Lakeside Reserve sees Wilmington’s homeless become renters

The Good Shepherd Center project has given affordable housing to 16 chronically homeless people.

WILMINGTON — For 10 years Frank Lewis lived in the woods off South 17th Street. His home was a tent, two air mattresses and a propane heater.

Today, the 56-year-old Navy veteran has 660 square feet of his own in the Good Shepherd Center’s SECU Lakeside Reserve. There’s a bed on which he no longer tosses and turns, a refrigerator stocked with food he purchased himself, and a slow cooker in which he makes “a killer rice pudding.” There are crosses throughout the home, and on one wall pictures of his parents and siblings.

“When you live in the woods, you can’t have anything like that,” he said.

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