot a vital new initiative: a sober living program for families.

While treatment is a crucial first step toward recovery, it’s only part of the journey. To truly rebuild their lives—finding stable housing, meaningful work, and lasting healing—individuals need continued support. Yet, in Bexar County, no programs currently exist that allow families to stay together during this critical time.

The need is urgent: 126,319 children in Texas live with a parent who has a substance use disorder and more than half of child deaths in the state involve a caregiver who was using or under the influence of substance. 

A sober living program for families will address these heartbreaking realities by providing a safe, supportive environment where parents and children can stay together while overcoming homelessness and substance use disorders—building a foundation for a stronger healthier future.

You can be the reason a family stays together on the road to recovery.

Your gift to today will help bring our first family through the doors and provide a safe, supportive home for parents and children as they rebuild their lives.

Donate now and give the gift of healing, hope, and a stable future.

Who We Are

Pay It Forward, Clean & Sober Living's mission is to provide the critical link between treatment and long-term recovery through supportive sober living, allowing individuals to heal from the destruction of addiction and create meaningful lives.

Drug and alcohol addiction is a contributing factor in nearly every problem area of quality of life, including domestic violence, child abuse & neglect, poverty, homelessness, hunger, lack of healthcare, unemployment, criminal activity and chemically impaired driving. Primary substance abuse treatment or incarceration is just the first step in the journey of long-term recovery. Often, after completion of treatment or release from incarceration, many in early recovery from substance use are faced with returning to the same people, places and things that influenced them during their addiction. Due to little or no family support, no job, no money, insurmountable stress and maladaptive coping skills, most return to the streets and re-start the cycle of relapse and homelessness.

Two primary factors that contribute to successful long-term recovery are a safe sober living environment and gainful employment. In working with the indigent population, we know that without a safe living environment, gainful employment is difficult to find and maintain. Pay It Forward, Clean & Sober Living operates two programs that focus on beginning to heal the devastating effects of addiction by providing access to attainable and affordable sober living, thereby reducing homelessness, unemployment, poverty and crime caused by substance use.

Through our Bridge Program, Pay It Forward offers financial move-in assistance to individuals and families in recovery from substance use. This assistance allows our clients, upon completion of treatment or release from incarceration, to immediately move into a partner sober living home where they can continue the hard work of recovery in a highly accountable, peer-supported environment through our partnership with over 70 recovery homes in the San Antonio area. The Bridge Program cost is approximately $800 per person and serves approximately 250 individuals each year.

Pay It Forward also operates the sober living dormitory on the campus of Haven for Hope and offers affordable, long term, peer-supported, highly accountable, zero-tolerance substance use residency to men and women in our Pay It Forward dorms. This supportive, recuperative time helps them to reinforce the tools learned in treatment, gain employment, develop their recovery community and supports, all while being supported by their peers and afforded access to community supports for successful reintegration to the community, instead of returning to homelessness or unsafe living environments. The Pay It Forward dorms serve approximately 165 men and women a year at a cost of approximately $1200 per person.