ORANGEBURG, S.C. — The Samaritan House in Orangeburg, which provides temporary housing, outreach programs and transitional services to people experiencing homelessness, is celebrating their third anniversary after a reboot in 2020.
Samaritan House Executive Director Henry Miller said he has seen an increase need for shelter and their services in the last three years.
"There is a need to grow this shelter, but in order to grow this shelter, we know that some of the space we have is not conducive to be able to support what we are looking into bringing into the shelter," Miller said.
Miller said the organization's next big project is standalone kitchen, as they feed the unhoused population of Orangeburg three meals a day.
"The thing now is to try and add a free standing kitchen on to the Samaritan House to be able to accommodate the need of where we are getting ready to increase our volume,” Miller said. “Because if we are able to free up some of the space in the kitchen, where we have the freezers and the counter top, that could give us more room to put tables and chairs to be able to accommodate the growing number that we are going to see."
The Samaritan House hopes that by moving the kitchen, the canteen space will be large enough to host house wide meals for all of their residents. Currently, residents have to eat meals split up based on gender.
The Samaritan House is expecting to have their standalone kitchen project completed before the end of next year.