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From a flop house to a four-building campus, The Refinery Mission in Opelousas has grown to meet the needs of men in crisis across the state. But nearly 20 years ago, the program itself was at risk.

“I didn’t come in at ground zero. I came in at ground negative. We owed the IRS money; they’d run everything in the ground,” says Johnny Carriere Jr., executive director of the faith-based program.

With the help of a $2 million grant from a federal bank, The Refinery will be able to house over 170 men struggling with poverty, addiction and other behavioral health problems by late next year.

Called ‘The Rig,’ the facility will add 57 more transitional and emergency beds, as well as a chapel and recreation space.

Carriere, who took charge in 2007, could not have been predicted what the Refinery has become — or himself, for that matter.

He had his own struggle with addiction and The Refinery’s rejuvenation is much like his own life, which saw him get clean and become executive director of the struggling facility in just a few years. 

“I started making new friends, started on a new journey,” says Carriere, who took over the then Opelousas Lighthouse Mission shelter with just 11 residents, in his late twenties. 

The Refinery has operated under its current name for roughly eight years. Carriere changed it to distinguish the men’s organization from others with similar lighthouse-based names. 

He no longer refers to The Refinery as a shelter, explaining that the faith-based service offers much more than shelter and food. 

“We were basically just like a flop house where guys just have a roof over their head…From day one, I knew that was not something I was interested in doing,” says Carriere, who now has over 120 residents coming and going from work and appointments, logged on front desk computers in the residential buildings. 

Located on W South Street in Opelousas, the campus has grown from one room with a dozen bunk beds to a soon-to-be four-building campus that can house 177 men, still well short of what’s needed.

“We have a huge need…from homelessness to just pure brokenness and affordable housing needs,” says Carriere.

Even with 120 beds on site now, the facility regularly has a waitlist of over 60 men, often referred by case managers to the Refinery, which is not part of Acadiana’s continuum of care.

Even with that large number of residents, the facility runs extremely lean. Carriere, along with Steven Barnes, the program director, make up two-thirds of the Refinery’s staff. Residents in transitional housing help run the facility, from cooking to working as drivers for other residents. 

Barnes and the third staff member, Terry Morris, both went through the facility as residents and stayed on as staff. Barnes had previously gone to Home of Grace, the same faith-based facility where Carriere got clean, but he was soon back living under a bridge in Dallas.

“I went back home in December, and by the first of February, I was smoking crack again,” says Barnes, who then found out about The Refinery from a friend from his days at Home of Grace who called him out of the blue, something he refers to as an act of God. 

Barnes, who stayed at the facility over a year as a resident, says he would work at The Refinery until he retires — if Johnny lets him. 

“I remember getting a new telephone number, an Opelousas number…And I thought, well, God, I guess you want me to stay,” says Barnes. 

In his role now, Barnes wears many hats, helping residents get IDs, running devotion sessions and helping men in transition set realistic goals for their future, which is often looking just a couple of weeks ahead.

With recent growth, many of these goals can be achieved while staying at The Refinery. The soon-to-be four-building campus offers transitional housing — less restricted, low-rent, style housing — for men leaving the emergency housing half of the facility. 

According to Carrierre, that part of the facility almost runs itself, allowing his staff to focus on the men most in crisis in emergency bunk-style housing in the facility’s main building, while the original facility, which once housed up to 32 men, now functions as a cafeteria and storage. 

Both the transitional housing and the main emergency housing facility were partially paid for using grants supplied by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas, through member Catalyst Bank, based in Opelousas. 

The FHLBank system was created by Congress in the 1930s and is required to contribute a portion of its net income to housing needs. The Dallas branch contributes 15% of net revenue to a range of grantees, mostly focused on affordable housing, across its regional umbrella, which includes Louisiana. 

The bank plans to distribute $96.4 million for affordable housing grants and programs to its member banks in 2025. The Refinery will receive $2 million from that distribution.

“That kind of deeply affordable housing is a priority for us,” says Greg Hettrick, FHLBank Dallas’s director of community investment. “You’re helping those who can least afford to help themselves.”

Rent for the transitional housing is under $400 a month, all utilities included, and daily meals are provided. The costs are much lower than the rates for the conventional, pay-by-the-week halfway house model. 

The latest grant is FHLBank’s third to the Refinery. It was awarded $1.25 million in the past for two other facilities.

The Refinery built the 54 units of deeply affordable transitional housing with a $750,000 grant from the bank. A $500,000 grant helped finance the main facility.

Many of the men in emergency housing come from shelters or right from living on the street and need hands-on care right away. 

“They need the attention. They need to care,” says Carriere. “Most of these guys come in with nothing, and normally, they come in with a lot of broken history.”

He says having the separated housing gives the men in emergency housing a realistic goal to work towards.

If Carriere wants to grow it any more, he will have to buy land, something he is finding surprisingly difficult in the rural Opelousas land around his campus. And he needs the space to make more room.

“There’s never an open bed here…there’s no one else that’s doing what we’re doing, in what we’re offering these guys,” says Carriere. “We are truly pouring resources into them and providing very personalized care in what we do and how we do it.”