Gary Carpenter has a dream, and he will not let any number of regulators, vandals or con artists stop him.
The Air Force veteran and certified rehabilitation counselor wants to turn a house in Keene into a residence for veterans and veterans’ family members in recovery.
“I want them to know they’re the captains of their own ships,” said Carpenter, who lives in Peterborough and is not only planning to open a rehabilitation house, but is also running for state representative, though he acknowledges he is an underdog. “I was in a lot of hell holes when I used to drink and drug.”
In the year and a half since work began on the project, the house on Church Street has been vandalized three times, flooded twice, and filled with homeless squatters many times. Emergency responders saved a man from overdose in the backyard.
“The addiction and heroin stuff, that’s destroying the whole state,” Carpenter said.
The Keene property is not new to Carpenter. Before he developed the plan to turn it into a recovery facility, he rented it.
“I didn’t do credit checks, and a couple of times, they beat me,” he said.
Now, he said, the house will be transformed into a place for people who want to recover.
The building is even being used to help people recover now, before it is open to residents, through a work program run by Todd Rogers, a home improvement specialist handling the construction work.
“We’re going to build this house with some of the same people who will be here,” Rogers said. “That’s the thing about the program: They want to work.”
One worker, Matt Johnson, called the job his version of rehab. He was released from the Cheshire County jail on July 25, and is at the house working seven days a week and only leaves to see his four kids.
“When I met with Todd, I was going back down the wrong path,” Johnson said. “If I go back to the drugs, I’m gonna die; if I get one more drug charge, I’m getting life.”
The work program lets recovering drug users learn trades so they can get jobs moving forward.
Rogers said, “We’re using Gary’s sober house as a springboard so we can put people to work and help them.” He added, “They need a place to be and something to do; that’s 90 percent of the problem, people come out and have nothing to do.”
Carpenter plans to help his residents through holistic treatments using what he calls the Choice Method, rather than using pharmaceuticals or traditional 12-step methods.
His residence will provide nutrition and business instruction, connection with local veterans groups, including the Veterans Business Outreach in Manchester.
Country Life, a health food store in Keene, will supply one vegan meal a day for each tenant. Carpenter even hopes to turn a shed in the backyard into a dojo so his residents get exercise.
It is important to Carpenter that people realize his plan is not to run a treatment facility like the nearby Phoenix House facility. It is simply an apartment-style residence he hopes can create a community for people who need help in recovery.
“This is just a homeowner who wants to do something good with his home,” Rogers said.
The Church Street house sits in the middle ground between newly developed family homes and a troubled part of the city’s downtown, and Carpenter sees it as part of Keene’s revitalization.
That is, if he gets the help to complete it.
The house has been cleared for partial occupancy, and Carpenter hopes to have one first-floor bedroom ready for a tenant soon. By getting a tenant, he can begin earning income, which will help fund the work still to be done on the rest of the house.
“Getting the first floor running will get us the funds to work on the upstairs,” Rogers said.
The house is in a designated flood zone and the Federal Emergency Management Agency requires all new houses in such zones to be build entirely above the flood line. The work being done to Carpenter’s house, which was built in 1891, will cost more than half of the house’s appraised value, technically categorizing it as new, so he may have to eliminate the basement. The property, appropriately, is adjacent to Carpenter Field and not far from Carpenter Street, reaffirming Gary Carpenter’s dream.
“The whole project has been a busload of adversity,” he said. “But I had dreams, I still have them.”
Brandon Latham can be reached at 924-7172 ext. 228 or blatham@ledgertranscript.com.