Restoration House staff didn’t hesitate when they found a familiar woman suffering from a panic attack, lying face-down in the dirt. Once Dedey Mathis was safely inside their vehicle, they drove off in search of help.
Seizures render Mathis unable to drive, so she walks nearly everywhere. Restoration House Executive Director Amy Dodson and case manager Pattie Ivey give her a ride when she can’t reach her destination on foot. Because of that small, nondescript white building on Academy Street in downtown Bryson City, she can also take warm showers, access her prescriptions and restock her cabinet. Restoration House is a lifeline to Mathis — and to hundreds just like her throughout Swain County.
Despite the breadth of its services — among them, also a MANNA-sponsored food pantry serving about 2,000 monthly, a grab-and-go outdoor refrigerator that’s stocked with meals and always open, a diaper bank, free Narcan and over-the-counter medication — the organization is assumed by many to only serve the unhoused population. That’s a false narrative, said Board Chair Dan Manley.
“Yes, we do embrace our homeless population as our family here. But most importantly, all of our services that comes out of the Restoration House is geared towards anybody that is struggling at all in this community, whether it’s food insecurity, whether it’s a housing issue, whether it’s an emergency with paying your bills,” he said.
“You can come to us with something bizarre and usually Pattie [Ivey] or I will be able to fix it by the end of the day,” said Director of Recovery Operations Amanda Caldwell. “I’ve given a puppy its shots. We do a lot.”
The nonprofit is also run according to the principle that barriers to entry must be eliminated to adequately cater to the community.
“You show up at our door and say, ‘I need food.’ You have self-declared your need,” said Manley.
Restoration House’s Diane Rosenberg, whose position is funded by the State of Franklin Health Council, emphasized how foreign that practice felt to pantry newcomers, used to filling out forms and jumping through hoops to prove eligibility.
“People will always say, ‘What do you need from me? You need my driver’s license, my birthday?’” she recounted, adding that the only information she requires is a name and the size of one’s household. “That’s all I need.”
If preferred, a fake name is also permissible, so long as it is used each visit.
Volunteer Keonta Ardrey said Restoration House is unique in how it facilitates guests’ agency.
“This place provides things that most places don’t provide,” he said. “Like a full kitchen over here … You come in here and cook your own food.”
Furthermore, Restoration House has taken on the cost-of-living crisis within the area, perhaps the base from which the misleading claim of “homeless only” arose. Staff agreed that the cause of Swain County’s unaffordable housing is the nationwide trend of increasing rental prices. Another is the prevalence of short-term rentals.
A recent TIME article outlining the former root cause explained that buyers competing for a new apartment building will bid with a loan secured from the bank based on rent growth forecasts. Generally, greater rent growth forecasts will enable higher loans — and increase the likelihood of the bid going through. Upon purchase, the building is bound to the rent growth prediction. Landlords price units at the highest market-permissible amount, so when the market speculates steep increases, rent hikes are the “business plan.”
As for the latter issue, Restoration House employees could speak to personal experience.
“I watched people I had known my whole life get evicted because their house was cute and they rented it, and now it’s an Airbnb, and it generates so much more money,” said Caldwell. “We’re losing the local people, which loses the culture of our area.”
Airbnb supply in Swain County grew 61.5% throughout fiscal year 2025-26, with increased nightly rates and revenue, reported AirROI.
Short-term rentals are not regulated (nor are restrictions in process) at either the county or town level, unlike other parts of The Smoky Mountain News coverage area. Highlands, in Macon County, has strict STR regulations in residential zones subject to ongoing litigation; Sylva, passed a STR ordinance in August 2022 and Waynesville, is developing one.
But Swain County doesn’t lack housing. In fact, numbers point to the opposite: The county house vacancy rate in 2022 was 32.7%, compared to 0.7% for all of North Carolina. What it does lack, said Ivey, is housing that is decently priced and habitable.
“When we had the [Healthy Opportunities Pilot] program, half of these rentals didn’t even pass their inspection because HOP would only give you the money if it was a safe place to live,” she said.
Swain County does not have a minimum housing ordinance, and even when one was proposed earlier this summer, it was described as primarily tenant complaint-driven, rather than mandating a habitability inspection. Immediately, commissioners had mixed reactions. Chairman Jay Kirkland wanted renters to have a safe place to live but felt conflicted about imposing on others’ property. In fierce opposition from the beginning was Commissioner David Loftis.
