43
Planned Liberty recovery home aims to help women transition into drug-free life
LIBERTY
A friend’s son died on Mother’s Day last year.
Another friend lost a child in October.
As the area’s drug epidemic continued to take its toll on members of the Grace Fellowship Church in Warren, Pastor Roy Mack and his wife, April, knew they needed to do something.
“It’s not a hopeless situation. Our community reads the stories and sees the news, and I feel like our community is ready to step up and do something,” said April, executive director of Project 180.
Project 180 is a faith-based response to the opioid-addiction crisis that has ravaged the Mahoning Valley. Mahoning and Trumbull counties have been some of the hardest-hit areas in a state that leads the country in overdose deaths. Between 2010 and 2015, for example, Trumbull County had 314 overdose deaths, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
Project 180 aims to tackle the problem by helping recovering addicts get their lives back on track. One component that the organization is working on is a support home for women. Project 180 is renovating a house in Liberty with the hope of opening the sprawling Sampson Road home later this year.
The white two-story home, accessible via a long, curved driveway, is not visible from the road. It sits tucked away on 8 acres, perched atop a hill and surrounded by a wooded area. Inside, the house features a large great room, dining area, modern kitchen, library, partly-finished basement and a winding staircase leading to several bedrooms that the Macks hope will accommodate about a dozen women.
Over coming weekends, volunteers will renovate the home and decorate its interior.
“A drug addict often feels they have no worth,” said April. “I want them to feel worthy of living in a beautiful home.”
They envision the house as a place where women who are recovering from drug addiction can come once they are committed to recovery. They would stay in the house for seven months, where they’d live a structured life away from the circumstances they left behind.
The plans have raised concerns among township officials.
“We have no say, yea or nay. I’m not really for it,” but the township has no authority in this case, Trustee Jason Rubin said. “You’re in a neighborhood where there are kids and people. ... If that was my neighborhood, I’d have a couple of concerns.”
“We’re aware of it, and of course it’s a concern,” said Trustee Stan Nudell. “Any time you have something like that coming into a residential neighborhood, it’s a concern that it’s run properly and doesn’t create any nuisance for the neighbors.”
“But they’re well within their rights to do it,” he acknowledged. “We’ll have to wait to see how it works out.”
Township Administrator Pat Ungaro doesn’t see it as a problem, however.
“It’s legal. They’re allowed to be there. They went through zoning and it’s approved,” he said. “Those are critical programs. And this is sort of in an isolated area. It’s off the road. It’s behind [Interstate] 680.”
The Macks noted the home will not be a rehabilitation facility. It’s for people who are in the next phase of recovery and who need some additional support to transition back into their lives.
“They know they’ve come to the point where they really want help. They’re not coming here because their mom wants them to get help, or their husband wants them to get help,” said April. “They’re really determined.”
“It’s faith-based. It’s a discipleship,” Pastor Roy added.
The program would feature daily Bible studies, health-oriented activities and services such as visits from a dentist.
“It’s really a transformation from the inside out,” April said.
Much of the initiative’s costs have come from fundraising. The women who live at the home would pay a monthly stipend, but the Macks hope to attract monthly donors who will sponsor the residents. For information, visit www.WeAreProject180.org.
The Macks also envision that women who live there will stay involved in the program for an additional seven months after they move out. That leg of the program would help participants re-enter society, from finding a job, to obtaining a driver’s license, to getting a car.
“They have to take responsibility. But we want to help them,” April said. “We want to give them a hand up, not just a hand out.”
Above all, they hope to instill in the women that they are ‘worthy of loving,’ which has became Project 180’s mantra.
“That’s our goal: To love them,” she said.