Samaritan Inns fights addiction with housing
Samaritan Inns has been helping the District fight addiction for over 35 years.
For nearly 35 years, Samaritan Inns has been fighting homelessness by tackling addiction and by all measures it is winning that battle. According to the District of Columbia’s 2019 annual count, the number of homeless people in the city has continued to fall over the last two years.
That decline represents residents like Deporah (who did not want to use her last name), one of the center’s clients who said she wouldn’t have made it if it wasn’t for being a part of the Samaritan Inns’ program for the last few years.
The numbers of homeless people in D.C. have fallen for the last two years. Photo: Noureldein Ghanem.
“I have been a guest here for the last four years and this is my last year at the center. They offered so many programs that have helped me recover and get rid of my addiction,” Deporah said.
The organization offers a range of programs including detox and transitional living.
For Deporah, a middle-aged African-American woman, they helped bring her back from a life gripped by drugs.
“I was so eager to try it, but slowly got sucked into it. Eventually, I lost my job, lost my boyfriend, and lost my home. Everything was falling apart until I found Samaritan Inns,” she said.
She took all the help available.
Cecilia Amor is the director of development at Samaritan Inns.
Photo: Noureldein Ghanem.
“They offer three programs. The first one is about a month long, this is all about treatment where we take case management services and meet with the counselor daily. The second one is where we take classes in life skills, and the last one is where they let us go out and try to find a job,” Deporah said.
It was a very long journey helped by living at the northwest center. Cecilia Amor, the organization’s director of development, said the healing and educational process has several stages.
“When they come to us we put them directly in the first phase. This one is kind of like a detox which focuses only on treatment and recovery and it lasts for 28 days. Once they are done with that, they go into the next phase that we call transitional living. In this phase they get into one of our Inns and start taking classes in life skills; like how to communicate, how to do Microsoft excel, and how to find a job,” Amor explained.
After that, the clients go to the third phase of the program and try to find a job to get on their feet again. “Once they are employed, they go to the third and last phase of our program which runs about two to three years. They stay in our Inns and pay a small amount of rent, but during their stay in our Inns they have to remain sober,” Amor said.
According to her, this is the best way for the clients to finish the program because by that time they will have some money saved and will have been sober for about three years. After they finish the program, they will be ready to be reintroduced to the world.
This is certainly the case for Deporah who is eager to get back into the working world.
