Tisha Temple, the founder and CEO of Recovery Alive Homes, has a passion for helping people struggling with opioid use disorder. She once struggled with it herself, and has been free from its grip for 11 years now.
Temple’s nonprofit was one of two groups to get grants from the city of Henderson in its initial disbursement of opioid settlement money.
The Henderson City Council granted RA Homes $50,000 to set up two residential sober-living homes here – and Temple can’t wait until the project is up and running.
“The money is there because people are losing their lives to opioid use disorder,” she explained on Thursday’s TownTalk.
“When we have funding to be able to create solutions in communities to give people a different pathway and to help them find recovery, the best thing to do is not leave the money sitting in the bank – the best thing to do is distribute it,” she said.
There are eight RA Homes in operation now, Temple said. She’s working with a local realtor to identify properties and then will work with an investor to purchase the homes, one for men and one for women who are already in recovery.
“That is how our model works,” she said. “We lease the properties from management teams. We are truly part of beautiful community solutions. We are good neighbors.”
She’s got her eyes on one property already, and hopes it’ll work out. If not, she said she “will patiently wait for God to open the right doors.”
Locating sober-living homes here in Henderson has special meaning for Temple. It wasn’t that long ago that she herself was regaining control of her life in a similar residential program in Raleigh.
At the time, fresh out of prison, Temple got the chance to enter a recovery treatment program and ultimately into a sober-living home.
The residential program that she created with RA Homes, however, has one important component that the one in Raleigh didn’t.
“That recovery home saved my life…(but) it wasn’t Christ-centered. It worked, but I believe that my recovery grew deeper because I was able to have a relationship with Jesus. That was my recovery,” Temple said.
And now, some years later, Temple is gearing up to plant two new RA Homes in her hometown. “It is now time to open recover alive homes in the same community where I did not have the resources that I needed to get better and stay better,” she said.
RA Homes and the 12-step, Christ-centered program will be here to help somebody else’s son or daughter as they embark on a journey of sober living.
Visit www.wizs.com to listen back to the complete interview.
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