ROCKINGHAM – Place of Grace Pastor Gary Richardson and his wife, Deborah, have expressed their concerns to Richmond County commissioners after his organization stayed out of talks about allocating opioid settlement funds.
Richardson praised the facilities that received allocations from the opioid fund, but also expressed displeasure at being barred from speaking with commission members because his organization is committed to housing and rehabilitating local drug abuse victims.
“When I came to this meeting, I was naturally sarcastic… But that’s not how God is. We’ve been at the school for six years now, and my husband has statistics on how many people we’ve helped. I’ve heard what wonderful things (Richmond Community College) is going to do with the money, but we already take care of those things. We already do that. We’re a reintegration program. It’s a wonderful program, but where are they going to live? We’ve been doing this for six years, and not once have we gotten a dime from the county, but what we’ve gotten is poor, lost souls dropped off at our gates because they have nowhere else to go,” said Deborah Richardson.
Place of Grace provides people who want to kick their drug addiction a place to live and improve themselves during the recovery process. In an interview with him last May, Pastor Richardson said that Place of Grace does not have a perfect track record in rehabilitating its students, with only 50 percent of those who began the program making it to the end. However, in addition to daily classes, participants in the program have access to work clothes or job interviews, food, household appliances, and even toys for their children, with families sometimes entering the facility wearing only what they are wearing. When they are not studying or interviewing, Place of Grace students also engage in community service, such as distributing free food to needy families in Richmond County. Place of Grace also provides temporary shelter to the homeless in the area during the winter months.
“We’re setting up a cold weather shelter because the drug addicts are going to freeze to death. They have nowhere to go. This is ugly. This isn’t pretty, but this is not a part of the community that anybody wants to deal with. That’s what the settlement money is for — for those people,” Deborah Richardson said. “You represent every drug addict in this county just as much as you represent the people in this courtroom. You represent them, and I’m not sure what happened here tonight, the fact that we didn’t speak until you’ve already voted, I’m not sure that’s representative of what this county can do. When I came here, I wanted to be angry at every single one of you. How could you do this? You know what we’re doing, but I’m not doing it because the county tells us to or because there’s money involved. We’re doing it because God told us we have to.”
Organizations receiving grants from the Opioid Settlement Fund include Richmond Community College ($75,000) for its Building a Brighter Futures program designed to combat addiction and improve employment prospects for at-risk populations, Richmond County Schools ($56,000) for its Youth Mental First Aid Responsive Raiders training program, the Samaritan Colony Residential Treatment Program at SECU Women’s Recovery Center ($18,000), and $10,000 to Sandhills Best Care Addiction Treatment to cover treatment costs for clients who are uninsured or underinsured and whose Medicaid application has been denied.
“We’re asking you to help us. Our shelter opens in November. It runs from November 1st to March 1st. It’s the winter months. We’ll take in 20 to 30 people. Last year alone, we brought eight people back to life with Narcan. Three had to detox… I don’t begrudge anyone the grants. They’re needed everywhere. They’re for the people in our community that you and we help. So we go back to those same people and tell them, ‘We need your help,'” Gary Richardson said.
