The documentary profiles McCreesh Place, a permanent supportive‑housing program in Charlotte for formerly homeless, disabled, and mentally ill men. Through on‑camera interviews and narrated segments, residents such as Dave Council, Dutch Gaines, Richard Harrison, Barry, and Bobby Livingston recount childhood trauma, loss, addiction, and the spiral into homelessness. The film shows the day‑to‑day environment of the 8‑by‑10‑foot rooms, on‑site NA/AA meetings, peer‑counseling, and staff support, emphasizing rules of sobriety and community responsibility. Staff and city officials (Pam Jefson, Pat Mumford) explain the program’s philosophy, its cost‑effectiveness, and the broader economic impact: reduced emergency‑room visits, police calls, and jail stays, saving millions for the city. Themes of personal transformation, peer giving‑back, and the importance of stable, supportive housing are woven throughout, concluding that McCreesh Place is both a lifeline for individuals and a fiscally responsible community solution.
Chapters
Amazing grace, how sweet, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. A wretch like me. I once, I once was lost, but Lord, oh, now I'm found. Was blind, But now I see.
I had a rough childhood. It came from my mother. I don't know why she— it was like she never cared that much about me. She called me all kinds of names.
Shoot!
My mental illness actually started when I was a kid because when I would play with my little You know, our kids talked to them. Mine would actually talk back. They were my friends.
I don't know.
So I just flipped out, I guess, when my daughter died.
How did your daughter die?
Leukemia.
How old was she?
7.
Dutch Gaines withdrew when his daughter died, spending 3 and a half years trying to escape his personal demons.
Pain.
Go through there.
A maze of trails through thick brush leads to his former home, just a cloth tent for shelter.
And here it is. When they told me she was okay, I thought she was okay. I thought it was going to fall in place. So there, I'll just take her home and have a smile like she normally does. She didn't.
She didn't even come home.
As a matter of fact, from the hospital to the mortician to the graveyard. So I've been out here ever since.
The loss of a child, an abusive childhood, mental illness and addiction. This is Dave Council's room at McCreesh Place, an apartment building for formerly homeless disabled men. It's jammed with amplifiers and electric guitars. His food's in a plastic storage bin on top of a small refrigerator. Asthma medicines in a corner, his clothes in an open closet. There's a sink with shower, toilet, and kitchen facilities in the hall. To Dave, a veteran who suffered with addiction and other mental illness and even lived on the street, this 8-by-10-foot room is close to heaven.
Everybody's straight and sober. There's no drinking or nothing allowed. It's a safe haven.
Where would you be and what would be happening to you if you didn't have McCall?
I'd be out in the street somewhere. I wouldn't have anything. So I'd be in bad shape if it wasn't for McCreesh.
There's a thread that you will see in the conversations with the gentlemen here, a thread of some type of traumatic loss. We have found in talking with gentlemen, some have had a trauma in their childhood, others that have had a trauma in later life, and it may have resulted in the decline in their functioning and being able to function in society. We understand in society when a trauma occurs, when it's something like a tsunami. We have not grasped as a society when it is an individual who experiences the trauma.
I'm a teacher.
I was a teacher. When I just started suffering from depression, I was in a very dark place. To be very frank with you, I was suicidal, hospitalized many times. I was in a very dark place. My wife divorced me while I was in the hospital, so I had to get out. So I literally was on the street. I just packed up my stuff and was on the street, and I actually was staying in a car. The area I was in was just— I heard gunshots at night. There were drug dealers.
Richard Harrison moved from the car to McCreesh Place. He's one of 64 rent-paying residents here, one of many living in recovery with a mental illness. but the only one with a master's in Shakespeare.
Hi, good to see you again.
All righty.
People shouldn't be afraid of what they don't understand, and I think that's what's so difficult about homelessness, is that, you know, people make assumptions about how people ended up on the street, and they have no idea that every person out there has a story. Here, where we have on-site NA meetings and AA meetings, it's very protective, and we want people to succeed. I think what makes McCreesh different is that it provides a safe and sort of comforting environment for men who've had a really, you know, spiral down and have been trying for so long to find some stability. And I think here it has a community atmosphere where everyone helps each other out and you can get your equilibrium back.
For you, it's maybe having a bad day is that you really are Almost antisocial.
There needs to be more places like McCreesh Place with permanent supportive housing with supportive services as opposed to shelters. We really try to look at each person as an individual and find out what their needs are and just wrap those support services around whatever individual needs they have. If you put someone who's moving out of a homeless situation into just an apartment complex With no support services, there's a really good likelihood that they are gonna become homeless again. One of the things that I saw, I used to work at the Uptown Shelter for 11 years, and I was their program director there. And I would see a lot of individuals cycling in and out of homelessness. Here with the supports, it's— we're trying to support them in their housing placement. We want them to stay here.
