Wynter Lesley has done pretty much everything when it comes to being homeless.
She has slept in the bed of a pickup, walked to town for work and lived out of a tent.
“The only thing I haven’t done is eat out of a trash can and that’s because of food stamps, but if I had to, I would have,” Lesley said.
Lesley had two tents set up in McAlester, Oklahoma. One she shared with her fiancée and the other for her son and two dogs who provided him with protection.
That’s when she gave Hope House administrator OJ Myers a call.
“I was like, ‘I don’t know what to do, I’m homeless, I have a kid. I just need some help,’” Lesley said.
Myers brought the family to the Hope House, an 18,000 square foot living facility intended to get people back on their feet and help them transform their lives. Men, women and children live in the house, rebuilding their lives from financial crisis and addiction. The house turned one year old on July 1 and has benefitted hundreds in the community.
The house is free to live in and provides food, clothing and a drug and alcohol-free space.
“(The Hope House) takes away the pressures of daily life that would normally cause a recovering addict to relapse. Those pressures aren’t here, you have time to sit there and focus on yourself,” one client said.
One year is an important milestone for a facility that has no fixed stream of income. Myers was thankful to receive a check for $3,000 last year so he had enough saved up to start accepting clients but wondered how he was going to pay his first electric bill.
“I thought ‘How am I going to pay this?’ because we just didn’t have it, and the next day a pastor at Community Church showed up with a check for a thousand dollars and I said, ‘That’s the last time I’m going to worry about the money,” Myers said.
The Hope House is run by the clients who benefit from its services. They intake new clients, do room checks, security, clean and tend the garden.
Although everybody comes to the Hope House for different reasons, the clients form a family, one that will do everything from celebrate birthdays to crunch back taxes together, all with the goal of reemerging with a changed life.
Hope House is located at 1916 E Perkins and OJ Myers can be contacted at (405) 887-0288 or oj.myers@yahoo.com