Who We Are
About Us
The Nexus Foundation, Inc.
Our Mission
Our mission is to provide women recovering from addiction with housing and supportive services on their journey to independence.
- Women become addicted more quickly than men. It takes less of a substance and a shorter period of time for a woman to become addicted.
- Women develop health problems more quickly from substance abuse. Addiction causes more pronounced physiological changes in women than men. They also experience co-occurring mental health disorders.
- While women are more likely to seek help, they fear the social stigma in admitting substance abuse. Additionally, women with children often fear losing custody of their children because of their addiction.
- Women tend to be more adversely affected by changes in employment. Many are at-will employees and often do not have employee assistance programs that support them as they seek treatment.
- Women are underserved in all facets of rehabilitation and recovery treatment. A woman's journey to recovery is compounded often by caretaking responsibilities for family members including dependent children. Women are often the primary caregivers and cannot leave their children for extended periods. The few facilities available to women rarely provide accommodation for women with children.
Founder's Story
In 2006, Nexus Foundation founder Dwight Anderson was traveling frequently from New York to Raleigh, NC to spend time with family. It soon made sense to him to buy a house there. Over the next decade, he invested in other properties in Raleigh and Charlotte, usually in distressed areas with an eye to rehabilitation of the home and the community. Dwight saw the life situations of many in the communities where he invested and chose to address the barriers to housing stability for underserved members of the community. North Carolina surpassed the national average of substance abuse disorders related to opioid use.
The impediments to sobriety were the same although the substances had shifted. In addition to alcohol, heroin and cocaine, the substances of choice were now opioids, benzodiazepine, fentanyl and methamphetamine. What was once an urban dilemma had now expanded to suburban and rural counties in North Carolina and other parts of the country. Substance abuse was impacting men and women from all racial and ethnic communities and of varying economic status.
Dwight’s acumen in housing investment and rehabilitation moved him to pursue establishing transitional and long-term residential facilities (known as sober homes) for women in recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. By 2017, he was ready to put in motion more concerted service to the community. He enlisted Tom Hamilton to blend their mutual experience and passion for community service to take the Nexus Foundation initiative forward. Tom came from the same community in Queens, NY as Dwight and had lived and worked in Charlotte for a number of years. Tom had experience in operating sober homes in New York City and in Charlotte, after having worked many years in substance abuse and street-based AIDS intervention. After successfully running a restaurant business in Charlotte, Tom returned to the addiction recovery field in late 2010.
Nexus opened its first transitional sober residence in Mecklenburg County in North Carolina for women without child custody in 2020. Its resident population is racially and socio-economically diverse women ranging in age from 23 to 62.
Ann Black House
