Spotlight on East Tennessee: All4Knox Housing Committee

While TNARR is proudly headquartered in Nashville, its mission extends far beyond Middle Tennessee. TNARR exists to support ethical, peer-based recovery housing across all three of Tennessee’s grand regions—and right now, some of the most innovative work is happening in East Tennessee. And in Knox County, that work has a name: All4Knox.

A Unified Approach to Substance Misuse

All4Knox is a joint city-county initiative based in Knoxville, created to build a comprehensive, county-wide response to the complex issue of substance misuse. What makes All4Knox stand out isn’t just its commitment to the issue—it’s how they approach it: by bringing together voices from every sector that touches the substance misuse and recovery continuum.

Local government leaders, law enforcement, courts, healthcare providers, prevention specialists, harm reduction advocates, treatment providers, recovery support services, and housing operators all have a seat at the table. This broad-based coalition ensures that strategies aren’t developed in silos, but instead reflect the realities and nuances happening on the ground every day.

It's local. It's collaborative. It’s boots-on-the-ground—and more importantly, it's working.

The Role of the Housing Committee

At the core of All4Knox’s work are six active Implementation Teams, each tasked with addressing key aspects of substance misuse prevention and response. Among them, the All4Knox Housing Committee plays a uniquely critical role.

This committee focuses on the intersection between substance misuse and housing access—a place where many vulnerable individuals either move forward in recovery or fall through the cracks. For people in early recovery, stable housing is often the deciding factor between long-term success and relapse.

Here, TNARR-certified recovery housing operators bring essential boots-on-the-ground experience. As peer-led providers, they offer more than housing—they offer community, accountability, and structure that clinical models alone can’t always provide. Their real-world expertise has become invaluable in helping shape local conversations around:

• Mapping Knox County’s recovery housing inventory, including location, operation, and services.

• Tackling stigma and discrimination that often excludes individuals in recovery from housing opportunities.

• Building wraparound partnerships with treatment providers, employment programs, transportation services, and recovery support systems.

• Hosting public-facing events like the Recovery Housing & Resource Fair, which gives community members and professionals a clear window into what real recovery housing looks like—and why it matters.

  
  

TNARR-Certified Providers: Not Just Present—Leading

What makes this collaboration even more powerful is the role TNARR certified providers are playing in shaping local housing policy. As active members of the Housing Committee, these operators have been instrumental in:

• Advocating for affordable, ethical, and inclusive recovery housing models that prioritize dignity and structure.

• Ensuring that certification standards—grounded in the nationally recognized NARR framework—remain the gold standard, rather than allowing inconsistent, locality-driven regulations to dictate housing access.

• Championing policies that emphasize sustainability, quality, and long-term success for residents navigating early recovery.

This kind of local leadership is exactly what TNARR was built to support.

A Model for the State—and Beyond

While TNARR’s strength lies in its statewide network, its true impact is always found at the local level—where lives are changed, one home, one resident, and one operator at a time. The work unfolding in East Tennessee through All4Knox is proof that when recovery housing providers have a seat at the table, real, sustainable solutions take shape.

East Tennessee is showing what’s possible when collaborative leadership meets lived experience. As new policy challenges emerge across the state, the All4Knox initiative offers a powerful example of how local voices, empowered by statewide certification standards, can build the kind of housing infrastructure recovery actually needs to thrive.

Recovery happens here. Thanks to the work of TNARR-certified operators inside All4Knox, it’s happening stronger than ever in East Tennessee.