“I believe we’re intruding too much on the landlords and all this junk about the law and forcing, tearing it down and stuff,” he said at a May 5 meeting.
The Affordable Housing Committee at a June 2 joint meeting with the commission raised concerns that the ordinance might displace residents, though temporary lodging was offered as a solution. It was later tabled indefinitely.
On the pricing side, Ivey routinely helps folks with Section 8 subsidized housing applications, but she’s not optimistic about their chances. One apartment complex is attempting to nix its Section 8 status, she said, even as locally, the voucher program already sports a waitlist.
“Affordable housing now is even shrinking more,” said Ivey. “These people can have two, three jobs, and they still can’t make rent.”
A common misconception is that those living on the streets are unwilling to work — and that housing inevitably comes with employment. In reality, the leading root cause of homelessness in the United States is a lack of affordable housing. Studies from 1988 to 2023 by agencies from the Institute of Medicine to Zillow point to a direct relationship between homelessness and availability of low-cost housing. Furthermore, it’s far more difficult for someone experiencing homelessness to find employment.
“People forget [that] for a job, even, a lot of these folks don’t have identification, so we’ve got to get a birth certificate, a Social Security card. We’ve got to go get them their I.D. It’s a process, so that’s why sometimes it feels like it takes so long,” said Ivey.
Job applications typically require a home address, which unhoused individuals do not possess.
Up to 40-60% of the homeless population is employed despite that fact, and Restoration House has been able to get some of these people off the streets and into stable housing situations.
“I am up to 19 people that were on the street this year that we’ve got into stable housing. Some of them became homeless, and we were able to fix it inside a month,” said Caldwell. The nonprofit previously operated a nightly Bryson City shelter called Sweet Dreams with the capacity to house six individuals.
But operations eventually “fizzled out,” said Dodson.
So Sweet Dreams briefly became HOP program headquarters until funding lapsed in late 2025, as the Republican-led General Assembly then hadn’t passed a budget. The Medicaid-based program, focused on addressing social determinants of health through preventative measures like promoting access to fresh food and addressing residential toxins, reduced annual healthcare spending, on average, by more than $1,000 per enrollee throughout its three-year rollout.
Without HOP appropriations, Restoration House staff, again made to rethink Sweet Dreams’ purpose, settled on their own pilot: a four-month supply of workforce transitional housing. This was not a new idea, though it would be a new initiative. The organization had tried in 2025 to implement an identical model at Calhoun House, a historic hotel named for William Calhoun, a descendant of former Vice President John C. Calhoun.
Calhoun House felt ideal for two reasons: accommodations for 21 living units and a history that fit the bill. About 90 years ago, the hotel was converted into apartments for the Fontana Dam construction workforce.
But the Calhoun House initiative ran into two major problems: it infuriated some of the public and it relied predominately on HOP appropriations. Community members and Bryson City business owners became falsely convinced the building’s new occupants would bring drugs and filth to the area, said Manley.
“We wanted to help people who were working be in a place that only cost them $800, $850 a month to live,” he explained, noting that this price point would ensure they’d have enough left over to afford essentials like car repair and clothing.
At the time, the board opened its meetings to anyone with doubts, urging them to listen and learn about the project. According to Dodson, some attended.
“They left nodding their heads,” she recounted.
Still, she said, they maintained the same opposition in the days that followed.
HOP’s discontinuation was the true dealbreaker. Program funding has been restored with the June 2026 biennial budget — though only partially. The legislature satisfied $25 million of the $80 million HOP appropriations originally requested. And there could be repercussions from such a pause, NC Health News reported. Previous employees might not return. Participating farms may supply fewer produce.
Likewise, state appropriations will not prompt Restoration House’s return to the historic hotel. Staff have moved onto the smaller, less visible Sweet Dreams (with a name change still up for discussion).
Sweet Dreams’ under-the-radar status — an absence of drugs, filth and other negative associations some have with the indigent and unhoused — is a point of pride for Dodson.
“The police said they didn’t even know about it … They didn’t know we owned a second location,” she said.
While the building hasn’t yet opened its doors to full capacity, it has piloted with several community members. And the outcomes have been promising.