I know it's hard sometimes to think that anyone will notice.
I know it can feel Bobby Livingston had been living at McCreesh Place one year when he met his future wife, Alice, at church.
When I met him, he was so honest with me, and he told me what he had been through, and I felt like, you know, some people won't tell you everything about them, and he was straightforward with me from the start.
Now Bobby is a certified peer counselor, giving back and also volunteering at McCreesh.
He's just amazed me so much as to what he's trying to accomplish. And he's doing it. He's really doing it, and I'm so proud of him.
Hey, thank you.
They're beautiful. Former resident Herbert Martin would tell you his life blossomed at McCreech, coming back almost every day now to tend the rose garden.
Although. Alcohol and drugs real bad. You know, shelter and this place really helped me to, you know, get my life together again. And yeah, and you know, I appreciate what they did and stuff. So, you know, I'm just giving back what they gave me.
Giving back. It's a frequent theme here at McCreesh and the surrounding neighborhood of Villa Heights.
They are great guys.
They're not homeless.
They're living in a place and they're being a participating member of our society. You can't ask for something better than that. It's taking somebody off the street and giving them a place to live where they can be a productive person.
Great guys. Productive citizens. Charlotte records show neighbors haven't called police about McCreesh since the doors opened. City staffer Pat Mumford says it's because residents are held accountable.
If they're in there with drugs or drinking, they, they get booted out because there are more people that can use those services in that space. That's where apartment buildings don't have that. A lot of crime occurs in apartment buildings and those tenants stay. But this is a very well-run organization.
Mumford says from the city's standpoint, McCreesh makes economic sense. The apartments residents pay rent, and there's always a waiting list to get in. Statistics show the chronically homeless in Charlotte have 584 hospitalizations in an average year at a cost of $1.2 million. And the homeless people with the most emergency room visits get a bill of $4.8 million over a year's time, a total of $6 million in Charlotte hospitals for about 800 chronically homeless people.
They're going to either be at the jail, which is our largest homeless shelter that we have, or they're going to be in an emergency room, or they're going to be utilizing mental health services or some service that costs the taxpayer money.
You know, I was on drugs and alcohol, and, you know, I lost everything— my job, my place— and I was literally living outside. At a park, you know, and because of that I used to go to jail a lot because I didn't care about life. I didn't care about, you know, where I slept at or what I ate or if I took a bath or if I didn't. I just didn't care, you know. I just, I was just out there. McCreese helps me in a lot of ways. It's not like just a place where you stay because, you know, we have staff here and if we have any type of situations, you know, like just need somebody to talk to, they're here.
I haven't made it into the—
When you sit down and you look at the cost to our community for a population that is not properly served, it is immense.
It is huge.
And when you look at what we can do here for so much less money, our community ought to be proud of what McCreesh Place is doing to make good use of the resources that we have so that there are Fewer interventions by police and hospitals and other public services that are very expensive, incredibly expensive.
McCreesh's support will help Barry with his plans to move on. He just finished working the Quail Hollow Golf Tournament and is studying for his GED. He's found that with mental health services, he's able to keep a job for the first time. But some residents, like Richard, may stay. The ultimate The ultimate goal is to keep the men from spiraling down to homelessness again. The bonus is taxpayer savings, but you can't put a price on a person's well-being.
Well, good. I'm glad your recovery's going so good.
Thank you.
How long has it been?
It's been, um, it's been like, it's been 3 years since I recovered, but it's been, so 2 years, it's been 2 years.
While we can prolong life and improve the quality of life, We can't prevent death for people who are so, so sick. And so I've had more experience with end-of-life issues for people and have accompanied more people than I ever imagined I would in the 6 years I've been here to their death. That's an unfortunate thing, but it makes me all the more pleased and proud to be able to say they were able to be part of a community at the time that they had to die. And so that's, that's a huge gift too.
A man who once lived under a bridge spent his last days surrounded by the McCreesh community of people who care. Executive Director Pam Jefson says McCreesh crosses society's barriers, mending relationships and self-esteem.
What McCreesh does is just reach down and give them a hand up. just give them that support that they need to do the kinds of things that we all want to do, to be in community, to be productive members of society.
McCreesh is transformative.
Changed my life. McCreesh saved my life. I don't really think if If I hadn't gotten here, I'd probably be dead today. I am truly blessed to have this place in my life.
It's—
I grow every day that I'm here.
I asked my mother, I said, when they told me I couldn't teach anymore, what am I gonna do? And she said, It looks like to me you're right where you're supposed to be.
Yeah, Recretion is a good place for people who don't have a home. It keeps you out of jail and out of the hospital. If it wasn't for donations, we wouldn't have anything.
If you want to help somebody or an organization that really It truly works. Macriechia is the place to do it.
I once, I once was lost, but Lord, oh now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see. I see.
