Home is where the heart is, but for Jennifer Smith, it’s a place where she can fix the broken.
For a house meant to assist drug addicts, criminals and the unlucky, the inside never looked so comforting.
An afternoon breeze wafted through an open window as Smith, 41, sat cross-legged on a couch with her eyes fixed on the empty street outside.
The window shook and the walls vibrated as a car blasting its stereo zipped past the house on East University Avenue.
Smith cracked a smile as the thumping faded.
“We get a whole orchestra of those during the night,” she said. “But I’ve gotten used to it.”
Smith is the director of the House of Hope of Alachua County women’s program. She has been living in the new women’s house since it reopened in March.
Nancy Cuddington, 54, of Interlachen, Fla., moved into the house with Smith on April 14.
A felony DUI charge has hindered Cuddington from getting a job since being released from prison in January, but it didn’t stop her from getting first pick for the bed she will be sleeping in for the next six months.
The House of Hope was established in 1995 to mentor newly freed prisoners in a Christian influenced, six-month program.
The organization did not establish a women’s program until several years later, Smith said.
Each section’s director lives among the ex-prisoners as both a teacher and housemate. Volunteers assist the directors in organizing and teaching classes.
Smith was named the director of the House of Hope women’s section in September. The women’s section reopened in March after a two-year closure.
Smith’s passion to help others in need is rooted in her past life of homelessness and drug addiction.
“It started with me as a teenager,” she said.
Born in Trenton, Fla., in June 1970, Smith trekked down the path of drug abuse by starting a habit of smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol when she was 11 years old.
At 14, Smith experimented with harder drugs: LSD, cocaine, speed and “everything I could get my hands on,” she said.
By the time she was 23, Smith was a twice-divorced, single mother deep into drugs.
At one point, she gave up the one thing she loved the most in order to keep up with her habits.
“The drugs made me abandon my son,” she said.
From 1993 to 2001, Smith lived homeless in Gainesville while spending time in and out of courtrooms for fraud, prostitution and drug possession charges, according to records from the Alachua County Clerk of Courts.
But she never lost the will to help others. If money was available, she rented hotel rooms to give prostitutes places to sleep.
“I’ve always had that nursing heart to make other people feel good about themselves,” she said.
Even as Smith tried to help others in need, she could not escape the reality of her ongoing struggle with homelessness and drug addiction.
It caught up with her at 31 years old. Smith suffered from hallucinations and paranoia while on the run from the police.
“I was scared of people,” she said. “I thought everyone was in this massive conspiracy to get me and to kill me.”
On Nov. 4, 2001, Smith hit rock bottom.
To hide from her fears, Smith walked to the house of a man who was supporting her and locked herself in a closet.
Inside the enclosed space, Smith questioned God’s existence and believed death would be the best way to end her pain. As the darkness swallowed her, she lost consciousness.
When Smith awoke the following morning, she walked back to Gainesville with a new goal: to get better.
Smith spent the next two weeks enrolling in drug rehabilitation programs but left because she did not find peace in them.
She found it after walking into the First Assembly of God church ministry. It inspired a revelation in Smith, and she realized she needed to turn herself in to the authorities, she said.
“I was always the ‘Catch-me-if-you-can kind of person,” she said. “But I turned myself in, and it felt like this massive freedom.”
She immersed herself in Christianity to distance herself from the past. She read the Bible and attended church regularly.
She found a job at Home Depot while volunteering at First Assembly of God on the side.
With her time volunteering at the church, Smith said she wanted to help alcoholics, drug addicts and broken women.
In October 2009, Smith seized her chance when she became the head of the Downtown Ministries.
As part of an organization that she said provides 300 meals a week to homeless people in Gainesville, she wanted to make sure every hungry person went to bed with a full stomach.
“I have a heart for hungry people,” she said. “I believe no one should go hungry.”
Smith’s work at the Downtown Ministries caught the attention of House of Hope Men’s Director Tom Bakos. He offered her the job as the new women’s director for the House of Hope.
“I pursued her for over a year,” he said.
She accepted.
As director, Smith planned to reopen the women’s section with the construction of a new women’s house.
But building stopped in December due to disagreements with the landowner’s contract, Smith said.
On Jan. 12, the House of Hope board of directors agreed to allow the women’s section to occupy one of the men’s houses on East University Avenue. The board agreed to reopen the house in March.
For the next two months, Smith interviewed female prisoners at the Lowell Correctional Institution in Ocala.
During the interviews, Smith told stories about her drug addiction, living on the streets and reconnecting with her son, Christopher, now 21.
“If I didn’t have that restoration to him, I wouldn’t be able to speak hope into these women coming out who lost their kids,” she said. “But I’ve gone through that, and I know it can be done. As bad as it was, it can be done. It is a process.”
The women’s house officially reopened on March 1.
Smith continues to live with Cuddington in the house and will begin the mentoring program when more women move in this summer.
Back in the living room, Smith pointed out two small bullet holes in the window.
She said the house is near where she used to do drugs, but the holes aren’t scaring her away.
“They are constant reminders of the world we live in,” she said. “When you commit to this ministry, bullet holes are meaningless.”
