A story of hope, and a lopsided deal: Ministry for addicts has a record of success, but its work program leaves some vulnerable
Jesse Carter’s first job out of homelessness and a crack cocaine addiction took him on an improbable journey, from a Philadelphia ghetto to the top floors of Boston’s Marriott Copley Plaza, where he worked on an $18 million renovation of the towering Back Bay hotel.
Arranged by his church, a Christian drug rehabilitation ministry called Victory Outreach, the job offered Carter hope of a steady wage and a fresh start. But inside the Marriott his optimism quickly faded, displaced by unshakable fatigue and pain from the daily demands of the work. He said he was moving furniture 12 hours a day, six days a week — part of a crew from Victory Outreach working around the clock last winter to remodel the hotel’s 1,100 guest rooms.
At night, Carter and 11 other laborers packed into a pair of two-bedroom apartments in Chelsea provided by the contractors. His pay for nearly three months of labor worked out to about $4 an hour, half the required minimum wage in Massachusetts.
“For what we got paid,” Carter said, “that job was crazy.”
In searching for a foothold out of poverty, the 50 year old got swept into a little-known corner of America’s underground economy. His job at the Marriott was not an isolated arrangement, but one of many hotel projects that have employed, on short wages, impoverished men affiliated with Victory Outreach, an international evangelical church that operates recovery homes for addicts and former gang members in some of America’s poorest neighborhoods.