Samaritan House is Charlotte's only full-time non-profit dedicated to providing beds, meals, and transportation to medical appointments for houseless individuals who have recently been discharged from the hospital. We provide a safe and nurturing place to rest and recover. While in our care, our guests connected to community resources and have time to reconnect with family and friends. Through the generosity of donors like you, Samaritan House has helped thousands of people heal over our seventeen year history. Over 80% of our guests move on to more stable housing when they leave Samaritan House.
Eric loves to take pictures. He’s originally from Texas and used to travel a lot. He loves landscapes and nature and sees the beauty in things, even when there’s not much to see. He moved to Charlotte a while ago and has come to love the city.
Everything changed for him this past year. Eric contracted bacterial meningitis which damaged his brain in the same way as a traumatic brain injury. When he was very ill in the hospital, he remembers the doctors telling him that he only had a couple of weeks to live, but he’s still here. He survived. The disease left him in a wheelchair, his memory and cognition intact, but his mobility diminished because his sense of balance was destroyed by the injury.
When Eric first arrived at Samaritan House he was scared, not knowing the other people and not understanding how things worked. The other guests helped him to figure out how to fit in. He appreciates that his roommate understand that he needs to be able to do things for himself. He can take care of bathing and dressing and making his bed—it just takes him a little longer. He knows that everyone in the house has challenges of one kind or another. The support of the other guests is crucial, from the older ones who can offer some life wisdom, to the others who are learning from their own challenges. Eric remembers what it was like to be the new guy so he makes a point of helping new guests orient to the house, making them feel welcome and helping them to find their own place in the group.
He spends his time reading everything he can get his hands on, from the latest political non-fiction to a romance story. He likes “This American Life” on NPR and listens to podcasts. He has Brad Goforth’s books on his reading list. He talks to his mom back in Texas every week. He prays a lot. Long term, he hopes to get an apartment in Charlotte and get back to his photography.
Eric used to take things for granted, simple stuff like being able to get up and get a glass of water—now that’s really hard. “God didn’t do this to me but it happened,” so he works on making the best of it and getting better.
Eric appreciates the volunteers, particularly people like Phyllis Acton who comes once a week to bring lunch and sits and eats with the guests. The act of sitting together and eating around a table helps to foster connections—Eric grew up in a household where the family ate together so this is familiar and comforting.
Eric works every day at getting better, improving his strength and mobility. He has to use a wheel chair to get around because of his balance issues, but he’s making progress, particularly with the help of the occupational therapy students from Wingate University. They’ve taken him to the aquatic center to work on therapy in the pool. He really works at the therapy and sleeps really well after a session.
Gregg Chapman says this about Eric: “When Eric first came to us and I was reading through his paperwork I kept seeing that there was no visible outlook that he would ever improve and be able to walk on his own again. There were times that I thought that to be true but over the time he's been here, that's definitely not the case, especially in the past several months. He's been with us awhile and the one thing I say about him is that he's not a quitter.”
Sometimes the therapy students ask Eric how it feels to be standing—“Does this feel normal?” He can’t really remember what it felt like to walk or run, but he knows that it’s good to be able to do a little more each day than he could do the day before.
Eric has been at Samaritan House for just over a year now, staying safe during the pandemic and working on improving from bacterial meningitis that he wasn’t supposed to survive in the first place. Before all this happened, he was living with some people that weren’t so nice, doing some things he shouldn’t have been doing. In a weird way, recovering from meningitis put him in a better situation that what he was in before. Samaritan House has been a “healing haven” for Eric. His physical situation is not bad enough for him to be in a long term rehab facility, but it’s not good enough yet for complete independence. He’s working on it!
When you support Samaritan House, you are supporting guests just like Eric. Each person in the house has their own story, their own struggles, and are striving for their own triumphs. Your generosity empowers the healing community connection that has been so important to Eric and people like him. We thank you for making an impact in the lives of these guests.