“We had a young man who had a 10-year-old son. They were living in their truck in the parking lot, and so we tested it out. For four months he stayed in a room, and at the end of the four months, not only had we helped him get a job, but he was stable. He got a home someplace else,” said Dodson.
After four months of workforce transitional housing, another 19-year-old boy had saved 80% of what he’d earned.
Restoration House staff told The Smoky Mountain News that these results point to success at a larger scale. When Sweet Dreams does take off, occupancy will come with a major stipulation.
“They’re going to have to be drug-free, but we are not going to drug test because it is not going to be a halfway house,” said Dodson.
The notion that the nonprofit’s primary location — not Sweet Dreams — attracts those addicted to drugs may have some truth to it, said community member Amanda Carpenter, who was at Restoration House to grab food from the pantry and spoke to SMN with two kids in tow. But, she said, it’s for one specific reason.
“This is the only place they can find to get help.”
And the assistance offered, she added, is extremely valuable.
“This place has got a lot of people off drugs, and that’s what I really want to see around,” she said.
Carpenter has a personal stake in substance use disorder rehabilitation. At 13 years old — the era of girlhood that brings lowered self-confidence, peer pressure and a still-developing body and brain — she began using methamphetamine. Early use significantly increases the risk of long-term addiction, which became Capenter’s reality.
At one point, when she was living in a camper, the Department of Social Services terminated custody of her children. What brought her to sobriety was that even in the throes of her addiction, she cared about her kids far more than the drugs.
But after four years sober, the urge doesn’t get any easier.
“Every day, I fight to stay away from methamphetamine. It’s a very hard thing to do,” she said.
Both the American Medical Society and American Society of Addiction Medicine classify substance use disorder as a disease rather than a moral failing. A biogenetic predisposition to addictive behaviors and chemicals increases one’s risk of substance abuse but is not generally a causal factor without other predispositions such as early-life traumatic experiences.
High-risk drug use can increase one’s risk of homelessness, but homelessness can also cause or worsen high-risk drug use.
Yet Carpenter said locally, some of the services that made life a little bit easier for unhoused substance users hardly exist anymore.
“You can’t use the [public] bathrooms because they lock them up. I mean, just because they do drugs doesn’t mean they can’t go in there and wash their freaking hands and live — still live,” she said.
Other challenges faced by the local homeless population aren’t as passive as an inaccessible stall. Carpenter and Mathis both agreed Swain County law enforcement is especially hostile to the unhoused.
“‘You can’t be homeless around here,’ is what they try to say,” said Carpenter, adding that when she lived on the streets, she was forced to move to Robbinsville because of the informal prohibition.
Mathis, who has also experienced homelessness, put it in more explicit terms. “‘Out of sight, out of mind.’ That’s what the cops are saying.”
But a large body of research points to the opposite, deeming ‘out-of-sight’ policies ineffective and unjust. A comprehensive Oxford University Press study noted that laws and actions treating homelessness as a crime — such as encampment relocations, property destruction and citations — “fail to reduce urban disorder but create instead a spatial churn in which homeless people circulate between neighborhoods and police jurisdictions rather than leaving public space.” Anti-homeless laws not only harm the health and safety of homeless people but also reduce their ability to find help, housing and employment, which in turn may increase their likelihood of remaining unhoused.
Carpenter explained why people experiencing homelessness prefer to remain proximate to town.
“They [stay] out close to here so they can be sanitary and come and wash themselves and cook and clean,” she said.
Mathis said that while the homeless are seen as dirty, most keep their living space as hygienic as possible.
“The tent is like your house. It’s very neat and clean,” she explained.
Meanwhile, key differences between tents and houses include the latter’s insulated physical structure and permanent foundation. So, transition from life on the street to within four walls can be jarring, according to the National Health Care for the Homeless Council. While no one chooses to be homeless, Mathis told SMN that someone acclimated to prolonged homelessness might struggle in a different environment.
“[When] you get used to [life on the street] for so long, you can’t function in a home,” she said.
That Mathis and Carpenter were able to weather this adjustment speaks in part to the work of Restoration House. For example, with $200 from nonprofit’s emergency financial assistance fund, Mathis secured power for her property. For Carpenter, who takes care of her four children and mother-in-law, it’s uplifting to know that she’ll find food and community in that small, white Academy Street building.
“God bless this place for helping when people need it,” she said.