Pubdate: Sat, 20 Oct 2001
Source: The Herald-Sun (NC)
Copyright: 2001 The Herald-Sun
Contact:  http://www.herald-sun.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1428
Author: Molly McGinn, Greensboro News & Record
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/rehab.htm (Treatment)

ABIDING BY THE NIA HOUSE RULES

HIGH POINT -- Nine o'clock on White Oak Street.

Twelve-year-old Zee Chambers runs down the sidewalk, thinking what flavor 
soda she'll buy her mom from the corner store.

She won't step on broken glass. She won't see women sell their bodies for 
$2. She won't see men hold up liquor stores with a beer bottle.

It used to be different. The corner of White Oak and Green streets was a 
main artery for drugs, gangs and prostitution, say police, who answered 343 
calls on the street last year for such violations as trespassing, drinking 
and fighting.

"Everybody'd come to White Oak Street to get high," says Dennis Garrett, 
who lives there.

The change started last year when Marine Gunnery Sgt. Derrick Whitaker and 
some recovering addicts converted three boarding houses on White Oak into 
halfway houses. They dubbed it the Nia Action Community Center.

Folks on the street let Whitaker know those changes wouldn't come easily.

"People told us they'd been drinking on White Oak Street for 40 or 50 
years, and they weren't leaving," Whitaker says. "I said, 'Well, neither 
are we."'

Derrick Whitaker joined the Marines in 1981 -- his way of getting out of 
the Newark, N.J., slums.

He was close to his parents and extended family of five aunts, two uncles 
and 30 cousins. He watched them all become addicts. By the early 1980s, 
crack cocaine was turning part-time marijuana smokers and beer drinkers 
into overnight addicts.

"Whoever created this knew what they were doing," Whitaker says.

He escaped by enlisting. Camp Lejeune, in Jacksonville, became his second 
home. He visited New Jersey on the weekends and watched his family -- some 
of whom were married and had children and attended church every Sunday -- 
battle addictions.

One of Whitaker's cousins and his mentor, James Walker, started 10 halfway 
houses for recovering addicts in Minneapolis. Four of Whitaker's cousins 
are living there now.

Halfway houses help people on their way back to society after leaving jail 
or intense detoxification programs. People are usually referred there by 
probation officers or the Guilford County Department of Mental Health.

The hope is that addicts living in a structured environment can help each 
other stay sober. But Whitaker says his family showed him that recovery 
takes more than hope. So he wanted his houses to be different.

Most halfway houses require residents to earn a steady paycheck in the 
first week.

At the Nia house, residents can stay the first two weeks for free. And they 
have to work as hard for recovery as they once did to score drugs.

Residents must apply for at least three jobs a day and adhere to a rigorous 
schedule of house meetings and 12-step programs. For the first 90 days in 
the house, residents must attend 90 12-step meetings somewhere in the 
community.

Whitaker was planning for retirement and life after the Marines when he 
borrowed $90,000 to buy himself a house. He didn't want a new boss in his 
next career. So the money instead went to three houses on White Oak Street, 
with himself at the helm of the Nia Action Community Center.

Whitaker's youngest brother, Jessie, 30, the last one to fall into crack, 
came down from New Jersey to help. It would be part of his recovery.

On that first day in June last year the brothers hit the street, asking 
people drinking and hanging around in the nearby lots if they had any skills.

"Some of them had problems with drugs or alcohol, but they were carpenters 
or electricians," Whitaker says, who recruited them to fix up the three 
houses. Some were eager to work, to have something to do.

Others watched from the empty lots across the street, or stood and drank on 
the sidewalk in front of the house. Some were previous tenants of the 
boarding houses, which were basically drug houses, Whitaker says. They felt 
those houses -- and the street -- belonged to them.

So Whitaker called the police every day, sometimes four or five times a 
day, to get them off the sidewalk. The police responded, and by August, the 
calls had dropped to 84 for the year.

"That street has dramatically improved, there's no question about it," 
police Lt. Marty Sumner says.

Amy Crawford, 30, is fighting her own war. A few years ago, she lived one 
street over from White Oak. She was married and had two children. Then 
somebody gave her a hit of crack.

Her husband called the police on her to get her to stop. So she stopped 
going home. She ended up sitting on the curb across the street from the Nia 
house.

"I used to sit and talk junk to them all day," Crawford says. "Then I had 
to come here. I took that last hit, and I ran straight to them. I knocked 
on the door, and I said 'I'm ready to go."'

It's easy to spot those who start using drugs again, Whitaker says.

"They wind up staying late and don't come back," he says. "I had a girl who 
didn't show up last night for a meeting. Yesterday was pay day."

Of the 75 residents who have passed through Nia House since it opened last 
year, 30 have moved on successfully. One former resident overdosed and died 
in a Greensboro hotel. Another was beaten to death by a man who lived in a 
crack house on White Oak Street, Whitaker says. It's a tough fight out here.

"Some people come here and they just see these old restored houses," says 
Seko Kirby, a resident and outreach worker. "They don't see it as a place 
that can change your life."

Kirby is the house electrician. He fixed the air conditioner with a pack of 
matches. He wrapped 30 match sticks together to make a torch and fused a 
broken connection.

That's how they get by at Nia house.

"How do we pay the bills? We struggle," says Dennis Garrett, a resident and 
a former drug hustler. He still cuts the figure of a drug dealer: gold 
chains, oversized silky shirts. But now, Garrett hustles for souls, not drugs.

Garrett is Whitaker's "right-hand man" and a substance-abuse counselor at 
the Nia House. He's getting his degree and is one of three students earning 
course credit for his work at the Nia house.

The no-rent policy for the first two weeks is a blessing and a curse on the 
Nia House, Garrett says. Many people come in and think they're miraculously 
cured and leave again, some without ever paying a dime.

Over the last year, Whitaker has paid the monthly payments on the $90,000 
loan for the first three houses out of his own pocket.

Some residents receive Social Security checks or disability pay. Others 
find a job in two weeks, but won't get paid for another two weeks. Whitaker 
lets them slide, filling the holes with his salary from his job as 
recruiter, a little over $50,000 a year.

Some relief may be coming soon. The Nia House recently got nonprofit status 
from the state. Now, Whitaker can apply for grants and other public money.

He wants to expand the Nia house program into Winston-Salem and Greensboro. 
He has completed his board of directors, and the tenants continue to keep 
the house and the streets clean.

"God's going to take care of us," Whitaker says.

On Monday nights, Nia house residents hold a house meeting as part of their 
recovery. They talk over house issues and about staying sober.

When the meeting is ends, the group files out the front door and cigarette 
lighters spark. Orange glows float in the night like fireflies.

"You see how beautiful it is around here," says Kirby, a row of street 
lamps dropping pools of light onto the street behind him.

"A year ago you couldn't walk down this street."

He stands in a group, next to Pastor Molly Chambers, who ministers to the 
drug addicted every Saturday in a parking lot. She also comes out to the 
house and conducts Bible studies. She's converting an old, abandoned fish 
market building on the corner of White Oak and Green into a church. "Does 
somebody have a dollar to buy me a soda?" Chambers asks.

Kirby pulls a dollar from his wallet and hands it to Chambers' daughter, Zee.

"Go get your mom a soda," he says. "Whatever she wants."
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MAP posted-by: Jackl