In the heart of South Memphis sits a massive, crumbling building with a name that once carried sorrow and stigma: The Home for the Incurables. Built in 1908 and once a place for those with diseases deemed untreatable, the 76,000-square-foot campus at 1467 East McLemore Avenue had been abandoned and forgotten — until now.
Ben Owen, founder of We Fight Monsters and Owen Army, and Memphis attorney Vanecia Belser Kimbrow are leading an effort to transform this historic property into something powerful: a full-scale drug and alcohol treatment center aimed at rescuing lives in one of America’s most broken communities.
“We’re fighting an incurable disease: addiction,” Owen said.
Ben and his wife Jess know the street well. They were once homeless and addicted in the very neighborhood where the “Incurables” campus now sits. Years later, they returned — not as victims, but as leaders of a growing movement that turns former crack houses into safe homes for recovering addicts, trafficking survivors, and veterans.
Kimbrow, who chairs the Board of Trustees at LeMoyne-Owen College and has dedicated her life to urban renewal, bought the abandoned site after reading the mission of We Fight Monsters. “I just knew South Memphis needed some additional resources,” she told reporters. The partnership between her and Owen was immediate.
“He read our mission, and I read his. The purpose and mission had been married,” she said.
Together, they're working to raise millions to restore the "Incurables" property. Their plan is rooted in lived experience and bold faith.
The impact has already started: volunteers from 14 states came to clean up the property, including parents of addicts and people in recovery who found hope through Owen’s work.
“We prayed: God, get us out of hell, and we’ll come back for everyone we left behind,” Ben said.
For those like Virginia Burton, a recovered addict who came from Seattle to volunteer, the mission of We Fight Monsters is deeply personal. “I love what Ben and Jessica are doing. We’re taking lived experience and applying a process that actually helps people turn and change their lives,” she said.
The site is more than just a building. It’s a declaration: that no life is too broken, and no community too far gone.
“The community supports it. I just can’t think of a better place to do this,” Owen said. “We’re in one of the most impoverished and violent zip codes in America — and it’s ready for something different.”
Read the full article on Action News 5.
To learn more or support this transformation, visit WeFightMonsters.org.