Deborah and Gary Richardson with Place of Grace Church discuss their concerns with recently allocated opioid settlement funds. Scan the QR code for the full conversation.
ROCKINGHAM – Place of Grace Pastor Gary Richardson and his wife Deborah expressed their concern with Richmond County Commissioners after his organization’s snubbing from discussions regarding allocation of opioid settlement funds.
While crediting the entities that did receive opioid fund allocations, Richardson expressed his displeasure from being barred from speaking with commissioners considering his organization works to house and rehabilitate local victims of drug abuse.
“When I came to this meeting, my natural personality is to be sarcastic … But that’s not who God is. We have been in the school now for six years, and my husband has the statistics of how many people we have helped. I was listening to the wonderful things [Richmond Community College] is going to do with that money, but we already deal with these things. We are already doing these. We are a reentry program. It’s a wonderful program, but where are they going to live. We’ve been doing this for six years, and never once have we received a dime from the county, but what we have received is poor, lost souls dropped off at our gates because there is nowhere else for them to go,” Deborah Richardson said.
Place of Grace provides those looking to recover from drug addiction a place to live and improve him or herself during the recovery process. Last May, during an interview with Pastor Richardson, he said Place of Grace does not have a perfect record in terms of rehabilitating its disciples with only 50 percent of those who began the program seeing it to completion. However, those who take part in the program, along with daily classes, have access to clothing for work or job interviews, food, appliances and even toys for their children, with families sometimes entering the facility with nothing more than what they are wearing. When not studying or going on job interviews, the disciples at Place of Grace also engage in community service such as handing out free groceries to Richmond County’s needy families. Place of Grace also provides temporary shelter for area homeless during the winter months.
“We do an emergency cold-weather shelter because the drug addicts will freeze to death. There is nowhere for them to go. This is ugly. This is not pretty, but this is not part of the community that anybody wants to deal with. That is what that settlement money is for – those people,” Deborah Richardson said. You represent every drug addict in this county just as much as the people in this courtroom. You represent them, and I’m not sure what has happened here tonight, the fact we have not spoken until you already voted, I’m not sure that’s representative of what this county can do. Coming in here, I wanted to be angry with each and every one of you. How could you do this? You know what we do, but I don’t do it because the county tells us to do it or because money is involved. We do it because God has told us we have to do this.”
The organizations receiving opioid settlement fund allocations include Richmond Community College, $75,000, for its Building a Brighter Futures program, which seeks to combat addiction and enhance job prospects for at-risk populations. Richmond County Schools, $56,000, for its Youth Mental First Aid Responsive Raiders training program, Samaritan Colony Residential Treatment Program at SECU Women’s Recovery Center, $18,000, and $10,000 to Sandhills Best Care Addiction Treatment to cover the cost of services for clients who are uninsured or underinsured and who have applied for Medicaid and were denied.
“We’re asking you to consider helping. Our emergency shelter is coming up in November. It starts from November 1 to March 1. It’s the winter months. We will have 20 to 30 people come in. We Narcan-ed eight people back to life just this past year. We took three to detox … I’m not begrudging anybody that got grant funding. It’s all needed everywhere it goes. It’s for the people in our community who you serve and who we serve. What it does do is have us go back to the same people and say ‘We need your help,’” Gary Richardson said.